Old school - Administrative Assistant LifeSpan BioSciences Employee Review

Work is full and straight-forward. Infrastructure that has been built makes it easy to extend, without even modifying objects. This is the single biggest reason work was so satisfying - instead of an insane cycle of fixing bugs, the (positive) energy was spent building on top of the known-good code foundation! A Computer Science course about simple, clean code, with lots of space to extend should really have LSBio's environment as the gold standard!

It is a small company, so Software Engineers also tended to be IT support staff too. It's not so much a "con" as it is a reality in a small company - you won't be "stuffed away writing code all day". If a printer is broken, you'll definitely be called to help. Router needs to be moved? New disk array needs to be installed - by all means -- save your work and get up and get your hands dirty -- AND be happy about it!

This is a very academically inclined company that is well established and found their niche in the market so it's not a limp-wristed startup where anything goes. Randy is the CTO or CIO and his skill set as a Ph.D. is impressive not to mention how personable he is. The view you get is great and while I was there a few employees asked for elevated keyboards, which they got within a week. They have a fridge full of soda, daily coffee drinkers are cautioned... as this place is filled with lots of Ph.D.'s who can chug hardcore coffee like fratboys draining a kegger. They double bag the coffee when its made so prepare to get STRONG coffee. There are TONS of great restaurants nearby for a quick pop to the shops or if you want a fancy coffee or a great slice of Rocco's pizza. The two developer and two analysts that I worked with were friendly and competent. Randy told us what he wanted and then vanished, he is definitely a macro manager which was a breath of fresh air.

I wouldn't say the company is growing, they are maintaining market share but this is NOT a growth company, its ripe for M&A, who is smart enough will keep all employees and double its budget as we created some amazing code base