241–250 of 441 posts
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What about people with lots of problems and not a lot of money? For some reason, I still think they have value and that their problems are worth solving, regardless of what the market thinks of them.
Mother Teresa's contributions to poor ppl of the world were minuscule compared to Bill Gates.
I have been extremely fortunate in my career. I'd say I won the interesting lottery. I started very early by today's standards, taking my first programming class at the local university when I was in 5th grade, back in '76.
At 17, in '82, I had a game company selling nationwide in Sears & KMart a few Vic-20 games I wrote. That got me a beta testing role with the unreleased Macintosh. Which got me to move to Boston, where I worked for Mandelbrot & DeVenney on the initial publishing of Fractals.
Basically, I've been fortunate to be an early developer for a series of advanced technologies: - initial 3D graphics research community (back when the question was "how to do 3D graphics at all"), - initial GUI developments (before Windows 3.1, there were a lot of competitors), - early real time mapping / navigation, I worked on one as my first post graduation job - early streaming media, I was writing media players for CD-I/CDROM/Network back in '90-'92 - early 3D gaming consoles, I was an OS developer for the 3DO and the first PlayStation - early 3D games, lead developer for games for 15 years - VFX, left games and worked on 9 VFX heavy feature films at an academy award winning studio - startup, left VFX and spent 7 years doing a ML based 3D reconstruction of photos to realistic 3D avatar web service - Facial Recognition, closed my startup and now I develop facial recognition software for an industry leader
There is not time enough in a day to explore all the stuff I've done or am interesting in further pursuing. Luckily, I am one of those that sleep less: 5 hours leaves me groggy, and 4 is just right. So I spend my daze 10 hours coding for work, and another 4-6 pursuing "mad science".
Just submitted my PhD in ML (waiting to defend) and started working as a contractor in an exciting enough arm of a boring enough company. So far it's all boring CRUD - but there may be interesting problems to solve as our team and product grows. I'm trying to position myself as the guy to tackle these interesting problems by taking a proactive role in planning and project management, without cornering myself as an ir…
So mush optimism..... just check out the other replies on this thread. Good luck anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm hesitant to post because there is so much anguish here about winning the lottery for interesting work. I have been extremely fortunate in my career. I'd say I won the interesting lottery. I started very early by today's standards, taking my first programming class at the local university when I was in 5th grade, back in '76. At 17, in '82, I had a game company selling nationwide in Sears & KMart a few Vic-20 game…
(Luckily, interesting technical problems in computing don't actually require resources, other than time, and their interestingness is their own reward, so it's not like I need or expect anybody to pay me to work on them.)
Eventually I decided that my world was going to be of my own making, and that I didn't want to spent it unhappy. If anything was going to change, then I alone was responsible for initiating that change in my life and my perspective.
I ended up quitting my job and going to Europe, where I worked with traditional cheesemakers. I learned how to make cheese, milk and to take care of livestock. When I arrived back in NA, my wife and I moved to a more rural location, bought a small herd of livestock and began building our own dairy. For me, working with the animals, and producing these rustic, old-world styled cheeses brought a lot of fulfillment to my life that I hadn't found elsewhere.
It's now almost 10 years later and we've just expanded our operations again. Our production will likely be 4-5x what it was when we started, and we have an incredibly supportive and dedicated customer base that love our cheeses. Being able to talk with them, make them happy, and get their feedback on our cheese is one of my favourite times of the week.
The last 10 years have held some of the most challenging periods of my life. I've had to learn and master entirely new skill sets - marketing, plumbing, veterinary skills, MacGyver'ing equipment to work for just another day before we can get it fixed properly. We've also had our share of the bad times - in farming, the unexpected happens frequently, and we've teetered on the financial brink a couple times. Certain aspects of what I'm doing now have also become, "just a job" - I don't really want to scrape livestock poop in the pissing rain, but someone has to do it. (And sometimes that turns out to be someone we hire to do it for us.)
I still pick up the odd tech contract during our slow periods, though those are getting fewer and further between. Turns out that tech wages pay for things a lot more quickly than farm wages, and a 2 month contract can pay for some shiny new farm equipment much more quickly.
I often joke with my wife that our decision to strike off on our own and start our own business was either the best-worst decision or the worst-best decision in my life; I just haven't picked which one it is yet. :)
Link to some of our cheeses and ladies: https://imgur.com/a/VC2aire
I left a well paid job in games to work in VR because I thought there was a lot of interesting potential for non games VR applications. Seeking out work that interests you does often involve taking on more risk and often a pay cut relative to 'safe' / boring software jobs, although perhaps with some chance of a bigger potential upside in the right startup.
I feel so sorry for you. Life is so very brief to be working on something you don’t like. I look forward to going to work every (week) day. I work in a different corner of the development biz doing computer vision, graphics and new products for companies. This week I’m working on “reading” test strips for a new medical device. Last month I was working on the graphics for a landing radar. At the risk of of telling you…
Not the OP, but regarding the "eat what I do" - how do I get your food? How do I get to work on medical test strips, or landing radars?
[1] As I tell people: "People know my reputation - and yet they hire me anyway."
[2] The last company I worked at before going independent consisted of 3 people. The owner/engineer and 2 software devs.
[3] "Develop a skill you can leverage": By that I mean, start to learn something that you want to work with and then find a place to work at that will let you really learn it. For example, suppose you want to work with the Internet Of Things stuff; get a development board and do an IOT project with something like C++ and leverage your existing skill set (Javascript, Web stuff). Then take that little bit of IOT stuff and try to get a job doing IOT and then maybe C++ embedded. Does that make sense?
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…