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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?

#31

Post by sklogic »

sanderjd wrote: post #30
sklogic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I have to admit that I did not do any web development, but I have a pretty good idea of what kind of complexity and challenges it does involve. I also know about it from interaction with the frontend developers themselves and from toying around it.

I know what kind of tools are available, I know how dead easy debugging is. There is nothing nearly comparable in complexity with a hardware design.

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

#32

Post by cableshaft »

I'd just suggest looking into something up and coming that interests you, and start learning whatever you can about that.

Industries that will have specific uses for machine-vision: autonomous driving cars, drones, robotics, augmented reality, internet of things

Others: crypto-currencies (specifically digital ledgers/blockchains), virtual reality, commercial space exploration, online education, voice recognition, (more as I think of them)

Tech that's already big and probably getting bigger: streaming video, instant stock trading based on algorithms,

Certainly one of those must be interesting to you. They're all pretty interesting to me.

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

#33

Post by lafay »

The technology to cost-effectively store massive amounts of raw metrics / data and quickly derive insight from it is still a relatively recent development, and so far we've seen turn-key tools to leverage that in just a few areas:

1. Where developers themselves are the likely product users (think Google Analytics, New Relic, Optimizely, Appdynamics)

2. Where there is a direct and immediate connection to $$$ (finance / quant stuff)

3. Generic data science platforms (Cloudera, Hortonworks, Databricks)

I think there is still tons of opportunity for industry-specific turn-key data science tools. Especially for verticals where there is a low coincidence of skilled developers with industry domain expertise.

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

#34

Post by HFTGuru »

If you are interested in huge bonuses up to 400k-1M a year for being a developer, then I suggest to you high frequency trading development. The problem is you'll have to move close to an exchange, but the finance industry rewards you handsomely and takes care of it's employees.

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

#35

Post by olalonde »

sklogic wrote: post #11
lmm wrote: 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.

You state this as if the answer was obvious... I recently switched back to front end development after months of developing a Bitcoin node from scratch as well as a custom BitTorrent server. I'd say among those three, modern front end is what I find most complex. The amount of technologies, protocols, tools and leaky abstractions to know about is just staggering and by the time you finally caught up, you are already behind.

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

#36

Post by lmm »

sklogic wrote: post #11
lmm wrote: 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.

Even then I'd say there's not a lot of difference - you naturally adjust your defect rate to what you're working on (even within a single codebase). I mean sure, when doing something like CPU design it's easy to feel like you're not using your full intellectual capacity the way you would in web frontend development, but you just need to step it up a level - the safety requirements justify putting a fair amount of time and effort into techniques like automatically generated testcases, maybe even formal methods.

One thing that can be harder to overcome is being trapped by processes that you're not allowed to change (and the kind of institutions that make CPUs are particularly prone to that kind of failure, IME). But even then, it just becomes a case of adding as much value as you can within those restrictions, and that can be fulfilling in its own way. But yeah, some organizations (in any industry) are really badly managed and if you can't live with that then your only recourse is to leave.

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

#37

Post by sklogic »

olalonde wrote: post #35
sklogic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You state this as if the answer was obvious... I recently switched back to front end development after months of developing a Bitcoin node from scratch as well as a custom BitTorrent server. I'd say among those three, modern front end is what I find most complex. The amount of technologies, protocols, tools and leaky abstractions to know about is just staggering and by the time you finally caught up, you are already…

Of course, if you're doing things the wrong way, you can create any amount of complexity out of nothing. I'm not considering this case. Why would anyone care about the amount of "technologies, protocols, tools and leaky abstractions" when the smart thing to do is to avoid them altogether and just pick the lowest common denominator?

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

#38

Post by sklogic »

lmm wrote: post #36
sklogic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Even then I'd say there's not a lot of difference - you naturally adjust your defect rate to what you're working on (even within a single codebase). I mean sure, when doing something like CPU design it's easy to feel like you're not using your full intellectual capacity the way you would in web frontend development, but you just need to step it up a level - the safety requirements justify putting a fair amount of tim…

Well, formal verification is exactly what I find the most intellectually challenging and enjoyable. There is no way you can apply any advanced math in something like frontend development, and you're very unlikely to be able to do anything anywhere near any formal methods outside of the hardware design.

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

#39

Post by jmagoon »

sklogic wrote: post #37
olalonde wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You state this as if the answer was obvious... I recently switched back to front end development after months of developing a Bitcoin node from scratch as well as a custom BitTorrent server. I'd say among those three, modern front end is what I find most complex. The amount of technologies, protocols, tools and leaky abstractions to know about is just staggering and by the time you finally caught up, you are already…

Of course, if you're doing things the wrong way, you can create any amount of complexity out of nothing. I'm not considering this case. Why would anyone care about the amount of "technologies, protocols, tools and leaky abstractions" when the smart thing to do is to avoid them altogether and just pick the lowest common denominator?

And what would that be for web development? Or are you just saying "don't develop for the web"?

I've seen people who are great at diving deeply into a narrow field struggle greatly with the broad, changing knowledge needed for web dev, especially at scale. It's not clear to me that one is intellectually more challenging than the other. They often seem like different types of intelligence.

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

#40

Post by al2o3cr »

IMO your question isn't really answerable: you've listed tools and techniques you enjoy but "sectors" in the industry are primarily about producing results using those. A similar realspace question would be, "I really enjoy building cantilevers and arches. What city should I look for construction work in?"

My personal recommendation would be to find people who are doing interesting things and talking about it in public - blog posts, conference talks, etc etc and reach out to them.

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