Merge pull request #5 from AaltoSciComp/rkdarst/rse-funding

content/2023/rse-funding: Blog post on status of RSE funding

content/2024/rse-funding.rst

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+:blogpost: true
+:date: 2024-02-21
+:author: Richard Darst
+:category: RSE
+
+
+Research Software Engineer project funding: what's been working
+===============================================================
+
+The "Research Software Engineer" service provides technical
+collaborators for researchers to complement their scientific
+knowledge.  :external:doc:`Read about Aalto RSE here <rse/index>`.
+The idea of this service was that it would be available to everyone,
+but some projects who made extensive use would fund it themselves.
+
+If you are a group leader reading this, Aalto RSE can help you release
+research code, debug it, make it reusable, rescue old code from former
+members and make it usable again, make it run on our cluster or CSC's
+clusters, manage data, prepare data for easy use, and so on.  If it's
+not long (less than a month), our work is free, if it's more than a
+month, the below applies.
+
+
+
+Early project funding
+---------------------
+
+When we started, we hoped for around 50% project funding.  The idea
+was that a lot of the funding for the service would come from the
+research projects themselves.  This hasn't really worked out so well,
+because a) we accomplish the vast majority of our projects quickly, in
+less than a few weeks, and b) finance would understandably not like to
+deal with small transactions for small amounts of time.
+
+What actually happened was that we basically have received only a small amount of the
+project funding we would have wanted.  On the other hand, this also
+means we have supported a far wider variety of projects than we would
+have otherwise.  It also means we are better accomplishing our other
+goal: tactical support right where and when it's needed most, with the
+least amount of administrative overhead.  This actually better matches
+our mission of helping the researchers who need us most.
+
+
+
+Future funding prospects
+------------------------
+
+For any **long projects** (more than a month or so), we still follow
+do our original plan: we can receive funding from grants (or basic
+funding) to do long-term projects.  This is usually 40-80% of a RSE's
+time, spread out over more than a month (and it can also be bursty:
+lots of work at some times, waiting for the next task at other times).
+We have done this for projects, and we know we can do it in the
+future.
+
+But there's another thing that has worked well: **retainer**-type
+funding instead of project-based funding.  You have extra funding that
+needs to be used?  You know your group needs support but you can't
+name a single specific project to use all the time?  Hire RSEs on
+long-term retainers and we're there for you as needed.  **You will
+always get priority for all the quick questions you have** (in
+:external:doc:`help/garage` or otherwise), and you get the highest
+priority for your medium projects, we can attend your other group
+meetings, and so on.  As your team wants, we'll make high-impact
+improvements here and there.  This could be (for example) anywhere
+from 10-40% time over a long period.
+
+We *have* worked out how to do both one-off projects and retainers
+with Finance.  As for as external funders are concerned, our staff
+count as researchers, so we can use any funding you might have.
+
+**If you think you have a project or want us on retainer, let us
+know:** :external:doc:`rse/index` or :external:doc:`rse/how-we-work`.
+
+
+
+Why are our projects so short?
+------------------------------
+
+This is a valid questions.  Compared to many RSE groups, we seem to be
+focusing on many small questions for a broad audience that knows a lot
+about the problems they need to solve.  Thus, we can come in to
+something already set up well, provide help, and mostly back off and
+be available for maintenance long-term.  The units that fund us
+(schools, departments) have been happy with this, so we've kept it up.
+On the other hand, we are pretty fast.  There have been projects where
+a summer worker was going to be hired, that we could end up doing
+(learning the framework + all the main tasks) in two weeks.  The way
+we work together as a team also makes things quite fast.  Thus, a
+project has to be quite deep in order to exceed a month of work.