rbiotechsalary

This repository holds the source code to produce rbiotechsalary web-app. There's two versions

1. web app hosted at app.victoryuan.com/rbiotechsalary

• a digital ocean hosted docker rshiny web app

2. static html hosted at victoryuan.com/rbiotechsalary

• gha to pull new data and render a new html page everyday. OJS for interactivity

I initially started with 1., but it wasn't free (cheap though $5/month), and I had issues with deployment (css and routing headaches).

I heard of OJS + quarto and was curious if I could make a functional web-app -like product without actually needing a server. But what I found was ultimately that OJS and quarto is not mature and stable enough to provide a featureful web-app like experience. Layout issues, interactivity bugs etc.

I think 2 is good for small projects, like simple data display. Not enough features and robustness for more in-depth data exploration.

Now I am back to working on improving 1.

Next updates

• Remove data pulling and cleaning into separate repo: wvictor14/rbiotechsalary.data, apps should just pull from there instead of running data cleaning everytime image or app is launched

• Related, web app receives data updates by manually redeploying / rebuilding docker image. Data is baked into the image itself.

• Make web app more mobile friendly

  • I'd like to experiment with a more mobile friendly layout. Perhaps with a scrolling layout, and more data presented on one page using some other apps as inspiration
  • e.g. level.fyi for web-based layout
  • I like Monarch Money for the clarity in their UI

• additional features

  • top companies
    • two columns, 1 is company, other is salary
    • expandable
      • show individual salaries?
  • provide alternative survey
    • many issues with existing survey, particularly relating to location
    • a survey redesign would be best but wonder if there is something less atomic

Overview

levels.fyi concise delivery of important info per title:

has a filter by location button

Individual salary explorer:

levels.fyi has a good way of displaying data in table that is also mobile friendly:

• 4 columns, each column actually shows more data, organized in rows
• rows are expandable for more details
• table is filterable and searchable

Top salaries by XX

levels.fyi section to explorer top salaries by location, company, title

Docs

The repo is a bit messy and hard to understand because it comprises 3 components: data clean scripts, web-app (1.) and static html (2.).

1. and 2. depend on the data cleaning scripts

web app source lives in inst/ext/app

both utilize code in R/

Installation

You can install the development version of rbiotechsalary from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("wvictor14/rbiotechsalary")

goals of this project

1. Provide user-friendly access to cleaned biotech salary information from r/biotech
   • focus on normalizing the most relevant variables
2. Convey a minimal but relevant set of statistics and visualizations on salary information
   • enable relevant queries with customized search based on normalized (cleaned) data for role titles, and location data
3. Promote community involvement and open-source frameworks
   • allow user to explore raw data
   • open-access data provenance

Architecture

Pipeline:

Google survey -> google sheets -> GHA-powered daily render and publish

Render and publish:

• R / Observable JS / quarto backend
• renders static html
• github actions to publish static html to github pages

interactivity is all client-side via Observable JS (ojs)

data processing is all using R

Task list

Ideas

? indicate still considering if worth

deployment

• dockerize
• decide on hosting service - digital ocean
• deploy
• automate software updates
• automate data updates
  • regular pulling updates from google sheets
  • target pipeline
  • automate new data cleaning and uploading

General

• add research associate data
• add other departments like product dev, clinical, business etc.

For cleaning

Targeted minimum set of variables:

• timestamp
• role title
• location
• salary base
• salary bonus
• experience years

For app

Filters

• add filter by location
• add filter by timestamp
  • select by year, or by all
• add filter by role title

Salary graphs

How to lay these out? by tabs?

• salary x experience
  • raw data - cool
• histogram
  • toggle between base / total
  • show median in text + line
  • show range (10th and 90th percentile?)

Table

• reactable winner over gt and DT -> server side processing, feature-ful and looks good
• show TC and breakdown base and bonus concisely - merge_cols()
• finalize column inclusion
  • options good to include

docker

for remembering how to docker:

docker container ls
docker exec -it <container_name> bash

# stop and remove
docker stop $(docker ps -a -q)
docker rm $(docker ps -a -q)

# build and push`
docker build -t rbiotechsalary .
docker tag rbiotechsalary victor2wy/rbiotechsalary
docker push victor2wy/rbiotechsalary # push to dockerhub`

# run
docker run --user shiny -dp 3838:3838 victor2wy/rbiotechsalary #dockerhub

docker pull victor2wy/rbiotechsalary:latest
docker run --user shiny -p 3838:3838  rbiotechsalary # local