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

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

#201

Post by swsieber » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:39 PM UTC

perfmode wrote: post #183

swsieber wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father-in-law mentioned something I find quite interesting to my wife: Don't look for a job that will fulfill every aspect of your life - that's what your family is for. And if you do find one, your family life might not suffer. Not all of us are raising families, but I think it highlights a bigger points. Work is not what builds societies (certain jobs do harm society I think, mostly by destroying it's moral virt…

The same thing goes for family. One should not look for family to fill every aspect of your life.

I haven't given it a ton of thought because I have a job I enjoy from time to time, and enough downtime to pursue a hobby or two - I guess I'm in a pretty balanced situation and am okay with it.

In reading your post, I had to stop and think for a bit.

I agree with you but want to give the thought that family can be one's top priority without looking for it fill every aspect of one's life.

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

#202

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:40 PM UTC

swsieber wrote: post #178

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…

My father-in-law mentioned something I find quite interesting to my wife: Don't look for a job that will fulfill every aspect of your life - that's what your family is for. And if you do find one, your family life might not suffer. Not all of us are raising families, but I think it highlights a bigger points. Work is not what builds societies (certain jobs do harm society I think, mostly by destroying it's moral virt…

[deleted]

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

#203

Post by carapace » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC

First of all, let me point out that this:

> Most of my work seems to be boring CRUD work where the challenge is gluing libraries together or figuring out business requirements. Actual interesting technical problems seems to be mostly wrapped in ready-made libraries / SaaS services.

...isn't a problem. It's a sign of maturity of the field. In 2018 most problems that you can solve with a computer should have an off-the-shelf library or service. (And most of the job of most working programmers should be mostly selecting and configuring existing solutions according to known design patterns. Like most engineering.)

Second, you've got to take into account that NN/ML/AI et. al. is going to "eat" a portion of all programming work within the next fifteen years or so.

(I think we're due for a contraction of professional programmers, at least as far as the job has been done for decades.)

If you really want to tackle intricate problems you're gonna want to look at biology or nanotech. People in this discussion have already mentioned "matter compilers" and "systems biology".

If you really want to stick to Computer Science problems I would suggest coordination and control of swarm robots. (That's what I'm working on, FWIW.)

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

#204

Post by emodendroket » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #126

sevensor wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> abstract everything away with money This is the lens through which von Neumann and Morgenstern saw all of human behavior, and their "rational" economics has been hugely influential in public policy. I use scare quotes because I disagree that the approach is rational -- many things in life can't be measured in dollars, not even dollars! (E.g. you can't compare a dollar today with a dollar ten years from now. Regardl…

" I use scare quotes because I disagree that the approach is rational " Agreed. For the most part, going to church is not economically rational. For the most part, having children is not economically rational. For the most part, being monogamous to one's spouse is not economically rational. For the most part, patriotism to one's country is not economically rational. In a slightly different sense, going to space, or c…

I think there's something to the Hume quote about reason being a slave of the passions.

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

#205

Post by throwawaymath » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

tudelo wrote: post #191

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…

Where are you getting this weather data?

All over. It's not strictly weather data, either. The majority of the data comes from programs within DSCOVR, LPDAAC, NASA, NOAA, NCDC, USGS, ARGO, CDC, CDIAC ORNL, DOE, EIA, EPA, FDA, EOSWEB, USFS, PHMSA and USDA. The snapshots I have are already around 50TB; I'm working on setting up updates at daily resolution for each of these sources, documenting it all and transforming it into something queryable.

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

#206

Post by emodendroket » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

PascLeRasc wrote: post #193

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…

My overall happiness was so much better when I was working for my university's pharmacy school making websites about where to find Naloxone and heroin overdose info than currently at my huge engineering firm company making twice as much. I'd love to find a job doing simple web development for a nonprofit.

I've been there and the grass isn't always greener.

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

#207

Post by projectramo » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

There are three responses:

1. "Interesting" has more to do with the person who is being interested than the task. There are people who insist on telling me about various sports statistics as if it is amazing and interesting, and they really want to meet famous athletes. There are others who really want to work with the machine code etc. Can you maintain interest?

2. I bet you even the ideal interesting jobs you can think of: say Elon Musk's job running multiple firms probably feels like yours from the inside. Board upset that he can't get the manufacturing levels up, sleeping in the factory, trying to figure out what is going wrong by staring at who knows what while asking SpaceX to hold off on the meeting this week.

3. Sleep early and drink caffeine -- not kidding -- and your job might seem more interesting.

Edit: There is probably someone out there complaining that they have to figure out boring technical details when they really want to learn more about the business challenges.

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

#208

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

swsieber wrote: post #178

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…

My father-in-law mentioned something I find quite interesting to my wife: Don't look for a job that will fulfill every aspect of your life - that's what your family is for. And if you do find one, your family life might not suffer. Not all of us are raising families, but I think it highlights a bigger points. Work is not what builds societies (certain jobs do harm society I think, mostly by destroying it's moral virt…

That's definitely something I need to think through more. And what your father-in-law said sounds wise. Thanks for sharing it.

The reason I ended up in tech is in part my fascination about tech, especially as applied to uplifting ourselves and solving our problems (yes, I watched way too much Star Trek: The Next Generation in my formative years). I never thought much about family - in fact, for the most of my life, I felt it's something of a side endeavour. I still feel it shouldn't be the sole focus of a person, though I definitely believe it's more important than I believed in the past.

Same for relationships. And small communities. I feel that maybe we overdid this globalization thing. Maybe global competition and centralization of various kinds of innovative work is more efficient, but it also doesn't seem healthy. Living in a city, there's no such thing as "local community" anymore. Not even neighbours.

> I have resigned myself that it's not my job to fix society, it's our job to fix society, and I'm doing my part where I am.

Still, I'd like to feel like I'm actually doing my part beyond just participating in the economy as consumer. I have specialized skills, I'm not dumb. But I have hard time finding opportunities to do things I'd know could help meaningfully and effectively. There must be something. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.

Your comment you linked to is golden. I'm favouriting it. Those are definitely words I'll try to remember from now on.

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

#209

Post by emodendroket » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #99

aalleavitch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This still asserts that solving the problems of a poor person is worth less than solving the problems of a rich person. Also, getting paid by the government to do something is decisively a non-market solution, given that the government gets its money through taxes.

I can provide examples: Panera Bread gross revenue $2.8B, McDonalds gross revenue $22.8B Nordstrom gross revenue $14.4B, Walmart gross revenue $500.3B Payday loan revenue in the rich burbs roughly-zero, Payday loan revenue nation wide mysteriously between $6B and $46B depending on data source Now can you get a cool and trendy very high social status hipster job to brag about on social media in the coolest office with…

> Payday loan revenue in the rich burbs roughly-zero, Payday loan revenue nation wide mysteriously between $6B and $46B depending on data source

Payday loans may "solve a problem" but they do it in a predatory and exploitative way.

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

#210

Post by davidkellis » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

I think that's where side projects come into play. I'm working on a language project on the side because, just as you mentioned, work consists mostly of CRUD APIs around tracking business resources.