Let's stop pretending to be unicorns!

Let’s stop pretending to be unicorns! RSECon25 Marion Weinzierl September 10, 2025 The RSE unicorn was designed by Cristin Merritt Eierlegende Wollmilchsau (Egg-laying wool-milk-sow) By de:User:Pixelrausch - http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Wollmilchsau.png, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8257927 History of RSE (Timeline image stolen from SocRSE Sponsored Event talk.) What the RSE Movement has achieved →Research Software Engineer as recognised job title →Career pathways (sometimes even with permanent contracts) →Central and embedded groups at universities and institutions in the UK and a growing number of countries →National associations in eight or more countries →Several annual RSE conferences worldwide →Funding opportunities →Increasing recognition of the importance of software and its developers in research →Inspiring movements in adjacent fields (data, infrastructure) ⇒Research Technical Professionals (RTPs) That sounds great! So what’s the problem? The (computational) researcher’s side ▶The RSE I was promised to work 2 days per week on my project does not seem to work full 2 days. ▶Three weeks of the 3 months allocation period have passed before the RSE got properly started. ▶The RSE keeps wanting to spend time on improving version control, testing, documentation – we don’t have time for that! ▶The RSE does not properly understand our codebase and research - a postdoc is much more efficient! ▶I was promised an expert in X, but the RSE is just an average programmer. ▶The funding council keeps banging on about RSEs and RTPs - they should rather fund my research! The (non-computational) researcher’s side ▶The RSE came to implement X for me, but now they want to constantly meet to discuss it - I just want it done. ▶The RSE wants to be co-author on my paper - they don’t have a clue about my research! If I use Word to write my paper I don’t make Bill Gates a co-author! ▶The software the RSE wrote for me is falling over after the project ended, but the RSE does not want to come back and fix it. The RSE’s side ▶I am working on two or three projects at the same time, and the context switching is slowing me down. ▶My team lead put on a project with a technology I have some basic knowledge and would like to know more. That’s great, but it means my progress is slower. ▶I know nothing about the research that project is about and it makes it hard to understand the software, create examples, find the right data etc. ▶In order to do the right thing in the code I need input from the researcher, but they are slow in getting back to me. ▶I am dreading the meetings with the researcher as they always seem disappointed in my progress. ▶I always feel behind and guilty. Mental Health in RSEng ▶Break the (academic) stigma around saying “I don’t know.” – Research is team work. – Research software engineering should be team work. ▶Don’t paint this superhuman picture of an RSEcorn. – 99.9% of people won’t see themselves that way and therefore feel insufficient. – Everyone will be disappointed. ▶Listen to Mike’s talk later in this session! If we are not unicorns - what are we? ??? Bob the Builder image by The BBC - bbc.com, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37342560. My little Pony image from freeiconspng.com. Horse types image Signiert: E. Volkers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Farm animals image by freepik. Another mythical creature maybe? Image by macrovector on Freepik [Massive rabbit hole here, note to self, don’t try to find more/better images....] OK then.... Let’s ask Cristin how it came about “In 2021 I was running the message boards at the virtual SeptembRSE conference. One of the questions was, ‘What do you think the role of an RSE is?’ and the answers were all manner of varied. RSEs can be broad, specialised, teachers, sysadmins, software developers, trainers, project managers and even therapists—all at the same time! There isn’t a one-size-fits-all format you can fit an RSE into. It made me realise that to be an RSE is to be a bit magical, and very, very unique. I also realised that as an RSE you can’t take things too seriously, in fact, if you did it would break the best of us. And from all that, the RSE unicorn was born!” What do you think? ▶Do we need more embedded RSEs? ▶Are more specialised small RSE teams the way forward? ▶Is communication the issue? – Are we overselling ourselves/selling ourselves wrong? – How do we get everyone on a level playing field? ▶How can academic and RSE career paths be positively interwoven? ▶Is there an alternative to being unicorns?