Ask HN: How can I find meaningful problems to work with long-term people? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can I find meaningful problems to work with long-term people?

10 pointsbrunoac5 comments

Hello HN,

I am a 30-year-old Engineering Manager that is confused about what is up next and would love to hear from HN some options.

Love tech but kind of tired of the startup world, Venture Capital craziness, short-term thinking, solutions-oriented thinking (vs problem-oriented), ...

How can I find meaningful problems to work with non-bullshit long-term people? I know there are plenty out there, but I feel I have no access to it. There is so much bullshit out there, I just want to solve problems.

Things I enjoy: solving tough problems, learning, working at the edge of my knowledge, inspiring, capitalism, autonomy.

Thank you all

View on HN

Start a group chat with people you respect, provide the prompt, and start spit balling ideas. You probably already have a list in your head of “non-bullshit” people that you already know. Ask them what they care about and what they like to think about/work on. A few brainstorm starters:

- How can we address inequality and provide more opportunities to traditionally under-served communities?

- What does a “better” education system look like?

- How do we get people to eat less meat without being dogmatic or preachy? It’s really a win-win, people and the environment will be healthier.

- How does one combat counter-factualism (fake-news) without getting political?

- How do we bring new opportunities to those working in industries on the out? E.g. coal

- What are we going to do about a growing & aging population? Thinking about things like elderly care, retirement savings, family relationships in a fast moving and increasingly remote world.

I think most people want to think of themselves as “non-bullshit” but often it’s easier and safer to take a 6-figure job at something like a FAANG where they focus on monopolizing attention instead of working on really impactful problems like climate, education, health, etc. How might we change those incentives to get more people working on those types of problems?

>What is up next?

This is a really tough question to answer because it depends on who's asking the question. On a forum like HN you'll find that these questions are often asked anywhere from the context of a small-scale startup ("I built a platform to predict stock signals "before the crowds know". What's next?") to mid-scale ("I want to build a deep-learning powered engine to clone people's voice") to real high level stuff (Autonomous vehicles).

What's the common trend in those 3 cases? They identified a need for a service using Deep Learning/Trend Analysis, but that's just one subset of a field. Fortunately for you, if you frequent HN enough you'll have no trouble figuring out the cross-section of (what you're good at) X (what's hot right now).

Off-topic but that small scale example got instantly flagged on HN while I was still figuring out what OP's company was about

What’s “non-bullshit” exactly? It would be nice to get a feel for what you think are problems worth solving? Is it stuff like helping the environment and climate change? Or is it more about real tech innovation as opposed to another sharing economy website.

What I mean from non-bullshit is the one that worries more about the problem that he is solving than his career.

It is more about tech innovation

Do something noteworthy, or work at a noteworthy company, then these types of people will find you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com