The experience helped me realize that a non-trivial amount of work done in these labs is worthless and probably even harmful. They don't seem to care as much about the science as they care about publications (on the part of the PI) and being published (the PhD students).

Moreover, the lab pushed me out and decided to use my work anyway. Specifically, they requested that anybody that used the software I wrote give them authorship on their papers.

I'm happily employed as a software engineer now.