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

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

#251

Post by gonzo41 » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

scaryspooky wrote: post #198

juliangoldsmith wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A job doesn't have to be a calling, and a job that isn't a calling doesn't have to be a soul-crushing grind. Most developer jobs are for CRUD apps, and you'll rarely be doing greenfield development. There's not a whole lot of room for passion there. If you just treat it as a job, though, rather than something you have to force yourself to be passionate about, it doesn't need to be that interesting. Once you make a li…

I've always wondered who the magical developers are that did the greenfield development of every project I've been on-boarded to. I never seem to get ahead of the maintenance grind to the point of being one of those creating the mess instead of wading through the mess.

Yeah me too. But looking through the doco i keep seeing the names of people on all the green field work are the same.

I think those people live the work life equivalent of hitting all green lights.

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

#252

Post by bsenftner » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

jciochon wrote: post #245

bsenftner wrote: post #242

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…

Wow, it sounds like you’ve had a fascinating career. You say you may have just been lucky to get in on the ground floor as it were, but would you attribute your success to any other habits, behaviors, or personal qualities?

I'm enthusiastic, almost to a childish degree, and I obsess. The joke at work is I'm "Sheldon", and I don't watch that show so I'm only vaguely aware that he's some type of bad communicating nerd. I think I communicate better. I'm also somewhat fearless, accepting projects over my head and still delivering.

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

#253

Post by maerF0x0 » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 3:35 PM UTC

In my experience one of the main issues is those who hold the reins often do not have the technical expertise to envision something interesting. Therefore there is no directive to do something interesting, and thusly people do not innovate.

My solution to this is to 1) gain rapport with executive level people and inform them of paradigm shifting opportunities and 2) do the interesting things anyways, when no one is looking... This requires you to master your current position to a point that you make free time within your working hours. Automate, clean up, pay off techdebt until you find it easy to deliver enough to keep managers happy. Then start to work on toy projects to prove out interesting applications of things.

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

#254

Post by opticalflow » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 3:36 PM UTC

I'm CTO of a machine learning/computer vision company, and quite a bit of the team's work is "gluing libraries together" -- but even so, it's an intensely interesting, rapidly evolving field. Plus I get to play with pixels and cameras and VR. That being said, I paid my dues in the 90's and early 2000's doing web services and boring J2EE and gluing Java to native and PHP to Perl to CGI [bleech]

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

#255

Post by chrisseaton » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 3:37 PM UTC

sarabande wrote: post #12

I think with time you may find such drudgery is present in every field. Ninety percent of any kind of work we do is gluing together components and solving boring business needs. It's part of the reason I think we engineers love side projects so much -- they're easy to start up, and you can try out academically interesting things (obscure programming languages, cool algorithms, etc.) without caring about the bottom li…

> If you want to solely focus on interesting technical problems, I'd recommend working in a research lab or going to academia. On the downside, you may lose that nice paycheck, but your curiosity will remain forever piqued!

If you join an industrial lab, rather than a lab in a university, you can keep the pay but still do the same thing as the academics.

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

#256

Post by nottorp » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

The sad truth is every interesting problem turns into a job eventually. I was very proud of myself when I did my first custom linux kernel for an ARM machine, rev 0 hardware bringup and all. Pretty proud when I wrote the first working kernel driver as well.

Now I'm doing that stuff regularly for various industrial applications, and it's pretty meh. Still beats churning out javascript for the 10000th online store, that's true.

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

#257

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

chrisbennet wrote: post #249

TeMPOraL wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That is a difficult question to answer. I mean, I get my work through reputation [1] & luck and 30 years experience but that isn't actionable advice for you. I would say that the trick to getting into work that puts the most "happiness under the curve" is to find a small company [2] that really needs you. Look for that advertisement on Craig's list, talk to your friends, develop a skill that you can leverage. [3] [1]…

So no royal road, just working well and actively steering towards working on the things of interest :). Thanks for sharing.

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

#258

Post by lachlan-sneff » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

As someone who is a student, I'm working on writing a new-kind of operating system this summer for GSoC. I find it pretty interesting :)

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

#259

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

chauhankiran wrote: post #236

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually everything becomes "just a job." In my mid twenties this was hard for me to grasp. I was working as an electronics design engineer for a company that made low-end industrial controls. We had a customer who had what seemed like the dream company to me: he made robots for animatronics and lab applications. One day I was talking to him about how exciting the work was and his answer surprised me: it used to be…

What are the thing that is intresting ( as per your opinion, if you are willing to share? )? I mean not everybody will get the job they like and it will be the boring thing to do ( but, still we have to do this boring job! ). But, life shouldn't be boring and it should be beautiful and enjoying.

The interesting thing isn't the technology, it's what the users/customers are doing with it. It's how it improves their lives, simplifies their business, enables them to build other products and increase profits, etc.

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

#260

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

gglitch wrote: post #250

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…

I've favorited more comments in this thread than anything else on HN ever. Thanks for the great thoughts. I can add tangentially that these questions, these considerations, were pursued almost maniacally by David Foster Wallace, especially later in his life. You may find satisfaction especially in his last, unfinished novel, The Pale King, which purports especially to treat the immense spiritual gravity that he thoug…

Thanks for the reference, I'll look at it.

When I wrote my edit to the comment, I didn't expect much reaction to my confused ranting. I was surprised to discover it resonates so strongly with people here. I guess I'm nowhere near alone in thinking those thoughts, and going through this process.