I currently teach journalism at Stanford, with a focus on computational methods and programming. It's a good school and I like working with students, and I can work on research and my own learning. But I'm not used to the pace and lack of deadlines and I don't like the Bay Area compared to New York. My favorite job at this point was working as a developer at ProPublica, for the kind of projects we did and for being in New York.
Ask HN: What is your job? Do you like it? What was your favorite job?
21–30 of 84 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your job? Do you like it? What was your favorite job?
#22I currently work at an ad agency (we call ourselves a "boutique data-driven marketing company") in Milwaukee. My official title is Developer, but I do a lot of things: I manage servers, code applications (HTML/CSS/Javascript, but also C, R, and loads of shell scripting), research new concepts, automate existing workflows, and so much more. Before I did this, I worked as a freelancer doing one-off website jobs for sma…
I teach in k12 in the Madison area. If you're developing concepts and want 'end-user' feedback I would enjoy taking part.
Thank you for your willingness to participate. Could I talk to you privately about it?
Re: Ask HN: What is your job? Do you like it? What was your favorite job?
#23I help run an general purpose applied computation R&D lab for a medium sized non-profit. In the last year we've worked in fields as far reaching as bioinformatics to cyber defense to finance.
In the meanwhile, we've helped develop faster disease detection assays to improving safety in transportation.
We get to play with lots of big computers, pitch new ideas, and can have immediate impact on people's lives.
I love this job, it's probably the best job I've ever had. I've even turned down some less appealing jobs at Google because of the range of cutting edge things I get to work on in a normal day and the Google positions weren't offering that. I've never been so engaged, on a daily basis. I'm long past my honeymoon with this job and can't see an end to it. Knowing that I'm helping people with my work makes it extra rewarding.
I've worked in similar applied R or D fields, did a stint at a couple software companies and worked as an analyst from time to time, working on some very hard problems. But nothing with this kind of positive impact potential.
Will I help change the world? Probably not, but I'm pretty sure I'm helping make it a better place.
Re: Ask HN: What is your job? Do you like it? What was your favorite job?
#24I've been involved in a fair variety of projects, but amongst my favorites would have to be:
- an experimental video codec based around contours, with some fairly tremendous potential. It works, but there's still a few years more work required to turn it into something commercially useful. (But, with no further funding for now, it's on hold)
- an embedded project, developing some audience response keypads and base stations. Nothing world-changing in the least, but a lot of fun. No OS involved, and everything had to fit into 256K of flash, with 64K RAM available. Designing the bootloader, a robust audio link, a scriptable accelerometer engine, and more, with plenty of hardware involvement - mm, that was good fun.
- the 3DO and Mac versions of The 11th Hour, sequel to The 7th Guest. What an amazing place to work that was.. arriving for my interview, the sense of enthusiasm was nigh palpable. Everyone knew they could be earning way more down in the Bay, but nobody left. Plus, coaxing 40-70fps video playback out of an 8MHz ARM6 core was quite gratifying. ^_^ (The result of some careful alterations to the datastream format, and a lot of assembly)
Re: Ask HN: What is your job? Do you like it? What was your favorite job?
#25Re: Ask HN: What is your job? Do you like it? What was your favorite job?
#26I work as a software developer on a product that provides a remote desktop environment whose activity is recorded. This isn't the main business of the company I work for; they do contracting work and use this environment for auditing purposes. I mainly do JavaScript/HTML/CSS and some C/C++/Python work. I neither like nor dislike my job. I like the people I work with, and I get to architect things and play with new te…
Ha! I used to work in field geophysics too. Same thing - got to know lots of interesting places.
Re: Ask HN: What is your job? Do you like it? What was your favorite job?
#27I'm a mechatronics designer at a robotics startup. It's a junior 'jack-of-all-trades' position: mechanical design, testing and automation, and hardware troubleshooting. I'm still pretty new but I like the project and I like the variety of work.
Re: Ask HN: What is your job? Do you like it? What was your favorite job?
#28I help run an general purpose applied computation R&D lab for a medium sized non-profit. In the last year we've worked in fields as far reaching as bioinformatics to cyber defense to finance. In the meanwhile, we've helped develop faster disease detection assays to improving safety in transportation. We get to play with lots of big computers, pitch new ideas, and can have immediate impact on people's lives. I love th…
How did you get this into kind of work? I've been working in dev for 20 years, web dev since 2000, and it's pretty depressing that doing good work just means extra profit for a shareholder :(
Re: Ask HN: What is your job? Do you like it? What was your favorite job?
#29I sit in a chair, in front of a panel with many lights, and another panel with many buttons. And I press the buttons rapidly in some specific order to make certain lights go on or off.
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Re: Ask HN: What is your job? Do you like it? What was your favorite job?
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