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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?

#111

Post by snarf21 »

I specifically looked for areas where I knew the end result would actually help people. In this case, I have a lot of mobile experience and interviewed with a medical company that helps diabetics manage their insulins and communicate with their health care providers. I also took a pay cut specifically because I want to help people. There are more important things than money. If you are willing to take a pay cut, there are tons of opportunities. You could even start a consulting company where you help non-profits with their tech/socials/website. They don't have much money but you would be making a real difference and you get to pick who.

Also, I don't know if they are hiring but look to something like costplusdrugs run by Mark Cuban where he is now selling more and more drugs at the lowest price possible.

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

#112

Post by eatonphil »

I think the most interesting jobs technically are in developer tools or developer infrastructure companies. This includes companies building databases (e.g. Cockroach, Neon.tech), compilers (e.g. JetBrains), CDNs (e.g. Fastly, Cloudflare), hosting (e.g. Digital Ocean).

These companies hire frontend developer, backend developers, core systems developers. You don't have to be a genius or a CS grad. You can always get in doing what you already know and do more of the core stuff over time if you like.

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

#113

Post by astura »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #45
gremlinsinc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people who value specifics about a career or have a passion do it more out of that passion because they know it doesn't come with high pay. Take teaching for example. Also people working for non profit or other socially beneficial companies probably know the company budget goes to help more people not to pad CEO pockets... The lowest rung of essential jobs are the easiest ones to get so those most desperate f…

> I wish we all could just earn the same amount In your society, what is the incentive for someone to clean up diarrhea in a gas station restroom?

People who clean up diarrhea in public bathrooms don't get paid well. I did it a few times at a job where I was making minimum wage.

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

#114

Post by ragebol »

rglullis wrote: post #69
nicoburns wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because taking advantage of market failures is much easier to profit from than producing actual value, and neoliberal political ideologies prevent us from correcting for that with regulation.

Please, feel free to share one single example me of a job you can "produce value" without being out-competed by a machine and/or computer.

I'd value my kids being taught well, me taken care of if I'm in a hospital or old etc. No machine can compete with the human care. Machine can help, but not replace a human.

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

#115

Post by mstipetic »

s5300 wrote: post #57
mstipetic wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tree hugger babble? Aren’t you just confirming the fintech stereotype

Malignant narcissism is a hell of a drug, if that wasn’t already obvious…

Maybe buy now pay later is the big financial innovation of our generation

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

#116

Post by alistairSH »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #41
uVacCXNiiJCTnYB wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory that's true, but in practice the people at the top deciding what's profitable aren't working for maximising public good, so it doesn't work anymore

Who are the people at the top? How do they “decide” revenue minus expenses? Are you claiming there is widespread fraud in SEC filings? If you are referring to many industries becoming controlled by a handful of large organizations, then people working in trading and finance have nothing to do with that. That is in the political arena.

Not the OP, but "the people at the top" fall into a few categories in my mind...

- Career politicians who are more interested in maintaining office than working for the public good.

- Corporate executives who prioritize profit/stock price over the common good. The Sackler family comes to mind.

- Financiers (of various types) who accumulate personal wealth to the detriment of the common good.

It's possible to be a good politician or a good executive and not be "evil", but there are enough notable examples of the worst of both that both careers are somewhat sullied in the public eye. And of course, it's all shades of gray.

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

#117

Post by uVacCXNiiJCTnYB »

robofanatic wrote: post #95
uVacCXNiiJCTnYB wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm building something interesting but it's not something that will make money, because it's an open source tool and open source devs generally don't get paid for their work lol. Outside of that, and outside of the obvious snarkiness, the whole "why don't you make your own job" thing isn't a real solution. Not everyone can be creating companies, otherwise who would be working at those companies? I don't have much sec…

> open source devs generally don't get paid for their work lol. have you seen this https://github.com/sponsors ?

yeah, I'm thinking of enabling it, but what I'm making is a game engine that only has a few users for now and it would be a very very long way to being able to make a living income from game developers sponsoring it.

Maybe eventually it could get to the point where I could do part time freelancing supplemented with github sponsor income, but even that would take a long time.

I suspect outside of a few super-popular repo managers, github sponsorship doesn't bring much income (don't know if there's any public data on that)

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

#118

Post by rglullis »

uVacCXNiiJCTnYB wrote: post #85
rglullis wrote: post #76

Why don't make your own job? If you are so smart, surely you can go ahead and find something interesting to build...

I'm building something interesting but it's not something that will make money, because it's an open source tool and open source devs generally don't get paid for their work lol. Outside of that, and outside of the obvious snarkiness, the whole "why don't you make your own job" thing isn't a real solution. Not everyone can be creating companies, otherwise who would be working at those companies? I don't have much sec…

Plenty of successful, profitable businesses are built on open source.

> Not everyone can be creating companies, otherwise who would be working at those companies?

Those who are not arrogant enough to think they are above the position. Those who tried running their own companies, got humbled by their failure and learned the hard way that perhaps any "uninterested" job is enough. Those who are find meaning in their lives from something else than their daily job.

But the worst group, and the majority of them: those who keep complaining about their jobs but are too afraid to take control of their own lives. These are the ones who keep making excuses like "I don't have much security net (sic) in my life" and "there is nothing interesting that would have revenue at the moment"

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

#119

Post by jimhi »

s5300 wrote: post #50
lotsofpulp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish we all could just earn the same amount In your society, what is the incentive for someone to clean up diarrhea in a gas station restroom?

Said society has fairly simply automated self-cleaning restrooms. It’s really not that hard, or expensive.

I looked up self cleaning restrooms and how to purchase. They are extremely expensive 300,000-500,000 USD and break constantly due to vandalism.

They appear to be very hard and very expensive in practice.

You may be thinking of self cleaning toilets which are not relevant to this discussion.

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

#120

Post by AshamedCaptain »

BoumTAC wrote: post #96
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "something"? I am in France and if an candidate does not ask me "something" at all it is usually a big red flag.

By "something", I mean something different in the process like in the comment. If you ask to talk to developer or see some code, or meet the team for a day, you will never have a positive answer. Recruiter will say it's not possible and disqualify you.

Wait, an actual developer/engineer is not conducting the interview ?

To see some code is definitely out of the question, though. But asking about the development process et all I find to be the type of mandatory questions I would ask as a candidate (and expect to be asked as an interviewer) even if I already knew the answer, just because not doing it would be strange.

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