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?
Ask HN: What do you do?
1–10 of 39 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you do?
#2Web/data mining freelancing. Working on bootstrapping a scraping/data transformation product leveraging a text analysis platform I built.
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!).
Re: Ask HN: What do you do?
#3I build video processing and streaming systems, currently back at Apple. And while it can present singularly frustrating problems, it's also really cool. I love it.
Re: Ask HN: What do you do?
#4Web/data mining freelancing. Working on bootstrapping a scraping/data transformation product leveraging a text analysis platform I built. 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!).
How did you pick your specialty? I've toyed with the idea of freelancing, but I have no idea what my niche would be. I don't have any professional experience, so I suppose that makes the decision a bit more difficult, but only because it adds so many options.
Re: Ask HN: What do you do?
#5Hope everything went well with your surgery and your recovery is speedy. I found HN because Slashdot changed their UI one too many times and programming.reddit didn't offer very high quality discussion.
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.
Re: Ask HN: What do you do?
#6Been programming since I was 13, a hobby that became my Job. Yes, love software.
Re: Ask HN: What do you do?
#7I work for a supermarket in Japan...doing some IT grunt work + db admin + CRUD apps. Itching to try out new things...preferably remote.
Trying to get pgxplorer.com off the ground as a side project to "vacation" profitability.
Re: Ask HN: What do you do?
#8I sniff packets and write analytic/metric applications on the data, as well as protocol analysis.
Re: Ask HN: What do you do?
#9Web/data mining freelancing. Working on bootstrapping a scraping/data transformation product leveraging a text analysis platform I built. 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!).
How did you pick your specialty? I've toyed with the idea of freelancing, but I have no idea what my niche would be. I don't have any professional experience, so I suppose that makes the decision a bit more difficult, but only because it adds so many options.
You'll laugh at the story. 2nd year of college I created a spider for the first time and loved the idea of a computer being autonomous. Took some classes, took it up as a hobby and it became a profession.
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.
Re: Ask HN: What do you do?
#10I'm a PhD student in experimental physics, working in a group that does precision tests of gravity and possible new forces. I like it, but I'm also hoping to graduate soon. I've decided that I like designing and prototyping hardware, so I'm looking for an industry job in R&D.
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.