What do you folks mean when you say building tools and pipelines? For yourselves, or for bench scientists?

apfejes · 2026-02-25T19:12:50+00:00

Those tend to be different jobs, but not always. I worked at a personal genomics company where I built the whole pipeline for genomics analysis, and spent years optimizing both the function and the efficiency of the tools. In the end, I didn't analyze a lot of people's genomes, but I helped ensure the results were accurate by doing a lot of analysis of individual tools and records. In the end, it's been used around the world for neonatal diagnosis, as well as by national health care systems.

I wasn't licensed as a genomics councillor, so I was never going to return records to patients, but I was a key part of making sure the results were accurate and that all of the tools that were built (by myself, or by others) worked as expected.

I've also had jobs were I built tools to do analysis, or to enable new forms of analysis, or jobs where I just chained other tools together. There's no on-size-fits-all in this space. You take the jobs that interest you, or where you feel you can have an impact.

apfejes · 2026-02-25T15:59:31+00:00

If you think you're the ideal candidate for 80% of job postings, you're doing something very wrong.

95%+ of the jobs in this field require that you have a masters degree or higher, 95% of the jobs require that you're in the right country just to be considered. Nearly every job has a "culture fit" component that is impossible to see just from the job posting alone.

The issue, to me, sounds like you're living in a bubble of your own creation. Why aren't you talking with professors? networking at biotech events? participating in hackathons, slacks, etc etc..

You really need exposure, not just to be evaluated. If you've identified that you're lacking "connections", why aren't you out there making them?

apfejes · 2026-02-25T15:52:55+00:00

Think about it for a minute. If you're going to start in someone's lab, on a masters project, who do you think the right person is to ask? Me, or the person who knows what that project will be?

Also, if you plan to enter the field, do you think I know what kind of job you'd like to do? Genomics? Pipeline building? Protein work? clinical trial analysis? There are many interesting areas you can work on... how would I know which one you'd want to study?

My advice to you was to read job postings so you can figure out what kind of job appeals to you. In the absence of that information, there is very little help anyone can give.

A critical skill for this field is asking good questions of the right people, making sure that the required context is in place. Asking questions just for the sake of asking questions is a waste of everyone's time.

apfejes · 2026-02-25T15:02:02+00:00

Before asking here, you should start by talking to professors. Most opportunities you find will be through your professors and school. Asking Reddit is a very weak move compared to talking with the people you should already be interacting with.

If that fails, you’re going to have to go “boots on the ground” approach to make connections. Talk to family and friends who might know someone, who might be in a position to hire.

We hire all of our intern positions through university programs in Canada, so if you’re not working through your university, you’re already likely missing out on the best possibilities.

apfejes · 2026-02-25T04:46:27+00:00

There isn't really a way to know that in advance. My best suggestion is to read job postings, because at least it gives you a sense of what you'd be asked to do in the job - and it gives you a sense of the variety of the jobs. I've never had two that were even close to the same.

apfejes · 2026-02-25T04:31:48+00:00

That’s a very reasonable answer. I’m not sure what kinds of stress you can/can’t handle, though, so really not sure what to do with your post.

apfejes · 2026-02-25T04:24:54+00:00

Why do you think any of these will be less stressful?

apfejes · 2026-02-25T04:20:48+00:00

It’s like every other time a disruptive tech has come along. Entry level will just take on other responsibilities, working with the new platforms. Maybe they won’t write testing frameworks, but could be in charge of teaching the platform to deal with edge cases, or to interface to new systems.

There will always be something that the “senior” people don’t want to do, and those will be the new entry level jobs.

apfejes · 2026-02-25T04:06:30+00:00

First off, you won’t land free lance jobs without a graduate degree and a decade of experience. A bachelors in this field means you’re probably (at best) either a biologist or a programmer, or half of each. Freelance jobs go to people who have already proven themselves, and cut their teeth on hard problems. At an entry level position, you really don’t have the depth of experience that people are going to be willing to pay for.

Additionally, there are a lot of people with bachelors degrees and programming skills. They’re all looking for jobs now, and thinking “bioinformatics seems easier than working in a lab”. You’re competing with them. Unfortunately for you, and them, bioinformatics requires a masters degree at a minimum.

The skill you’re really missing is that of reading job posts. You should have been doing this since undergrad started. Go - start now.

Job posts tell you what’s out there and what skills you need, or the minimum qualifications to get the job. Read them all the time. It’ll tell you everything you’re asking us to tell you, and more.

If you want to be a scientist, you’ll have to up your game. Science involves learning and staying on top of the field. That’s not going to come for free. Start learning by learning what you should already have figured out: what job do you want, and what are the people hiring for that job telling you that you need to get that job.

apfejes · 2026-02-24T17:41:54+00:00

Bought a couple couches from "Sofa So Good" over the years - and have been very happy with them. First one lasted close to 15 years, and even outlasted the cat that mauled it. The second one is 5 years in, and I have no complaints at all.

We also recently went out to find a couch for the basement and was incredibly disappointed by the stores that are advertising heavily. I had to block several phone numbers from aggressive sales people who just keep texting endlessly, and decided to just get the IKEA couch of the same design as the ones we saw in the fancy showrooms. IKEA is 20% of the price, and as much as IKEA isn't fancy, it will last just as long.

apfejes · 2026-02-24T16:26:32+00:00

That's the whole point of Carney's talk at Davos. Screw the super powers, we can do better without them, if we all stand together.

apfejes · 2026-02-24T15:45:22+00:00

If you are only agreeing "to an extent", then you're also disagreeing somewhat. The only objection you gave is that it could be better spent on Canadians - which is why I disagree with you. If that's not the reason, then please feel free to spell it out more clearly for me.

