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Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

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Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#101

Post by Loughla »

psim1 wrote: post #82

> Everything is crypto "web 3" bubble, fintech, or recruiters being very vague about "unicorn" startups Everything? No, you're looking in the shiny techy places. Counterintuitively, interesting tech jobs are found in boring, established sectors. Get on the boring, common sites like LinkedIn and Indeed. Consider healthcare, automotive (not Tesla, but Ford), or even higher ed. If you want interesting, and not just a bi…

So I have experience in higher education (for decades), as a consumer of technology, as well as the key player in implementation of software for campuses: This is a field with many opportunities for technology growth, but there are two problems.

1. Many of the ed tech "solutions" are just pretty packaging on the same three services (scheduling, generic student/institution information databases, student tracking). There is very, very, very little actual innovation in this space. One or two exceptions to this rule are in the accessibility realm, and are genuinely interesting, but are mostly just knock-offs of each other with little real innovation in the last three to five years.

2. There is a butt-load of inertia behind the big players, and higher ed institutions are notoriously difficult to convince to change anything, let alone their core infrastructure. This is probably the largest opportunity, but the hardest to get into. The companies that run databases for institutions are massive, and ingrained into the culture at most places. But they're also incredibly un-user friendly, and are massively expensive.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#102

Post by chasd00 »

OrangeMonkey wrote: post #14
rethab wrote: post #9

> I've also found that interviews don't tell you much about reality. Always ask to see code and talk to engineers about what their days look like. I believe there are very few legitimate reasons they won't show you their code, but more likely if they're refusing, it's because they're hiding something. When talking to an engineer, ask them how their code goes from idea to production and have it explained in detail . T…

I'm sure it depends on industry, but in my industry there is no way showing someone code during an interview would fly. Zero chance. A programmer who decided on their own to show our code to someone without nda and a confidentiality agreement would be at best severely chastised and no longer trusted with anything important or dismissed. But, your mileage may vary - every place is different.

Yeah at my firm an interviewer getting access to and sharing code would go further than dismissal and result in unlocking the cages of the attack lawyers. They may or may not be turned loose but that’s def a DEFCON 2 event.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#103

Post by mcv »

roenxi wrote: post #42
mcv wrote: post #8

The weird irony of our society seems to be that the most useless jobs pay the most, while the most essential jobs pay the least. A lot of important work is being done by volunteers and charity organisations. The best paying jobs are often parasitic. Like stock manipulation.

Stock manipulation isn't really a "well paying job" though. The person making money isn't drawing a salary. The key insight that explains the situation is that we pay based on how easy it is to replace someone. If you are doing a critical job that everyone can do (like cooking) then it is unlikely to pay well. There has been little success by systems that pay people based on how important their job is.

We also pay people based on how much power they have. People with lots of power and influence have more pull to ensure better pay for themselves. That power may come from being hard to replace, but it can also come from other things. Even bad CEOs that run their company into the ground, who really should get replaced, still draw significant pay on the way down, and may only be hard to replace because of the power they hold over the company.

But also: people don't get paid based on the value they create for society, but on the value they create for shareholders. So running a company into the ground may actually be short-term profitable for the shareholders if you manage to keep dividend payouts high. Parasitic companies extract value from society and give it to their shareholders. Lots of companies do enormous damage to various aspects of society, but as long as they don't have to pay for that damage, they can still be profitable for their shareholders.

Shareholder value is the biggest curse ever unleashed on/by capitalism.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#104

Post by uVacCXNiiJCTnYB »

kdumont wrote: post #65
uVacCXNiiJCTnYB wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is interesting but what I find hard is getting a foot in the door when changing expertise field. In my case, I'm generally a mix of full stack dev and game dev (specialised in HTML5 game dev). I want to do more systems stuff (particularly Rust), and I've recently created a scripting language with a VM from scratch for a game engine as part of a side project. But I don't have any commercial experience or keywords…

I’m actually hiring for a role that seems to fit what you’re looking for at a small team. There’s a significant graphical component (so game dev sounds relevant), it’s primarily in Rust, and the front-end is Vue! And I think it’s in an interesting space, but that’s also why I started this company :) Role details here: https://allspice.notion.site/Backend-Engineer-Data-Structure... Feel free to send me an email if you…

