Ask HN: What is your job? Do you like it? What was your favorite job?

My favorite work is writing open source software. The variety of people interacting helps make the project more general purpose. Creating software for strangers enforces better docs. You get to work with people around the world whose programming ability and knowledge is humbling. Everyone is intrinsically motivated by the project and puts their best effort into what will be publicly visible code.

I'm currently working on PostgREST, an open source server that turns any PostgreSQL database into a RESTful API. http://begriffs.com/about.html

I currently work as a software engineer in a hedge fund on their datawarehouse platform - most of it is written in Perl. I also code in JavaScript/JQuery/HTML/CSS. I code all day long in Vim on a Linux system. I've developed significant sub-components of the system and learned tons doing that. It is pretty great.

I've been working for a b-corporation that is in the ed-tech space. There are a lot of problems to solve here.

After two years, I feel that educational software is more about production quality/entertainment value than about solving technological challenges. Poorly designed content that is not engaging can't compete with other resources on the web.

Building a platform to facilitate learning is difficult, because the user experience will only ever be as good as the effort the instructor puts into the course. At the same time, training/education requires a hugely diverse set of features. You're pretty much developing a content-management system, plus a lot of extensions for client-specific needs. Different school districts/companies can have hugely different needs and standards that they need to satisfy, so apps become bloated and dysfunctional. I don't think anyone starts out thinking that they'll build a "crap webapp", but education is a really tough problem for computers to solve.

At the end of the day, organizations choose the most "comprehensive" system, which usually means Blackboard or one of their competitors. Established vendors make integration difficult, and will try to scare their clients from working with you. Also, school districts are also notorious for procurement processes that are incredibly painful.

If you go the content route and become an eLearning development firm, you're looking at a race to the bottom for lowest price for acceptable quality. You'll also be going up against big companies (e.g. Relias) that already have thousands of stock trainings on-hand that they can adapt slightly to individual clients.

All of this said, the online learning space is ripe for disruption. Articulate Storyline (the industry-standard eLearning authoring tool) is still heavily dependent on flash and has numerous glitches. xAPI is almost completely meaningless as an LRS standard. I also get the sense that many organizations are beginning to re-think their commitments to Blackboard and the like. It's a great cause and I wish you the best!

I make little websites which I don't know if people will care about. Enjoyment will depend on the millions I manage to rake in.

haha my favourite response.