I spoke recently with a BCBA who described herself as being in a “bubble” or in a “vacuum” at her organization where she has been for the last 3 years. Her comments were primarily about having a great caseload and getting paid well for her experience and credentials. She did comment that she rarely gets any type of supervision, and when she does it is mostly for her to complete paperwork for clients on her caseload. There is no room for her to ask for seeking out mentorship or seeking out constructive feedback. Her experience is typical for a BCBA in our field, and highlights again why there is such a huge gap for individuals in our field seeking a healthy career.
My most recent conversation with a BCBA was incredibly telling of her situation and of the culture where she works. Even though she has a great caseload and is paid well, she feels like she is in a ‘vacuum’ and that her supervision is basically just signing off on paperwork. This means that she does not have a mentor and there is no feedback loop going on. Her situation exemplifies the situation that many BCBAs find themselves in. As I have said many times before, the work that is done with children with autism and their families through the medium of ABA, does not ‘attract’ a certain type of person. However, it is rare for someone to ‘drift’ into this type of work. Instead, there is a reason that someone is drawn to it. It is also true that the work can ‘drain’ a BCBA, slowly. He or she may be exhausted but that does not mean that he or she is running on fumes because of overwork. Rather, he or she has been slowly drained of energy over time. There are many bag of tricks that a BCBA could use to pull himself or herself out of such a place of tiredness. However, the biggest trick would be to leave the place where he or she is working in order to go to a different place where he or she would be honored and supported as a BCBA.
But again, that’s not what a meaningful career for a BCBA looks like. Below is a real life portrayal of what a BCBA’s career could look like. A depiction of what it is really like to work for a company after a few glasses of wine with a friend.
Supervision that actually teaches you something
Supervision can be very good for a BCBA’s work, or it can be worthless. There are really two kinds of supervision. There is the kind where a senior clinician watches you work with clients, and then helps you understand what you did well and what you can do better in the future. That kind of supervision is really good for a BCBA’s work, because it teaches the BCBA a lot about how to work with a wide variety of clients, in a wide variety of situations. And then there is the kind of supervision that is just elaborate theater in order to pretend that the BCBA is growing as a clinician. This kind of supervision does not help a BCBA’s work. In fact, it can make the BCBA’s work worse, because the BCBA will feel
First, supervision. Ideally your BCBA supervisor can teach you something about how to work with clients as well as what it’s like to be a BCBA. Your supervisor watches you work with clients, and then discusses with you your approach and can offer perspectives on what you’re doing that might be slightly less than optimal and which you could work to improve. It can be uncomfortable sometimes and should be from time to time, because it’s through these discussions that you’ll really experience growth through supervision. Most of your meetings with your supervisor should not revolve around whether or not you’ve met your goals for the month, and certainly should not revolve less around the BCBA signing a form so that the BCBA’s supervisor can turn in the form as proof that the BCBA completed the monthly meetings of supervision. Meetings of supervision should generally revolve around ways in which you can grow as a behavior analyst.
Finally, to give you a sense of whether a given employer is the right fit for you, I would recommend asking 4 questions and paying close attention to the answers. First, what does supervision look like on a weekly basis for staff on my caseload? Second, who would be supervising staff on my caseload? Third, what is the ratio of supervisors to staff on my caseload? And finally, can I speak with any current staff members?
The team around you matters more than you think
Also of great importance to BCBAs in the job market are the team of BCBAs and other behavior analysts with whom a BCBA will work on a daily basis. This team of clinicians functions in much the same way as an editing process for the BCBA’s thoughts, ideas, and behavior analysis. The team of clinicians can provide the BCBA with feedback that the clinician may not have thought of, expose errors in the clinician’s behavior analysis, and even identify situations in which the clinician’s work that could be improved upon.
A good clinical team is analogous to a good editing process for one’s own work. Even the best clinician can get stuck in a rut by relying on a number of poor or outdated assumptions that no longer serve children well. A good team identifies these errors and offers a fresh perspective by bringing in alternative viewpoints, data, or even simply a different way of viewing things. Moreover, good team members are able to ask the hardest questions in a manner that is supportive in the face of challenge, allowing one to fully explore the implications of one’s actions and to gain insight into alternative viewpoints.
Signs of a healthy team:
- People disagree openly but without it turning personal
- RBTs and techs feel genuinely comfortable raising concerns to BCBAs
- The culture around data is honest rather than performative
- New staff aren’t left to figure things out through painful trial and error alone
A quick look at what to compare across employers
| Factor | What to look for | Red flag |
| Supervision model | Regular, structured, clinically focused | Primarily administrative, infrequent |
| Caseload size | Manageable enough for genuine individualization | Volume-first mentality with no cap |
| Training and development | Ongoing CEUs, internal training, growth pathways | Onboarding only, then silence |
| Team culture | Collaborative, transparent, feedback-rich | High turnover, siloed clinicians |
| Family involvement | Active caregiver training built into model | Families treated as passive recipients |
Child Focused Programs
Child-focused means that the techniques used with the child are in order to increase child engagement and responding to bring about behavior change that is beneficial to the child. Many ABA programs are not child-focused. They are rather programs in which children participate in drills throughout the day, typically within highly structured situations that do not allow for true play. The treatment is often very standardized, and do not take into account many of the circumstances that are unique to a child and their family. In some cases, the techniques that are used in programs are even contraindicated for a child with a certain set of circumstances, but are used anyway in order to increase staff’s ease of use of techniques.
Most programs are not really child-focused. They are focused on how to get the child to behave, or how to help them learn new skills in a controlled environment. In reality, most teaching of children with autism is not really naturalistic teaching and play with the child. Instead, it is often mental exercise for the BCBA or RBT to make up a goal, design a session around the goal, and then go to teach the child in that session. And once the session is over with, the child is often rarely referenced again until the next session. In the meantime, the BCBAs are focusing on how to get the caregiver to implement more of the same teaching in home sessions with their child. And often this is viewed as a compliance problem on the part of the caregiver. Why won’t they do what we are telling them to do with their child?
The quality of family partnership is another indicator that I have found to be a reliable signal of an organization’s clinical integrity. Programs that invest time in training caregivers to implement teaching across settings tend to have thought through the rest of the treatment as well (not always, but often enough to make it worth paying attention to).
Next Steps – Looking for New Opportunities?
Do your research into the organization’s clinical approach before applying for positions. Read the published approach if they have one. Get a sense of the turnover of BCBAs in the organization’s treatment units. Ask the interviewers of people who work in the treatment units to describe the turnover of BCBAs in that unit and pay close attention to whether they ‘flinch’ at all when talking about the high rate of turnover of BCBAs in that unit. Speaking with current BCBAs who work for organizations in ABA is also a good way to get a sense of what it’s really like to work for a given organization.
Bierman Autism Centers. They are child-focused, ABA-centered and would be a good place for a BCBAs looking for employment as a child-focused ABA provider. Bierman Autism Centers have numerous locations throughout the northeast. Therefore, for a BCBAs looking for work in the Boston area the Bierman Autism Centers listings for available jobs in Massachusetts, bcba jobs boston, would be the appropriate place to start your job search for a BCBAs looking for employment.
The question worth sitting with
What does meaningful actually mean to you? On a Tuesday afternoon at 3pm, with a bad session under your belt and 3 more to go for the day, is the space you are in helping you to deal with the difficulties of your job or is it adding to the struggle of dealing with a difficult child and difficult family.
That’s the real diagnostic. Everything else is preliminary.
Be honest with yourself before you sign anything. The brochure will always be more flattering than the Tuesday afternoon.