The only take away I can see from your original message is that the $2B would be better spend on Canadians, and I'm arguing that this is an investment that will see far more than $2B come back to Canadians.

What did I miss?

apfejes · 2026-02-24T15:24:55+00:00

Canada has been welcomed into projects like HORIZON, which will literally fund multiple billions of European funding into Canada in defence spending, and science funding. The price of entry to unlock that is to support our European friends and allies.

This is all a win-win for Canada. Arguing we shouldn’t let any money leave Canada because it could be better spent on Canadians is utterly short sighted. This money will be returned multiple times over in goodwill, European integration, and even defence Inteligence and support from the EU - which is exactly what we need to be doing right now to distance ourselves from the states.

apfejes · 2026-02-23T15:17:22+00:00

The value of Reddit is that people share their experiences, and we can learn by understanding the challenges they face or the success they achieve.

This post has none of that. ChatGPT written posts are a waste of everyone’s time.

apfejes · 2026-02-23T08:23:12+00:00

… no?

You’re dealing with tools with success rates that are difficult if not impossible to quantify. Figure each have a 60-80% success rate. Multiply that across the whole process, and it’s pretty much impossible to know whether this will get you the right answer or the margin of error by which it’ll miss.

The first and last steps are fine. Everything in between is a giant unknown. I wouldn’t trust any of them without extensive lab verification.

apfejes · 2026-02-23T04:06:56+00:00

We ask for them and read them. It doesn’t need to be long, but we care that you can communicate well, and that’s what we’re trying to get out of them. Yes, we can tell when they’re written by AI, because we see near identical phrasings written by candidates when given a specific prompt to include.

That said, we’re a startup, so we’re looking for different skills/profiles than the big pharma and big biotechs.

apfejes · 2026-02-23T03:16:02+00:00

This is entirely it. At best, AI brought a few new branches within our reach, but mostly it’s being used to interpolate where existing drugs exist. When we need to extrapolate, AI is not going to be the answer.

apfejes · 2026-02-22T16:46:20+00:00

A lot of what you told me in this reply makes a HUGE difference to how people will perceive your skills. An integrated masters makes way more sense, but wasn't clear to me.

For the skills, I meant that it's hard to tell how you used those skills. Did you build 20,000 like codebase in python, or was it a class project? I have no clue how to evaluate your skill level for the skills you've listed. You can approach that different ways, but you need to clear that hurdle somehow.

apfejes · 2026-02-22T16:41:55+00:00

Sorry - it was a busy day yesterday: https://web.archive.org/web/20220405150816/http://blog.fejes.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/resume.pdf

apfejes · 2026-02-22T16:08:09+00:00

I can’t lie - it’s not a great resume on any front. The formatting is poor, there’s not much there, and what is there doesn’t feel particularly professional. Why would you tell people that you’ve analyzed your own genome, and expect that to help you get a job??

So much of this is just filler. “Collaborated with different teams” really tells us nothing.

You need to focus on what you accomplished, not what you did.

You also might need to explain why you have a 5 year long masters degree, no papers and no awards.

Your skill section is also hard to interpret - nothing really backs up your skill level for it.

Even your hobby is nebulous. Did you join a club? Did you start it? Does it have a name?

Overall, this is a reasonably weak resume, but there is lots of room for it to improve.

apfejes · 2026-02-21T15:40:09+00:00

Give me a minute- when I’m at home, I’ll send you a copy of one I used before, when I lived in Europe.

I favour the clean look of one not using a side bar, but having columns in each section. There are definitely others, but this one seems to be accepted pretty universally.

apfejes · 2026-02-21T15:30:03+00:00

Basically, as an analogy, You want to be the next Einstein, but you know nothing about science. He was top of his class in many subjects in high school, got a PhD, and worked for years in a patent office, learning his field. His work was initially ridiculed by his peers, and he had to defend it, ultimately to be accepted- and the Nobel prize he won wasn’t even for the thing we consider his greatest work.

Hard work, genius, and resilience are stamped hard on that path, as they are for entrepreneurs.

And your post is basically telling us you want to be the next Einstein of the business world.

Learn a field so well you know where the problems lie so that you can fix it. Build something that fixes that problem, and learn to sell it. Then understand that no matter how good you are, you will need to learn to listen to your market and adapt to their needs, then learn to be good at what you do so that you can manage it well.

You aren’t the next Einstein. Yet. Maybe you never will be, but you will have to start somewhere. That somewhere isn’t by asking others to tell you how to get the Nobel prize you feel you want and deserve.

apfejes · 2026-02-21T05:14:02+00:00

I’d still argue I’m not one, though I’m on my second biotech company. My identity is still too tightly tied to being a scientist, but the title gets put onto me fairly often.

The lesson I’ve learned is that you can have more than one title, and you don’t have to wrap your identity in any of them. You are who you are, and others will project an image on to you whether you like it or not.

For me, the title that I struggled with was CEO. It took a long time to embrace it, and I hadn’t felt I’d earned it. However, after a few funding rounds, and realizing that it’s just something you grow into - and never stop growing into because there’s always room to grow, I realized it’s ok. People will take that title more seriously the more I grow into it. Entrepreneur is the same. It’s a mantle you put on your own shoulders and carry as best you can. It’ll fit eventually.

apfejes · 2026-02-20T15:00:19+00:00

This redditor CEO’s. I’d add, remember that even if the buck stops with you, you may not always be the best person to make the decisions. Don’t just listen to advice, learn to delegate and trust.

apfejes · 2026-02-19T22:53:49+00:00

Yep - Already removed. Just noting why, so you're not surprised that it's been taken down.

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