Ask HN: What do you like most about your job? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you like most about your job?

7 pointsbryanmgreen15 comments

The recent "Who wants to be fired?" thread kind of bummed me out.

Can we share something a little more positive?

I love the people that I work with. Competent, hard working, individuals that are a pleasure to be around.

I love working on the problems that I do... we do ML/ NLP work with some standard issue (fun) web development using good tech... but we get to focus on things that will actually move the company forward, and the barrier to implement good ideas is low.

I DEFINITELY like being far away from all the shitty jobs I used to do, both financially and the work. Aside from a fluke emergency, I will never professionally do landscaping, dishwashing, bathroom cleaning... etc again (I know most devs come from comp sci... I did not)

I like that I get to work from home when it makes sense too. I live at the beach and its great to have the time to go for a surf before you kick off your day.

theres more... but I need to get back to work!

Where do you live? I'm in based in London but on the look out for a place with decent surf and interesting jobs.

Orange County, CA. I would actually prefer San Diego if you are looking but my folks live close by.

I recently joined a biotech/hw startup after working at much larger companies.

I love the trust that everyone puts in me. I feel like I'm my own director, of a team of 1, and that I can work on whatever I want, but people trust me to be working on important stuff.

There are so few barriers between having an idea and actually shipping it. And everything I ship improves the experience for our customers and our internal team by so much!

As a programmer it's also been a ton of fun working with hardware and in the biology domain... not sure if I can ever go back to pure programming!

Also everyone is so nice and kind and smart and curious. Honestly sometimes I look around and wonder if everyone is just messing with me.

Since joining I've felt excited about going to work, in contrast to the past when I was just excited about what was going to be for lunch at work.

Awesome that you're not just allowed to work on ideas but can also ship them. A lot of times there are deployment barriers.

Number one thing is not having my time tracked by management. That always sucks and leads to stress. In theory having time tracked could be good if the powers that be know how to process the information, but usually it’s used as an interrogation / scalding device. So no logging time is a huge positive.

Next is working in a small company where you can make architectural decisions as a regular developer due to hat swapping and not too much legacy code compared to a bigger company.

Finally working in a non office building, nice colleagues, flexible hours etc.

I like not being broke, sick, hungry, and homeless. I like not being seen as "poor white trash". I like not being hassled by Johnny Law because I look out of place.

Sorry, but there are no positives to being employed. Just an absence of negatives.

I get to travel to exotic places and have been on a lot of interesting ships. Plus the tech I work on is really unique and I learn something from my colleagues almost every day.

I work on a software suite to optimize the dosing/infusion of various drugs. The software helps people recover more quickly, so I feel like I am contributing to someone's well being.

The only upside is I only need to spend ~2 hours per day on work. So called work life balance. Pay is decent with regarding to the workload. I won't elaborate on downsides, there's a lot.

The money.

For me, I love that my job allows/requires me to do and try a lot of things.

Needing a broad set of skills keeps me energized, whereas I would personally feel stuck being a specialist.

competitive salary, good tech stack and especially the people in my office. I have some friends with whom I can talk about whatever I am interested in such as arthouse movies, books, coffee, etc.

I like destroying startups.

What's your job and are you (or similar companies) hiring?

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