Ask HN: Are you Enterprise, or Startup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are you Enterprise, or Startup?

3 pointsPinbenterjamin2 comments

I've found myself reading a ton of HN lately, the quality is pretty high, and the topics only regularly make it over my head, instead of mostly, like the LWN.

I especially love OP ED pieces, no matter their quality, because it's kind of like a window into the soul of other developers, I'm not always looking to learn, sometimes I want to empathize.

One thing that isn't mentioned enough, is what environment you 'grew' up in as a developer. I think that shapes the way you write code more than almost any other factor, regardless of where you go after.

I think the Show HN: posts are the best examples of this. You have a huge volume of developers hoisting projects that solve problems in such a huge number of domains...I wish I knew why you wanted to solve a problem in that domain in the first place. I wish I had more background.

So I ask; What world did you start in? Did it shape the way you wrote code as you traversed your career? Where you predisposed to one environment over the other?

I'm still youthful in my career. I'm not yet 30, and I've been working professionally in Enterprise for 6 years. I barely empathize with the kinds of problems being solved with these 'Show HN' posts. It's not glorious development, but I don't hate working in these applications at all.

We have 3 main domains, that consist of modern technologies (Angular > C# WebApi > SqlServer) And 3 applications that are legacy, and still require feature updates (JSP / VB6 / ASP.NET MVC)

We move at a regular pace, and have access to great, expensive tools that I would probably miss in the start up environment. (Local TFS, Jira, Enterprise VStudio, iDea, local Sql instances)

I can learn so much, because the enterprise environment provides so much, and the jobs around here are entirely enterprise development(Philly).

I love the idealism in the West, but absolutely nothing about my environment makes me think the grass is greener over there.

I work for a multi-national $BIGCORP by day, but in the course of my career I've worked for little 10 person companies, other $BIGCORPs, mid-sized consulting companies, other small-to-medium sized software companies, etc. I've kind of been all over the place experience wise.

Predisposition? I like the enterprise "world" in many ways, but I don't necessarily like working for a $BIGCORP in many ways. In fact, I don't really like the fundamental idea of having a traditional "job". My real passion is to run my own company. That's why I've been working on getting a software company of my own established. It's still a "nights and weekends" thing right now while the day job pays the rent and electric bill. But doing my own thing is my real passion.

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