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Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

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Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#101

Post by Tade0 »

I am at a point where I consider using a different framework than the usual to glue things together "interesting".

It used to be even worse though - I spent almost two years maintaining and developing an 8-year-old JavaScript codebase. Sure, it was interesting, but in way I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.

Eventually I found an outlet for this need in my work after hours. If you're childless and your line of work is pumping out CRUD apps then you should easily have the capacity to spend an average of at least half an hour daily on interesting things. Embarrassingly enough sometimes I feel I've created more during these thirty minutes than a whole day doing the stuff that pays the bills.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#102

Post by rsp1984 »

glangdale wrote: post #25

I was in the happy position of finding a job (post being a failed academic) doing stuff at the intersection of architecture and algorithms (high-speed regex implementation) and getting to to this for 11 years straight (2 years as a researcher, 5 years as a startup CTO, 4 years as a Principal Engineer at Intel). Got a decent if not ginormous exit too, which was nice. Also got to IMO change the industry - Hyperscan (gi…

I am thinking about blogging about this;

Yes, please do.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#104

Post by TeMPOraL »

tw1010 wrote: post #96
TeMPOraL wrote: post #31

You might as well have asked who among us won the lottery. I've been struggling with this for years now; after 4 boring jobs I finally gave up even the expectation that what I'll be asked to do will be even remotely interesting (or socially useful). The chance of landing an interesting job is absolutely minuscule - the market rewards whatever it rewards at the moment, and that's where jobs flock. These days, one of t…

There should be a name to the phenomenon that humans seem to become crushingly depressed once they start to grasp the big picture dynamics of the system they're encapsulated within. I think it's an effect that we're not quite prepared for as we reach closer and closer to science dotting all its i's. It's as if childhood primes us to think that life is all about figuring out what the heck is going on around us, and as…

I agree. Maybe there is a word for that?

Personally, understanding the "big picture dynamics" of systems is kind of an intellectual porn for me. I loved doing that for as long as I remembered. It always came with the sense of control - understanding the systems means you could tweak it to your liking, if you so desired.

Finally realizing that the system in which we live is basically uncontrollable by an individual within it has blindsided me. So many interesting things happening, so many interesting things that need to be done still, and yet all you and I get to be are observers and consumers of whatever the system happens to spit out.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#105

Post by sAbakumoff »

My suggestion : forget you CS degree, drop the idea of doing something interesting during your work hours, think about it as inevitable procedure to earn your montly salary. At 5pm run away from your office and focus on whatever you think is interesting.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#106

Post by mhluongo »

Currently, I'm implementing BLS signatures in Go and Solidity. A couple co-workers are implementing a threshold ECDSA signature scheme from the paper announcing it. Last night we had a jam session with a cryptography professor at a top-10 CS school to discuss our system design.

Getting the opportunity to dive back into the literature, get involved with research, and still code has been amazing.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#107

Post by matte_black »

If you want consistently interesting work you need to be proficient in two different disciplines. Computer Science isn’t enough. Interesting work is the product of being an interesting person.

If you are a computer scientist and say, a marine geologist, there is some work that only you would be able to do, and some innovations that only you can see, that plain CS guys knee deep in the CRUD cannot.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#108

Post by tootie »

indescions_2018 wrote: post #67

Hang out with the folks in biotech if you want to be inspired. You can literally see progress on a daily basis for a host of age related diseases ;) You can also participate indirectly by tracking the market and making small investments in say: AbbVie, Gilead, Regeneron, Spark Therapeutics, Ginko Bioworks, etc. Or apply your skills to Kaggle style ML competitions, citizen science projects, open access gene banks, etc…

I did a biotech project as a college student for a cheap hourly rate. It was amazing and I didn't really appreciate it at the time. I've spent most of the last 20 years working in IT or digital marketing (building branded web and mobile apps mostly). I've had a handful of interesting technical challenges, but nothing close to working in biotech.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

#110

Post by emodendroket »

airfreak wrote: post #37

I work at a boring company but I manage to get interesting projects to work on. I left CRUD behind about 5 years ago and I couldn't go back now. I just don't find most business logic problems interesting enough. The transition for me came when I started a new job and my first project was to fix a slow batch job. Then I managed to get a second performance improvement project and soon I was the performance guy focusing…

I think that actually "boring" companies with "boring" products often have more interesting problems.
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