Ask HN: What do you do?
Clearly we all like technology given that we browse this site. But I'm curious as to what we all actually do for a living. Do you like it?
And, if your career isn't technology focused, how did you find out about HN?
And, if your career isn't technology focused, how did you find out about HN?
I work as a software developer, mostly doing web apps (currently in RoR and node). In the past, I worked on simulations of vehicular networks in grad school. I found that far more interesting than web development, but only because of the problem domain and not necessarily because of the work itself. There's very little sense of "pushing the envelope" in most web development, and while the simulations I was writing and running weren't exactly doing that either, I had more sense that I was actually producing something than I get by burning through code to resell flights and hotel bookings.
I enjoy software development, but I feel conflicted about it at times. I used to be a professional landscaper, and I found my life much more intellectually fulfilling then when I compare it to now. There's something to be said for a job which only requires bodily presence but leaves your mind free to do whatever you want, and I really enjoyed that. I did not, however, enjoy working for subsistence level wages under constant threats of being replaced by immigrant labor - noone wants to work in an environment where they're treated as if $7 an hour is an outrageous wage.
I also want to apply what I know to long-standing problems in education. I want to bring core concepts of programming workflow, such as forking, into education. I am currently working on a project called Open Competencies, which allows:
- schools to develop and maintain their own bodies of learning standards;
- new schools to fork another school's competency system, in a matter of minutes;
- schools to define different "pathways" through the curriculum.
Demo project: http://opencompetencies.herokuapp.com
>I teach an intro programming class each year
God bless you.
Do I like what I do for a living? It has it's crap moments but I'd say it gives me a certain amount of satisfaction. I like the variety, and the fact that there is a tangible change that's evident after I complete my efforts. I'm not running a line function that is the same day after day.
However, if I ever win the lottery you wouldn't see me for dust...
1. I work part-time as a consultant for a company in Durham, NC named Open Software Integrators. There I do things ranging from working on greenfield, custom-code-from-scratch projects, to architectural consulting, to training, to performance tuning, to writing articles and blog posts, to mentoring / training junior employees. As a company, we focus on open source enterprise engagements, mainly focused around the open source Java ecosystem: JBoss, Tomcat, Activiti, Hadoop, and other technologies of that general nature.
2. I am one of two founders of an Open Source Enterprise Software startup called Fogbeam Labs. We develop OSS products for the enterprise, with a focus on tools that foster the application of collective intelligence, and support better and faster collaboration, problem solving, decision making and knowledge transfer. The product we are most focused on right now is an Enterprise Social Network named Quoddy. Quoddy brings together aspects of Social Networking, BPM, Machine Learning. and the Semantic Web to that end. Over time we plan to offer products in several areas, including Enterprise Search, BPM, "Big Data", Business Intelligence / analytics, SOA / integration, etc., where everything fits into our vision of IT as a means to enhance the collective intelligence of the organization.
As the original founder, and one of only three people working on the project (counting an intern) I do a bit of everything: writing code, developing product vision, writing marketing copy for the website, sales, customer development, strategy, market research, you name it.
Yes I enjoy it, I would much rather be self employed working on my own projects, however as a job until that point it's enjoyable with many different challenges, just still looking for that perfect idea/project :) Also considering freelancing however no clue where to event start, any tips?
Found hacker news through Google, can't remember what I was looking for but the post was fairly interesting, hit the home page and found loads more interesting posts, visited back probably daily since! Found my self no longer browsing other sites like Slashdot, Tech crunch, Lifehacker, as any decent posts on there will probably pop up on here.
Overall, I can say I wouldn't be doing if I didn't like it. There's something empowering about throwing mass input at a computer and having it auto extract things you want to know in milliseconds (not talking about just search either!).
Other than that, I asked a lot of questions, read papers in different areas to find what was interesting. (Not necessarily understanding ALL of the math behind it immediately, but enough to get an overview of what the intended functionality was supposed to accomplish.)
It took a long time to get to a level to where I could do it professionally, so I started out with a web dev background, went through an incubator to learn how a business works and started taking more specialized work. Lots of it was in distributed messaging/finance and I went from there.
My best advice is to experiment with different areas. I'm not talking about your typical socket.io/long polling app written in node either.
Don't be afraid to step outside your comfort zone. Computer vision or even graphics programming with Web GL aren't so hard you can never do them if you just step enough in to an area such that you get a feeling for whether you enjoy it or not.
I might add that what you enjoy might not be super complex, but I would say take time to understand different areas (it might be making CRUD apps for a certain industry) enough to understand what work would be like in the field and work from there.
I am just finishing up an HTML5 anonymous IRC client that I originally planned on using Socket.io for. I decided to use Firebase in the end.
Also, I think the Oculus Rift is one of the coolest inventions I've seen in a long time because it takes an industry that has a pretty consistent history (video games) and turned it on it's head. Oculus VR is taking what most people believe to be science fiction and making it a reality. I have a lot of respect for those guys. (And I might have sent them a job application last week. ;)) Computer vision/graphics is an interesting field that thrives because of the type of math I enjoy: linear algebra.
My training is also in web development, but the high tech side of things is where I want to end up.
Once that is done, I am returning to my native Stockholm, Sweden to find a job. Hopefully it will be something interesting haha. Time will tell, thesis takes priority over finding a job at the moment.
While reading news articles I usually google whatever I wanna know more about, that's how I stumbled upon HN and I've been a regular reader since.
Trying to get pgxplorer.com off the ground as a side project to "vacation" profitability.
Please raise issues and let me know if you face anything. Glad to iron it out.
I found out about HN from an office mate, who probably heard about it from a former research prof at our lab who co-founded a YC startup.
In my spare time I look for methods to make work easier for people like me and sell these methods as a product or a service.
I found about HN on Jeff Atwood's Coding Horror.
I'm just glad the ship I'm currently on has a good satellite Internet connection. I don't remember how I found out about HN.
I'm only a few years into programming but I love every minute of it. I'll be graduating this spring and am very excited to start searching for jobs.
I heard about HN from my brother, who's a psychiatrist. I wonder how he got here though.
I love what I do every day!
Most of the time they have to do software. I'm currently working at a small game studio on our flagship iOS game, but I've also done my share of other stuff.
What software stack do you use?
For storage, PostgreSQL and some custom stuff, also playing with Cassandra. If a web interface is required, SpringMVC - it's not cool but works.
Have never done anything as cool as every other commenter here - wondering what I have done with my life :-)
You understand many people dream of what you are doing right?
This is still rough draft, but I am publishing anyway.
Let me know your thoughts