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Ask HN: Which industry sector should I target?

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Re: Ask HN: Which industry sector should I target?

#21
Best of luck to you, I am not in the industry and cannot recommend from that perspective.

As a consumer though, augmented reality ( eg Hololens and Magic Leap) seems like it is about to become very big, and probably utilizes machine vision.

Can you recommend some resources for learning about web scraping?

Re: Ask HN: Which industry sector should I target?

#22
post #10

If you like web-scraping, and you're not an idiot, you immediately have an information advantage for anything you decide to do. Do not underestimate this advantage. I would suggest you leverage your interest in web-scraping and use it to customers in what ever niche you believe you can sell them something. Collect your "beta" users through web-scraping, figure out a way to reach them at scale. Build/sell a product th…

Can you provide an example or two of a project that involved web scraping? (without divulging client info) I can see how it could be used for price scraping in web retail, but am drawing a blank in other industries.

Address parsing from a large web corpus https://github.com/openvenues/libpostal The author uses http://commoncrawl.org/ data, 250TB/3.6b URL and a 100 machine cluster of 8-core machines.

Re: Ask HN: Which industry sector should I target?

#23
post #4

What do you want to optimise around? Stable job, 9-17, decent salary? Lost of money, caution to the wind? Be something [for one or more of several values of 'something'] to a lot of people? Fiddle with deeply intellectual CS problems, shielded from pedestrian worries about revenue and users? I personally enjoy the knowledge of having solved a real (business) problem for real people, and being appreciated both financi…

I also enjoy this, but not for my current employer (for several reasons I don't feel like going into). How do you do it, as a consultant or as a 9-5 job? Any advice on getting started as someone who graduated 2014?

I do it as an employee of a company, but it's a pretty sweet fit for consultants/freelancers (I used to be one).

I don't have any particular advice, beyond the generic stuff: You'll need a network of people who might (know someone who might) want to pay you to help them achieve business outcomes. Remember that you're selling business results, make sure every line on your invoice is part of a narrative that makes (or reduces risk of losing) money for the business.

Re: Ask HN: Which industry sector should I target?

#25
post #20

Which one are you talking about: Damn Small Linux, a very small Linux distribution Definitive software library Domain-specific language, a computer language designed for a specific problem domain

DSL= Domain Specific Languages

sorry I left the non-technical terms in there I didn't mean to piss everybody off. Thanks for answering.

Re: Ask HN: Which industry sector should I target?

#27

Have a look at the legal industry. There are quite a few legal tech startups by now. Even web-scraping applications are rare in legal. The sector is famous for being profitable (high margins), rusty and inefficient.

Having worked at a fintech startup specializing in decision systems for regulatory compliance, I second this. There are interesting theoretical aspects stemming from the fact that domain is very tricky to model. * There is considerable structural sharing inside finance regulations, but it is not hierarchical * Regulations may be changed at any time, and these changes may be future-dated or back-dated * Users insist o…

That's interesting, may I ask which startup is that? Is it still alive?

Re: Ask HN: Which industry sector should I target?

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked at a fintech startup specializing in decision systems for regulatory compliance, I second this. There are interesting theoretical aspects stemming from the fact that domain is very tricky to model. * There is considerable structural sharing inside finance regulations, but it is not hierarchical * Regulations may be changed at any time, and these changes may be future-dated or back-dated * Users insist o…

That's interesting, may I ask which startup is that? Is it still alive?

Still alive, last I heard!

Droit Financial Technologies http://www.droitfintech.com

Re: Ask HN: Which industry sector should I target?

#30
post #11
post #7

I've worked 5-6 programming jobs in 5-6 different industries. Honestly the job is pretty similar in any industry. I'd recommend working for whoever pays best and/or a team you get on with.

YMMV. A cognitive load and inherent complexity can vary dramatically between industries. Compare web frontend development with, say, a mission critical CPU design.

I'm always curious when I see comments like this: have you done both things professionally at scale, or are you guessing based on how things seem to you from the outside?
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