Ask HN: What’s the most interesting job that’s not on your résumé? Why?

I did backcountry trail work for a summer. We'd camp and live deep in the woods, in Congressionally designated wilderness areas, where no vehicles and motorized equipment are allowed (generally speaking).

We'd find a section of hiking trail that'd need fixing, and bring in several weeks of food and supplies for 20 people on pack mules and set up a base camp somewhere.

From there, an average day would consist of us waking up at 5am, doing camp chores and some early morning PT, then breakfast. Then we'd hike an average of 15 to 20 miles a day, working sections of trails with picks, shovels, mattocks and Pulaskis (various tools).

That would happen for 8 hours a day with a 30 min lunch break and two 15 minute breaks. It paid about $8 an hour. We'd work typically for two week sprints (we called them spikes) without access to showers or electricity. Water was carried or pumped from rivers, and sometimes the whole crew would come down with some water borne illness from all the cow poop runoff in the rivers. We'd wear the same two uniforms for those two weeks, drenched in sweat and dirt every day, until our next town run half a month later.

Most days we'd just be digging dirt, but some days we'd also move multi ton rocks with giant crowbars or cut down dead and dangerous trees with long crosscut saws wielded by two people. Occasionally we'd build staircases out of rock, or crush boulders to make a French drain for a swampy area.

It was by far the hardest thing I've ever done, before or since. It was also one of the best times of my life.

Factory work as a teenager. Actually the job was boring, but compared to the usual dev jobs, it is the only job I have done not involving sitting at a screen (although there was occasional sitting at a screen entering points for a milling machine - best part of the day!). Doesn't seem too relevant now.

I worked for a crypto startup for a year, mostly as a side hustle; not on there because ftx crashed and Alameda Research was an investor. 80% of us were laid off two weeks before christmas. they don't deserve a mention and i don't need the embarrassment.

I worked as a camp counselor. I felt like it was not relevant to put on my resume for IT/SWE roles. However, if interesting/previous jobs discussion organically come up in an interview I will bring it up.

I was a line cook in a restaurant for a year and a half.

Great experience. You learn that communicating and teaming up are important. You work fast. You learn how to prioritize quickly and move on. Sometimes you crash and burn and it sucks! These days it’s basically too far from my current experience to matter but I bring it up when I can.

It was a one time thing but I was a background extra in one of the episodes of The Man in the High Castle.

i used to have it on my resume, but ultimately took it off because it wasn't technically a paid gig, though they paid for my housing and food every so often. i was sponsored through an organization to teach ESL in Israel to mostly Ethiopian Israelis and Israelis. Loved the job though it did make me realize how much I hated teaching. However, I accidentally got into web design while I was there and it ended up a valuable skill later on. I ended up living in Israel for about a year.