<i>&quot;However, I imagine these people just hire programmers to do the work in the same way they might hire lab assistants.&quot;</i><p>From what I know (decades ago, and from a very low-N and non-representative (biology, psychology) sample), <i>&quot;in the same way&quot;</i> = not.<p>The typical lab assistants are students or Ph.D. students; the researchers cannot do software engineering, so they write programs.<p>Things likely are different in medicine and hard physics. When people are used to spending huge sums on hardware, they tend to accept that spending money on a professional is worth it. Similarly, in the humanities, people probably are more likely to realize&#x2F;accept that paying a professional is worth it.<p>And the career track should be different from a normal one in the sense that one has more control over what one does, how one does it and when one does it, has higher job security, and works on things that are more fun and&#x2F;or more fulfilling, all at the expense of lower financial reward.