Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems? • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by jacques_chester » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #77

jacques_chester wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't agree with Marx, your sense of ennui seems to reasonably represent what I understand to have been his concepts of reification and alienation. One might ask: what does the alternative look like? From what I can tell Marx is a bit wishy-washy on that point. Hayek more helpfully explained that the market provides a mechanism for determining value, not virtue . That it works, but doesn't uplift. And that tr…

"Ennui". I like the word. Thanks! > One might ask: what does the alternative look like? From what I can tell Marx is a bit wishy-washy on that point. I have no clue either. But it feels to me as if we're turning humanity into a single superorganism, with each one of us being just a cell, except all those cells have brains capable of wishing they'd play on the same level as the superorganism. Related: I've never had a…

I don't have answers either. I just chase books and try to cobble them together.

I wish you luck.

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

#162

Post by rumcajz » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

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…

Interesting work is done by open source hobbyists at night. What remains is what you get paid for.

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

#163

Post by reitanqild » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

weliketocode wrote: post #140

sAbakumoff wrote: post #105

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.

Is this view that common? I'm all for work-life balance and working on passion projects on the side. But do that many people really think of their developer job as a salary and a daily grind?

I work on "boring" stuff (CRUD, frontend and backend) and love it.

Maybe because I remember all to well what jobs I used to have:

- farm hand (heavy work on smaller less automated farms)

- construction (noisy, wet, dusty etc)

- security

- help desk

Being paid 8 hours a day to work on borderline interesting tasks, getting free lunch, being paid to study etc feels great. Oh, and I can work from home if I need to.

I also make my work interesting by putting some effort into it.

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

#164

Post by avip » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

I'd take 20% pay cut to work on something important or useful to our world. The tiny problem is... there is no such thing. Everything seems meaningless crap, especially in small startups where I generally try to be. So yes, depressingly maybe, I'm with you OP.

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

#165

Post by chasd00 » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

technology drives business, switch your thinking from interesting technical problem to an interesting business problem solvable through the application of technology.

There's many more options when you think in those terms. For example, decreasing ER frequent flyers through figuring out a way to measure and track patient's medication usage. That's a real problem that, solved, would save a hospital tons of money and dramatically improve the quality of life for many people (especially the poor/homeless schizophrenic community).

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

#166

Post by asah » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

exikyut wrote: post #153

throwawaymath wrote: post #139

I'm in the exploratory stages of starting a noncommercial project focused on hosting, processing and serving a vast amount of climate data for scientists and researchers. I've "seeded" this project with my own bare metal hardware, electricity and internet access. This includes 136 vCPUs, 512GB of RAM and 128TB of hard drive storage capacity (with room for another 456TB). As my own money permits, I plan to slowly add…

Wow :) High-level questions: - At the risk of birthing a page-long subthread on ZFS-vs-everything-else... what storage solution are you using, and why? - What sort of hardware are you using? (This is a non-catalyzing question, and is just out of curiosity) - How did this get started, and how are you managing this? - Will you ever be interested in accepting donations or funding? (Including on a voluntary basis; and in…

Take a look at quiltdata.com (open source), YC S17

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

#167

Post by exikyut » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:05 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #52

I do a lot of robotics software engineering from top to bottom: UIs for mapping spaces, web APIs, web servers, databases, ROS nodes to handle mapping, web-based controls, industrial integration APIs, error handling, etc. I've excitedly taken on every little task thrown at me over the years, I think, because I went to school for GIS, earned geography degrees, and never in my life expected to do anything remotely as in…

> All without any engineering or CS education (which makes me really angry at the education system for barring me from engineering or CS, but that's another story)

I wouldn't mind hearing about that, huh. (In my case my story was learning difficulties I only began to get past at around 25, with virtually nil remembered schooling (besides what I could figure out on my own) from before that point, more or less.)

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

#168

Post by longnguyen » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:05 PM UTC

I’m working on a project that utilize RGBD camera (realsense) and radar to extract body measurements. I’ve been developing a react binding for Qt Quick (react-qml) which allow you to develop cross-platform native application faster and easier. Personally I feel it quite challenging and rewarding.

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

#169

Post by betimsl » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

sAbakumoff wrote: post #105

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.

Where's the social life when doing this?

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

#170

Post by cuchoi » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:07 PM UTC

avip wrote: post #164

I'd take 20% pay cut to work on something important or useful to our world. The tiny problem is... there is no such thing. Everything seems meaningless crap, especially in small startups where I generally try to be. So yes, depressingly maybe, I'm with you OP.

A place to start are the YC NGOs