[noname123]

Hmm as an ex-Broad employee (and now in another genomics center), what did you find really toxic about the Broad?

FWIW, I really loved Broad the people, my direct line manager and co-workers. The management was horrible and the management at DSP (not the line folks/managers) were the worst.

[noname123]

Since my post was upvoted a tad... I'll give more feedback about the Broad.

When I joined, it was running really like an academic center. Like literally in my lab, if I wanted to go into the lab and pipet and do library prep, the wet lab scientist would teach me and vice versa. It was lit. a place where anybody could pivot their career to anything. We worked on NIAID/NIH grants and went to conferences even as SWE's and I felt we were doin' important research - not just pipeline monkeys but actually performed important analysis like RNASeq differential analysis, ChIPSeq peak calling, metagenomics etc. on publications along with PhD scientists even if I didn't have the academic credentials. Groups within the Broad was running courses for Software Engineers to learn Biology... and you could literally take off middle of day to go across the street to Stata Center to attend lectures on ML or audit Comp Bio at MIT. Nobody would bat an eye. 75% of my group got a Masters degree on the job where we spent more time some months on classes than actual work.

The culture somewhere shifted around 2018-2019... where they brought in new management to run DSP (Data Science Platform where most SWE's likely end up). The DSP management (not the chief guy) but lieutenants ran the "tech playbook"... get PM, Scrum/Agile coaches in; make software and comp biologists line workers.A lot of my fav. people either left or got pushed out. A lot of intuitional knowledge about sequencing and biology got lost, self-driven people left and line workers to work on Portal web development and Data pipeline management came in. To the point where I presented once to the software engineers of DSP and nobody in the room even knew the basic's like what is a long or short reads is. I left soon afterwards to a place where I wouldn't be silo'd. I wouldn't recommend the Broad to anybody now... unless you're working for an academic group. Avoid platform groups (DSP mostly; other platforms are still good) if you want to learn & grow.

[bmitc]

This is a great read. Thanks for the information. What you originally described is basically my dream job: software engineers working alongside scientists and engineers, where the software engineers become domain knowledgeable if not experts in certain areas.

I had a job similar to that at a similar places (actually places), but I ended up leaving because I was a one man team and got burnt out. Writing software for scientific purposes and true R&D is very fun and interesting, and I think there is a lot of untapped potential for doing some interesting things there. But there is a balance between the wild west, then what your first described, and then what you later described. Keeping things organized enough to not be chaos but loose enough to not get siloed.

[geoffjentry]

A really hard aspect to this is that there's a massive impedance mismatch between the research & production side of things. Working in the research side is pretty straightforward - although software development practices are going to be a lot looser & faster. Working in a production environment is straightforward, it's like any other software job. But - working at the confluence of those two states is incredibly difficult.

[noname123]

Fwiw I acknowledged the good people directly from the Cromwell team on a presentation recently due to the incredible support/help somebody & their team provided my team. The WDL/Cromwell community has grown and I've heard people mention it everywhere now (far away from the Broad) and it's in no small part due to that team and its former leadership.

[aednichols]

Hey, that's my project! (And geoffjentry is my former boss.)

Nice to hear the praise, thank you. The project has changed a lot over time and inevitably left some disappointed people filing Github issues (CWL, non-cloud backends, etc).

It's really unique and enjoyable working on OSS that has a strong community, it is the highlight of my career.

[aednichols]

Current DSPer since 2017 and broadly agree with OP.

[noname123]

Yea I liked almost everybody in DSP.

I disagree strongly however with the management's tech approach, the Broad cannot compete with the other companies in the Boston area in terms of comp. What worked in the past is smart people came to the Broad for the fun, autonomy and intellectual challenge over pay.

If you reduce people to just worker-bee's finishing CRUD tickets on an Agile board - you'll get efficiency for the 1st 2 years but you'll lose so much institutional/domain knowledge and collaboration; the PMs will get promoted in 1 year while projects on a 5 year timeframe get uber-delayed; the smart people will get bored and leave and even the good efficient engineers in the system will also leave for the better well paid tech jobs that Broad cannot compete with. I've seen it in every company who has run this playbook.

[Melting_Harps]

> respect of a lab assistant – unless you have a PhD and a postdoc.

This applies to even those with those with Biology backgrounds, as an undergrad that entered the Industry after an expensive and precarious 5 years of University and exiting during the aftermath of the financial crisis with tons of debt I knew I was never going to enjoy or like my time there within the first months.

I had aspirations to be CLS (you need to be sponsored by a corporation for the training/licensing process) but the truth is the Industry is rife with petty political rivalries where you can get sucked into for no other reason than being assigned to someone's lab that didn't cite them years back--you and your career can easily become collateral damage as result or some other bitter rivalry.

I found most in that Industry to be passive-aggressive cowards who would never confront an issue with anyone or anything and would rather create and foster this toxic atmosphere where it's typical that unless you did a PhD or a Post-doc you might as well be a mindless drone who carries out the edicts of your superiors who graduated in the 70s or 80s.

I will offer this advice: don't enter the Industry unless you get paid extraordinarily more to do so than any other offer you get, and if you love the life/health sciences (as I once did) please find some other outlet because the Industry will quickly steal any passion and leave you without much recourse.

Work in Genomics is promising, as is most Health Sciences in the 21st Century, but it is in DIRE need of a cultural shift (most boomer aged researchers need to die or retire already) and since the best ones are bio-hackers for a reason despite the lack of funding, there are other options albeit not lucrative ones.

> The culture somewhere shifted around 2018-2019

Your experience sounds like the brochure version of what we were sold as an undergrad in the Health Sciences, the ability to have on the job cross-discipline job experience, the reality was way more toxic, we didn't have agile or PM back then but we had Lab Directors and the thumb of corporate which in my view was way more hostile towards such an environment. Anything that deviated from your workload was seen as a unnecessary distraction and misuse of company resources.

I'm glad I made the pivot to tech when I did despite the turmoil to get there, but sadly now that I'm focused on AI/ML in order to come back to tech industry outside of my narrow displine, it's now imploding on itself with mass layoffs or hiring freezes and it seems that the recession will be used a reason to up-end the many reasons why tech was better than the health sciences, where apparently it's already becoming more normal for even a role as an intern for a YC backed company to require a Masters/PhD student!

[noname123]

Yea if there's a unsolicited take-away from me... don't ever become a lifer or think a company/field will never change. Nobody, even if it's GOOG circa 2010's, IBM circa 1970's, MSFT 1990's ever offer good combination of intellectual and comp forever. Only you and maybe your mother care about your well-being... I don't feel sad anymore about the good jobs/research opp. is now gone. I realize I was lucky and I aim to always to try adapt to get into those environments and accepting things are always changing.