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Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?

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Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?

#71

Post by dasmoth »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #6

I have never been happier than I was in grad school (the Space Systems Lab at the University of Maryland). Which might sound surprising, given the pay and work hours... but there's a lot to be said for working with a group of people you love with all your heart, who have your back, in a field you are passionate about and have been since you were a kid. Grad school was incredibly hard work, and the pay sucked. But I w…

Probably PhD work for me, too. It's a slightly different experience in the UK, I think, but did afford me quite a bit of autonomy. Has been hard to match since.

(I get the impression that the trend has been gradually towards more structure and less autonomy in "doctoral programs" -- from my point of view, that's sad).

PS. did you follow Akin's Laws?

Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?

#72

Post by bsvalley »

devmunchies wrote: post #65
bsvalley wrote: post #17

None. Haven't found a company that would meet my standard. And we're talking about class A companies. I should try to start my own company, I think it's the only way to get what I want.

The question was "at what company we're you the happiest" and you said "none"? You can be unhappy at ever but you would have still been happier at one over the other.

No, you're ignoring one case scenario - I categorize all my previous employers at the exact same level. Same experiences, same problems.

Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?

#74

Post by enf »

multimedial wrote: post #68
enf wrote: post #31

Danger, Inc. Good people, making an important thing (the Sidekick), under hardware constraints that were neither too limiting nor too generous.

German user here, I loved my Hiptop/Sidekick phones! IPhone functionality way before Apple got it! Loved also the skiing game easter egg. Had the first and second phone, was crazy in love with them. Still have them in a box somewhere, was thinking about resuscitating them for hipster purposes. Seriously, I loved these phones, one of my best gadgets I ever had. Unbreakable, full of functionality, clever design... i ha…

Steve Wozniak was on the board of directors, so we met him once at an all-hands meeting. (The other major celebrity appearance was from Thomas Dolby, who was involved with the Beatnik Audio Engine that we used for sound.)

The SnowBored easter egg was the subject of some internal controversy because it wasn't part of the standard QA testing process. There were initially some bugs in invoking it from localized keyboards where the asterisk wasn't on the 8 key.

The company was bought by Microsoft, and the Kin was the ill-fated result. Many of us went to Google and made Android; others went to Apple and made the iPhone; still others went to Palm and made the Pre.

Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?

#75

Post by halfnibble »

4DK. A cool startup later acquired by Radius Networks. That's where I got the "bug" for coding. It was sometimes stressful and occasionally caused a great deal of anxiety. But everyday, I felt challenged and engaged to the max. Plus, I loved flying out to Chicago to meet the rest of our small dev team and drink beers. It was more about camaraderie than anything else. It was just us, 5 developers and a UX director, against the world. People were trusting me with their livelihoods. And I still feel honored to have been a part of the 4DK team.

Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?

#76

Post by byoung2 »

RepressedEmu wrote: post #62
byoung2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company is Surge, LLC ( https://www.surgeforward.com ), and they offer developers for hire. It is 1099 contract work with at least 40 hours a week guaranteed.

Just curious, what tech stack do you use?

You get matched to projects based on skill set. I only advertised myself as PHP and Node, so that's what I've been assigned to (75% node/angular/mysql, 25% PHP/angular/mysql).

Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?

#77

Post by byoung2 »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #56
byoung2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference, I live in the suburbs of Los Angeles so prices are lower than in the Bay area. I make $200k and my wife makes $100k working part time as a registered nurse. Flexible schedules mean we can spend lots of time with our daughter and travel quite a bit.

You make 200k as a developer?

Senior developer with experience as a former director of engineering, but yeah, $199k last year, tracking for $205k this year.

Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?

#78

Post by byoung2 »

marcofiset wrote: post #61
byoung2 wrote: post #2

My current company, because it's 100% remote and I can work on my own schedule.

I'm happy for you. I tried remote work for 2 years and now I'm happily going back to working in an office next Monday. Can't bear the loneliness anymore. I don't have much of a social life to begin with, so I really need some actual human face-to-face interaction in my job.

I'm at year 2 and I don't see myself going back to an office. It is nice getting out of the house, but I never want to commute again (read: Los Angeles traffic) and I don't like people expecting me to be in a certain place at a certain time.

Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?

#79

Post by cmoney »

bsvalley wrote: post #72
devmunchies wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question was "at what company we're you the happiest" and you said "none"? You can be unhappy at ever but you would have still been happier at one over the other.

No, you're ignoring one case scenario - I categorize all my previous employers at the exact same level. Same experiences, same problems.

By this logic you were "happiest" at all previous employers :) "None" implies that happiness levels (positive or negative) did not exist.

Re: Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why?

#80

Post by muzani »

My first job as a junior. I worked with really smart coworkers. I got to build things that were used, and things that made money.

Most other jobs after that I ended up building things that were never used, or used to get some kind of grant or impress investors, and wasn't even what the user wanted.

A lot of the more senior jobs I get, I end up doing a lot of management and getting little work done. Sometimes when someone else does the hiring, I get complete idiots in my team, the kind who typo variable names, spend 3 days discussing specifications, but don't do them, refuse to use source control.

I would really love to get back into a job where I can just build things that people use, with smart people.

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