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Ask HN: What has been your most rewarding job or project and why?

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Re: Ask HN: What has been your most rewarding job or project and why?

#31

Post by Vinnl »

rschneid wrote: post #8

Nonprofits are relatively underserved by tech workers. I've tried to get many of my friends to join me but the allure of bigco paychecks is simply too much. This is a pretty general answer but so's your question :) I think if you pick a nonprofit with a mission that you feel passionate enough about to really give it your all then there's a good chance for you to quickly become a double-digit percentage of global tech…

I'm very interested in pursuing a path like that, but I have two reservations about it:

1. Colleagues. The fact that non-profits are underserved by tech works, also means that you're less likely to have talented colleagues to learn from. 2. When they're not tech organisations. There might be a lack of understanding of both the opportunities and challenges for tech in their specific area, and I'm not sure I'd have some influence in helping with that. I really don't want to be the person who maintains a Wordpress site for a non-profit, and don't think I'd actually be that effective in contributing to their mission that way either.

What are your reflections on that?

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most rewarding job or project and why?

#32

Post by mettamage »

My most serious and rewarding job was freelancing for the New York Code + Design Academy. It's a coding school. It paid a freelance fee to me, since that is how they do projects and I really liked it. Teaching comes quite natural to me.

It did set my graduation back by a year since I was there full-time and didn't focus on my study program anymore. But now they don't operate in The Netherlands anymore, so I can go back to my studies and finish it.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most rewarding job or project and why?

#33

Post by Sumaso »

When I was a new grad I was hired at a company that did QA consulting. I was put on a team with 5 other people to create a integration test framework for a insurance company, who was rolling out a brand new software stack. It's probably one of the few times in my career that I had:

A) The whole team was responsible for the project, if the framework broke we took the blame as a team rather than crapping on individuals

B) PRs got seriously reviewed, there were strict rules about what was a quality PR and our team lead ensured that they were enforced. At the start of the project I lost several days of work because my PRs weren't of sufficient quality.

C) We got a start a project with no legacy code, building everything from the ground up. We had architecture meetings, everyone's input was vetted and valued.

Since then I haven't worked on a team where I felt that things were as cohesive. People make shitty design decisions and are not receptive to criticism. Lots of rubber stamping "approve" on PRs without actually reviewing the code, or accepting PRs without unit tests. Inheriting legacy code which was written poorly, but still has to be maintained. Nothing quite has the same feeling as that first project.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most rewarding job or project and why?

#35

Post by soneca »

Not sure it will help with your decision, but mine has been a website for my mom to sell her handcraft goods.

It is a simple, ugly (I'm not a good designer) website that showcase her products (dolls, purses, patchwork, etc), so she can show people.

She is 70+ years old and getting a lot of joy of her handcrafting, this helped her hobby even more important for her and added a lot to her general well-being.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most rewarding job or project and why?

#36

Post by jpmoyn »

Liquix wrote: post #2

Not quite startup or hobby project material, but some of the most gratifying work is making non-critical, easy to implement changes in your business's workflow! Sometimes users will have minor (or major) issues with the way a tool works - database takes 30 seconds to retrieve a certain type of information, there's no clear path from point A to point B in a frequently used business tool, certain jobs take 2x as long a…

I spend a lot of time developing internal tools to make my company's operations team's life easier, and I agree it feels good! It's nice that people appreciate it as well. Not every coding task is rewarded with praise, so it's nice when they are!

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most rewarding job or project and why?

#38

Post by studenttt »

When I quit a programming job in industry to work as a lab programmer at a university. Loved it so much I am now pursuing a PhD in hopes that I can always find work in research.

Reasons: - more flexible work hours than industry - more flexible work topics, basically work on what you find interesting at the moment - it's nice to be surrounded by the young and curious rather than the business-savvy/practically-minded grown-ups of the world

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most rewarding job or project and why?

#40

Post by logicallee »

dmead wrote: post #5
Liquix wrote: post #2

Not quite startup or hobby project material, but some of the most gratifying work is making non-critical, easy to implement changes in your business's workflow! Sometimes users will have minor (or major) issues with the way a tool works - database takes 30 seconds to retrieve a certain type of information, there's no clear path from point A to point B in a frequently used business tool, certain jobs take 2x as long a…

This is definitely not an answer.

I'm trying to read your comment charitably[1], since it's "obviously" wrong (as wrong as if you said, "hard to put this advice into practice since most professional programmers have never worked in a company that has any business processes or tools, and it's not really possible to start working in one that does have one")

I say this because your parent post is "obviously" a great response that directly answers the question.

So, if I want to read your comment charitably: a lot of technical people are poorly in touch with their feelings. Maybe you are right about Liquix, and they poorly report their most rewarding experience.

At a guess what would you say is likely more gratifying (the meaning of rewarding) for Liquix? What would a better answer to the question be?

I really have trouble guessing why you would write this, unless you thought rewarding meant "highest-paid" (not the usual sense of the word.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

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