[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.