Best Jobs of 2011 | Hacker News Reader

Best Jobs of 2011

careercast.com

34 pointsRickasaurus31 comments

I went to school during right after the crash and during the height of the outsourcing fears (remember the 2004 election rhetoric?) and I'm pretty sure both of those contributed greatly to the profession's outlook. CS and CompEng enrollments have plummeted while the demand keeps on growing and growing. Definitely a great time to be competent software engineer.

I'm surprised at this mainly for the stress figures. I don't know if this is the case for everyone else, but I would assume some of those positions would have much higher figures for stress - namely software engineers and actuaries.

Yeah that was very surprising especially since the stress number was the lowest for software engineers. I have way more stress than a dental hygienist.

So when you screw up you have the potential to fuck up someone's teeth, draw blood, or generally cause pain and discomfort to your client? Personally, I just edit and re-run the program.

We're talking about a hygienist not a dentist. They do teeth cleanings and assist the doc'. And having just gotten my teeth cleaned yesterday by my dental student sister, I can comfortably say that there is not that much room for really fucking things up. Yeah, maybe you can nic someone in the gums with the pick, but that's about it.

I just had my teeth cleaned today. The hygienist did an exemplary job and still my teeth and gums are sore. Perhaps there's no worry with healthy teeth, but someone who has brittle teeth or a somewhat-hidden cavity could definitely receive damage at the hands of a careless hygienist.

That's not to mention the general stench of some of that crap that gets picked out, the filthiness of some people's mouths, spending a half hour or more hunched over someone with bad breath, and the opportunity for someone (especially a child) to bite you while you're working. I'll take software engineer, please.

And the stress I'm referring to is more deadline induced than anything else. It's a fact that people in the dental world have very regulated ~40 hours/week schedules. How many all nighters do they pull? None.

and 95% of software engineers don't either. My roommate in college works an exact 40.0 hours each weak doing ASP.NET coding for enterprise stuff. Basically zero stress what-so-ever, and makes $55k at age 22.

Unless your roommate wants to stay in the same position (entry level coder) then s/he will at some point have to take on more responsibility and/or more challenging work which in turn leads to working some overtime.

Sounds like the job of a software dev in a properly managed company.

The last all-nighter (or actually, the closest I came) I pulled was in 1997. And then we went home at 2AM. I've been doing development work since 1988 and I've rarely failed to leave by 5. Even then, when I stayed late it was -- with one exception due to an a-hole boss -- by choice.

The fact that we think working a 40 hour week is unusual is itself a sign of how prevalent terrible work environments are in software development. Believe me, there are many well-run and profitable companies where "in at 9 out at 5" is the norm.

I have the ability to lose people a lot of money, that's kind of stressful.

Remember that "Software Engineer" also includes a ton of people designing internal-use VB enterprise bloatware to specifications written by people who think Excel is a database. Not very inspiring work, but good pay and good job security, and well within the median programmer's capabilities. When averaged in with the small number of pressure-cooker startups and the slightly larger number of fast-paced tech-focused companies, it's surprising but not unreasonable.

That would be Computer Systems Analyst. #5 on the list.

The main form of stress for actuaries that they measure is deadlines. There might be a bit of travel if they are a consultant, but otherwise job security tends to be quite good, salaries reasonably high, there's a continuous intellectual challenge, peers tend to be friendly and clever(er than oneself) and so on.

I was surprised to see Mathematician as #2. That contradicts everything I've read about math careers on HN.

This would make sense if they're counting Operations Research as a type of Mathematician. Those are the people who design the algorithms (not necessarily write the code) for air flight planning, supply-network chains, personnel scheduling, and most forms of resource allocation. Lots of applications in resource extraction, manufacturing, transportation, military, and infrastructure design.

This assumes that they're talking about "Mathematician" as a career, and not just what you can expect with a Math major. If you have a degree in math, you can get quite a high-paying job in a broad range of other industries (like programming and finance, also on the list) because people will just assume you're the smartest person they've ever met.

> If you have a degree in math, you can get quite a high-paying job in a broad range of other industries (like programming and finance, also on the list) because people will just assume you're the smartest person they've ever met.

I do get people who assume that, especially when they hear what a CMS degree consists of, but I have yet to work out the high-paying job bit.

At work, I mostly only get to do 2D Euclidean geometry, where people seem amazed that you can find mutually tangent circles to make windows look nice.

Living in the midwest, I always hate looking at national average salaries. My cost of living is great, but its always an ego hit to see numbers like that.

Either that or I need to get a better paying software engineering job :/

I feel the same way... 24 yrs old in Indiana and only making $45k + benefits. Granted I never finished my degree (12c short)... :\

I'd like to see lists like this normalized by region taking into acct cost of living, etc. Also, I wonder if outliers are chopped off here -- ie: top google software engineers making several hundred thousand/yr.

It's nice to compare lists like this to the constant wailing and gnashing of teeth in places on the internet where software careers are discussed.

The best job of 2011 is the one that makes you happy.

Actually, I'm scared that the florists and cashiers will start applying for programming jobs again after attending a DeVry Insitute program or something similar. I remember suffering through this during the DotCom boom...it sucked.

How does a Historian have almost twice the stress of a software engineer?

Trying to make book deadlines?

Probably that old "publish or perish" thing.

They do not measure stress directly, but base it on a rather narrow rubric of objective factors such as physical demands and travel.

http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/2011-jobs-rated-methodo...

Looking at the actual jobs that get pulled up by clicking on "historian," it looks like they are incorrectly identifying engineering jobs that use a product called "Historian" or talk about "historian data" from monitoring devices as actual jobs for historians.

I would think even a rudimentary spot check would have caught such a glaring error before they published the article.

Credibility fail.

Systems?

Historian? That blows my mind, who, besides academics, hires historians? I understand studying history is vital to being a competent executive/decision maker, but no one hires solely on that.

I had a friend who did history research in Hollywood for movie companies. That is one example of a non-academic historian.

Heck, you could even say that some news reporters and non-fiction book authors are modern day historians.

They forgot Steve.

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