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Ask HN: Where can we find the unsexy jobs?

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Re: Ask HN: Where can we find the unsexy jobs?

#81

Post by froggertoaster »

Disclaimer: I own a boring consultancy.

Boring, however, is contextual. We have flex hours. We have unlimited PTO (and frequent reminders to take personal time - I already know the data related to offering unlim PTO and how often people then take PTO, thank you very much). We make over $1 million in revenue a year with 6 people and no plans to have exponential growth, coupled with high margins so that we aren't rugpulled by a rainy day (and to take appropriate profits of course). My employees report high levels of job satisfaction and happiness.

Our focus? Maintaining boring legacy software for low-risk clients. We also do some greenfield work, but we like the stability that comes with working on older cash cow software.

The jobs are out there. We're just not super flashy about it.

EDIT: I appreciate everyone who commented :) if this wasn't a burner I'd totally reach out to some of you!

Re: Ask HN: Where can we find the unsexy jobs?

#84

Post by dimitrios1 »

Work for a heavily regulated private industry: banking, finance, healthcare, energy.

I did startups for 10 years prior. Never ending rat races, constant high pressure deadlines, everything is "ASAP", compensation is iffy (your start ups got to make it).

In contrast, I work for a bank now. Easiest and most well compensated job I have ever had in my life. So easy that I am pursuing additional degrees (which they pay for), and moonlighting my own product offerings, virtually stress free.

They still dabble in some of the tech you mention. But they are much more deliberate about everything. And if they do go with something, it will be around for a long time.

Re: Ask HN: Where can we find the unsexy jobs?

#85

Post by westonplatter0 »

giantg2 wrote: post #66
curiousllama wrote: post #36

They’re outside of the “tech” industry. Look at companies 200-300 on the Fortune 500; their IT group uses boring tech. Just fair warning: you seem to be under the assumption that “boring” means “straightforward and just makes sense.” It does not. If you’re looking for that… good luck! Update if you find somewhere and I’ll join you.

Especially banks on that list. They're slow to adopt new tech due to risk aversion.

+1 to this. I've worked in tech but never enjoyed the "upgrade the system every 2 years approach." Banks and financial services are now regulated to be slow, methodical, and dependable post 2008. I found a manager I respect in a group that does work I'm curious about (options/futures) so it's a good fit.

Re: Ask HN: Where can we find the unsexy jobs?

#86

Post by ptero »

giantg2 wrote: post #66
curiousllama wrote: post #36

They’re outside of the “tech” industry. Look at companies 200-300 on the Fortune 500; their IT group uses boring tech. Just fair warning: you seem to be under the assumption that “boring” means “straightforward and just makes sense.” It does not. If you’re looking for that… good luck! Update if you find somewhere and I’ll join you.

Especially banks on that list. They're slow to adopt new tech due to risk aversion.

Public utilities are high on that list, too. Old tech, stable IT jobs, good benefits, but (IMO) also boring as hell. My 2c.

Re: Ask HN: Where can we find the unsexy jobs?

#87

Post by withinboredom »

throwaway787544 wrote: post #49
dotancohen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't confuse faulty hardware with software abstractions of perfect hardware. Those cloud VMs are still running on some hardware somewhere, even it's been abstracted away from your control. And that hardware can and does fail.

But with an autoscaling group a new one magically pops up in the same AZ if an old one dies. You don't get that by rolling your own rack (without having hot spares on hand, in multiple racks or data centers). Not to mention getting a managed SAN basically for free (EBS) and backup/restore, and managed DBs... I'm a pretty good engineer, but I'm not good enough to be an expert at managing racks of hosts, switches, rout…

Except for that one time a new one magically doesn’t reappear… only to find out that the entire region is down. Then you have to explain to the owner that you don’t have multi-region deployments because they didn’t want to pay for it… and you have no idea when it will be back. (based on a true story) At least with more traditional setups, you can have visibility into why/how your entire system is down and can even have a reasonable timeline to get back to running.

Re: Ask HN: Where can we find the unsexy jobs?

#88

Post by bluehatbrit »

aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #80
anonymouse008 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot wanted Facebook for $500. Mind explaining what this means? Did they want content generation for posts? Or did they actually just want someone to post what they had on file? Or did they just want advertising help? My family has small businesses and I've thought about helping others, but the asks seem too all over the place.

They wanted to have a well-cared for FB page for either 500$ upfront or monthly, I'd presume.

I took it to mean "[...] managing expectations is important. A lot of places wanted something the size of facebook but to only pay $500."

Re: Ask HN: Where can we find the unsexy jobs?

#90

Post by sealeck »

qwedf wrote: post #31

Industries that actually run the world and won't be disrupted by whatever VC-funded "Uber of X" whose business model is ultimately a Ponzi scheme. Think banking, engineering firms like Schneider/ABB, tools that are actually used in hospitals, etc. Look for major industry players that provide the backbone of basic infrastructure that you probably never heard of because they're too busy growing at a clip of 2% per year…

Not sure that financial services (banks) are less likely to be perpetrating a Ponzi scheme than Uber, etc.
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