Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Where can we find the unsexy jobs?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 224 posts

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

#191

Post by RyanGoosling »

seanw444 wrote: post #127
bmj wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small-scale manufacturing is another good spot. I spent some years doing consulting work with a steel processing company. "Boring" tech, but interesting problems to be solved.

This is it. Currently at a local manufacturing company, and their in-house software runs mostly open-source stuff. No major proprietary headache to deal with, it's not a tech company so I'm not dealing with the obnoxious meetings and calls; and since the software I maintain is internal, I don't have to deal with angry customers. Coworkers let me know if something needs to be better, and I make it so. Simple. I would…

Thanks for the advice. I had an internship at medium-sized manufacturer in California, above SF a bit. Was really cool to be next to a bunch of CNC machines while writing some code. I think I’ll try to find that vibe again sometime.

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

#192

Post by tinco »

Melatonic wrote: post #171
tinco wrote: post #57

You've got the wrong impression of what is "boring" tech. A setup out of a rack in a rando datacenter isn't boring, it's frustrating. Saying doing things the old way is boring, is like saying sending your wife out to carry water from the well in a jar on her head is boring. We've got running water now, that has nothing to do with double-digit YOY growth, it has to do with actually reliably and comfortably deploying a…

Who says you can't use Kubernetes and all of your running water tech running your own hardware? Plenty of places do it. Sounds like you just have worked at places who sucked at updating, maintaining, and setting up their own hardware unfortunately. Which I agree can be a huge pain in the ass if done incorrectly.

Jup! We run Kubernetes in our own little on premise two racks as well. We use microk8s it was really easy to set up.

Jup I've only worked at startups the past decade and never had a mature system administration team so yeah learning the ropes was rough.

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

#195

Post by apohn »

badthingfactory wrote: post #170
the_only_law wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair warning, many non-tech F500 may be less of “places running their setup out of a rack in a rando datacenter grandfathered into an affordable Edgecast plan running a LAMP stack on Debian using borg for backups?” And more of “places running near archaic .NET/JVM versions that somehow manage to combine bureaucracy with lack of organization”.

The non-tech F500 I worked at several years ago is doing everything they can to abandon .NET/Java in favor of low-code tools. Their engineers are jumping ship and they're having a hard time finding replacements.

>in favor of low-code tools. Their engineers are jumping ship and they're having a hard time finding replacements.

I have a friend who works for a major low-code software company. They're doing quite well financially because of all the excitement around low-code. The product is good if you stay within the boundaries of what it can do. Some managers people think they can replace their enterprise Tableau/Spotfire/PowerBI license with low-code and they get bitten very badly.

Finding engineers for a low-code environment is a challenge. You need to understand software development well enough that you can build something because loops, conditional statements, all of those concepts are there. You also need to find somebody who is willing to possibly lock their career into a single tool and forgo the benefits of knowing a general purpose language like C#, Python, etc.

Some companies have success with finding technically minded business people or IT folks who don't enjoy coding and training them. They can thrive and build some nice apps. Lots of folks can't make the leap and fail. Software Engineers are probably the worst bunch to try an convince because the opportunity cost is too high.

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

#196

Post by zikduruqe »

RyanGoosling wrote: post #191
seanw444 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is it. Currently at a local manufacturing company, and their in-house software runs mostly open-source stuff. No major proprietary headache to deal with, it's not a tech company so I'm not dealing with the obnoxious meetings and calls; and since the software I maintain is internal, I don't have to deal with angry customers. Coworkers let me know if something needs to be better, and I make it so. Simple. I would…

Thanks for the advice. I had an internship at medium-sized manufacturer in California, above SF a bit. Was really cool to be next to a bunch of CNC machines while writing some code. I think I’ll try to find that vibe again sometime.

How close to Sebastopol?

I went to visit out there and kinda dig the area.

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

#197

Post by zikduruqe »

m348e912 wrote: post #152
froggertoaster wrote: post #81

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 rugpu…

Unlimited PTO to me would only be interesting to me if you had a policy stating the minimum number of days/hours you must take a year. Reminders are nice and all but (written) policy is better.

Unlimited PTO is an expense savings measure so that HR doesn't have to pay out your unused sick time or vacation time when you leave the company.

It sounds good on paper, but it benefits the company, not you.

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

#198

Post by laughingpine »

badthingfactory wrote: post #170
the_only_law wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair warning, many non-tech F500 may be less of “places running their setup out of a rack in a rando datacenter grandfathered into an affordable Edgecast plan running a LAMP stack on Debian using borg for backups?” And more of “places running near archaic .NET/JVM versions that somehow manage to combine bureaucracy with lack of organization”.

The non-tech F500 I worked at several years ago is doing everything they can to abandon .NET/Java in favor of low-code tools. Their engineers are jumping ship and they're having a hard time finding replacements.

This is the direction my current employer is headed. I was sent on a week long course to evaluate the viability of PowerApps. While there is certainly some cool stuff in there, it just doesn't feel like we should be moving all our development there wholesale. There is certainly a time and place, or at least that is how it seems to me.

Business / money making / crucial systems? No. Some random HR survey application? Maybe. Sadly Microsoft seems to have convinced a number of folks in our organization that this tool set is appropriate for all our development.

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

#199

Post by froggertoaster »

zikduruqe wrote: post #197
m348e912 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlimited PTO to me would only be interesting to me if you had a policy stating the minimum number of days/hours you must take a year. Reminders are nice and all but (written) policy is better.

Unlimited PTO is an expense savings measure so that HR doesn't have to pay out your unused sick time or vacation time when you leave the company. It sounds good on paper, but it benefits the company, not you.

None of the employees I have in the states they work in require me to pay out accrued vacation/sick time by law, so your point is moot because I wouldn't offer such a benefit anyways. That said, your cynicism is noted.

EDIT: my employees work across 4 states.

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

#200

Post by brimble »

anonymouse008 wrote: post #73
nolroz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked for a small web agency, I loved the fact that when you did a website for someone, you'd be introduced to their entire business model and everything within. It was a great opportunity to help them optimize all the things if they were willing. It lead to doing a lot of add on work like spreadsheet-> program work, physical network setup, ads, logos, kiosk applications, Christmas tree databases, etc... I lo…

> 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.

Sometimes a customer suggests one little feature for the site and you have to gently point them to the entire business employing 25 people that just does that one feature as an entire program/service on its own, so no, they won't be getting it as some little easy and cheap thing in one sprint, and probably won't be getting it at all, on their budget.

Other times, yeah, they want some crazy machine learning driven whatever with bells and whistles and social and apps on every major platform and blah blah blah and don't get why that will take at a bare minimum dozens of very talented and expensive people, and probably multiple years, to achieve. Which is the "Facebook for $500" thing.

Post reply on HN