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Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?

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

#351

Post by dasmoth »

njbooher wrote: post #87
dasmoth wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been out of the genome-sequencing space for quite a few years now, but that seems a pretty strong assertion and I’m curious about your rationale. Is it that the analysis will need to be re-done in future? Or do you think the space is saturated?

I left the game in 2015, but even then third generation sequencing could close bacterial genomes for < $1k. Long reads make it trivial to detect all sorts of stuff (sample mixup, contamination, phage activity, in vitro evolution) that goes unnoticed with short reads. Since the conclusion of large scale draft genome sequencing papers always seems to be 'we need a bigger sample size' anyway, I feel the money would be b…

Ah yes, I was mostly out of it before short-reads-only genomes were a common thing. “Draft” meant a slightly different thing in the Sanger sequencing days.

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

#352

Post by kyleperik »

I'm not sure you'll have a lot of luck finding that in a job as much as pursuing personal projects.

That's where I let my creative and experimental ideas run free. Who knows, maybe one will become popular. Remember, it's quantity over quality with this kind of thing.

As for things you've been taught in college, and this is just my opinion: if you're being taught it in college, odds are there's about a thousand wrappers or frameworks to do the same thing without the need to about it. I doubt there's any demand for things popular enough to make their way into your curriculum. I'd say a lot of college is fluff and a waste of your attention.

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

#353

Post by cuonic »

apeace wrote: post #295

It took several years but I finally found my dream job. I work as a software engineer for an ISP. We're a startup and so of course our mission is to disrupt the industry. The great part is we're actually doing it! Fun stuff I've done so far: - Wrote a library to find the best available subnet given our set of IP blocks, set of existing subnets, and the desired subnet size. This may not sound like a big deal, but we'v…

Wow you've done some great stuff. I work in the same industry in a company that has been around since 2007 and we don't have anything remotely similar to provisioning systems for client or backbone equipment, everything is done manually.

What kind of equipment do you use mainly ? Cisco, Juniper... ?

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

#355

Post by phendrenad2 »

Yes. Every day I get home from my Node.js CRUD-app drudgery and learn something new.

Sometimes I work on my machine learning skills (CuDNN/caffe).

Sometimes I design high-performance FPGA boards that meet tight EMC tolerances.

Sometimes I build game engines in C++ with Vulkan.

I'd hate to do any of these things as a day job, that would take all the fun out of it.

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

#356

Post by apeace »

cuonic wrote: post #353
apeace wrote: post #295

It took several years but I finally found my dream job. I work as a software engineer for an ISP. We're a startup and so of course our mission is to disrupt the industry. The great part is we're actually doing it! Fun stuff I've done so far: - Wrote a library to find the best available subnet given our set of IP blocks, set of existing subnets, and the desired subnet size. This may not sound like a big deal, but we'v…

Wow you've done some great stuff. I work in the same industry in a company that has been around since 2007 and we don't have anything remotely similar to provisioning systems for client or backbone equipment, everything is done manually. What kind of equipment do you use mainly ? Cisco, Juniper... ?

I am not sure whether we share that publicly or not, so I'm going to be conservative and not share it here. But we are hiring! We'd love to talk.

Here is our web site: https://pilotfiber.com/

Here is our Who is Hiring post (contains my email):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17209386

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

#358

Post by bpyne »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #208
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…

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…

For me, the most rewarding work is the volunteering I do. I coach various youth sports. I have no pressure to win so I can focus on letting the kids enjoy themselves, have positive interactions, and learn a little about the sports. Seeing them gain confidence and passionately work toward something is a major reward for me.

I still enjoy trying to match a user's expectations with the software I write. But, it's balanced by other aspects like coaching and being in a family.

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