How much does it cost a Bioinformatician? - Asking ChatGPT

Some time ago, I became curious about the gross salary range for bioinformaticians across various countries in Europe and North America. While browsing through platforms like Glassdoor and Indeed seemed exhaustive, I opted to try ChatGPT for insights. After obtaining data from ChatGPT, I chose to convert the yearly gross salary into a month rate, considering a standard work year of 12 months. After this was just some plotting with ggplot2. These are the results I discovered.

Fig 1. Average Bioinformatician salaries among countries in Europe / North America normalized (USD/month). Salary lines are divided in max (green), average (red) and min (blue). I have also included a yellow dashed line to indicate overall average.

ChatGPT have found an overall average of ~4250 USD/ month (Annualy: 51000 USD or 26 USD/h). This does not take into account bonuses and benefits.

Also asked same for software developer, post doctoral position and data analyst.

Fig 2. Average Post Doctoral salaries among countries in Europe / North America normalized (USD/month). Same as fig 1.

Fig 3. Average Software Developer salaries among countries in Europe / North America normalized (USD/month). Same as fig 1.

Fig 4. Average Data Analyst salaries among countries in Europe / North America normalized (USD/month). Same as fig 1.

Those plots might not be a full picture but give us a hint of how Bioinformatics is doing in IT world.

If you are also interested in how I did this plot, you can find it below:

library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)

plot_salary <- function(data_file, prof){
    tab = read.csv(data_file, header = T)
    tab = tab %>% pivot_longer(names_to = "Salary", values_to = "value", cols = 3:5)
    img = tab %>% 
        ggplot(aes(x = reorder(Country, value), y = value / 12)) + 
        geom_point() +
        geom_smooth(aes(x = as.numeric(as.factor(reorder(Country, value))), color = Salary), se = F) +
        geom_hline(yintercept = mean(tab$value) / 12, colour = "orange", linetype = "longdash") +
        ylim(0, 12000) +
        theme_classic() + labs(y="USD / month (Gross Salary)", x = "Countries",
                                title = prof) +
        theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 45, hjust = 1, size = 12),
                axis.title = element_text(size = 20),
                title = element_text(size = 20),
                legend.position = "none")
    print(mean(tab$value/12))
    return(img)
}



# This is how table would look like:
# Country,Title,Min Salary (USD),Avg Salary (USD),Max Salary (USD)
# United Kingdom,Postdoc,32000,42000,52000
# Germany,Postdoc,38000,48000,58000
# France,Postdoc,33000,43000,53000
# ....

bioinfo_file <- "../../data/salaries_bioinfo_table.csv"
png(filename = "Bioinfo_USD_h.png", res = 300, width = 3000, height = 2000)
plot_salary(bioinfo_file, "Bioinfoinformatician")
dev.off()

postdoc_file <- "../../data/salaries_post_table.csv"
png(filename = "PostDoc_USD_h.png", res = 300, width = 3000, height = 2000)
plot_salary(postdoc_file, "Postdoc")
dev.off()

soft_file <- "../../data/salaries_sd_table.csv"
png(filename = "Soft_USD_h.png", res = 300, width = 3000, height = 2000)
plot_salary(soft_file, "Software Developer")
dev.off()

soft_file <- "../../data/salaries_da_table.csv"
png(filename = "DA_USD_h.png", res = 300, width = 3000, height = 2000)
plot_salary(soft_file, "Data Analyst")
dev.off()