It does seem interesting, I've wanted to get more into electronics since I played with HDL when following the nand 2 tetris book. Though I'm not super experienced in low level or Rust yet (which is why I want to get into it) and I'm in the UK, not US

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#105

Post by taude »

giaour wrote: post #70
neilv wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recall hearing of (non-opensource) proprietary code being shown in an interview. Is that common in some circles? In a startup, I think I'd have to get an NDA from everyone, even if the code was mindless bulk glue code -- if only to avoid having to later mention that practice to investors who are checking our IP diligence. Would the following alternative work for you? In a great engineering environment, people…

This may happen more at large companies than at startups, but having interviewees sign NDAs is normal, isn’t it?

I've signed NDAs for almost all large company I've interviewed at. But for most smaller startups, haven't had this requirement, as the interviews are more casual conversations. (Also, Boston area.)

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#106

Post by Unbeliever69 »

Startups perhaps? I look at my startup. Complete greenfield project. Never been done before. Industry disruptor. No ceiling for the growth potential of our product. Developers engage the full stack. Never boring. Fully remote.

What do we make? CADless vertical CAD software (web app) for the construction industry.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#107

Post by dan-g »

gniv wrote: post #78

Sometimes you can get lucky and land an interesting job, but I think getting to do interesting work takes time (and luck). An anecdote from my past as an illustration: When I started my job at [FAANG] I was assigned a project. It was not mind-numbing, but not sexy either -- modernize the infrastructure while not messing up the site. Being new, I gave it my all and was rewarded a couple of years later by having the op…

This resonates with me, and I recently read (yet another) Cal Newport book that helped me codify the feeling into words.

“So Good They Can’t Ignore You” makes a lot of good points, but IMO chief among them is building up career capital that you can use to leverage to work on things you’d rather be doing. In this example, you earned so much capital with the boring project that you were able to spend some to work on something you wanted to—obviously higher-ups don’t want to lose a good worker.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#108

Post by slothtrop »

pc86 wrote: post #60
gampleman wrote: post #24

First, you need to actually value interesting work in relation to other job values (like compensation, good working hours, low stress, making a difference, family friendliness, good management and many others). Generally these will be a tradeoff, but you might find one where the tradeoff suits you. For instance I had a job I really enjoyed at an Earth Observation startup geeking out about maps and space, but the comp…

People really forget the first point. All things being equal, everyone wants to work on something interesting. So almost by definition, when interesting things come along people are more than happy to let the other things drop a bit. Pay will likely be a little low (not always). Hours will almost certainly go up, even if it doesn't feel like it since it's more interesting work. The only one I'd disagree on is managem…

This is my experience. I have an interesting gig with lower-than-average pay. Periodically I'll take a look at other opportunities because the wages are so good, but most of the time the jobs don't sound better. Mind you, I couldn't pin down what might pull me away.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#109

Post by walleeee »

It sounds like you've discovered what you aren't aligned with, but you don't yet know what you do think is interesting or valuable. The first step is answering this question for yourself. What do you care about?

Science perhaps? Pick a field and you can probably find a lab or project in need of research software engineers.

Healthcare? Plenty of work in digital health records, computational drug discovery, or so I've heard.

There is a world of mundane but important work humming along below the turbulence, but it doesn't have the hype or marketing bullshit and isn't as visible. Somebody is writing software to transfer your driver's license when you move to a different state. Someone programs microwaves, somebody else rail scheduling systems, someone else water treatment plants.

If you know what you care about, look for jobs involving it, and pay no mind to web3, fintech, adtech or whatever.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#110

Post by wittycardio »

nurettin wrote: post #11

> Everything is crypto "web 3" bubble, fintech, or recruiters being very vague about "unicorn" startups I work in fintech and it is very interesting to me. I've turned down recruiters from 50 countries since getting this job and I obviously don't care if you think money is the root of all evil or some other weird tree hugger babble. So what is interesting for you ?

Fintech grifters are a lot less intelligent and interesting than tree huggers
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