Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

You could work for a police department doing tech work for them. You could work at a sewer district helping them out with calculating flows on computers or whatever. You could work at a hospital doing some kind of tech thing. You could move to Alaska and work for their State Parks calculating the movement of tagged bears. You could go to a university health school and see if develop measuring programs, like maybe some professor wants to measure and weigh poop for some reason, you could create a poop measuring app.

I don't know, man. What is interesting to you? How would any one know?

The utter reality is there is no such thing as a interesting job. That's the long and short of it. Almost any job, generally speaking, is interesting for the first year or two. Then it is just a drudge job, with the same people, having the same conversations day after day, doing the same thing. No matter what it is, not just technology. Accounting, janitorial work, truck driver, lumberjack....it all gets boring, if you're that type of person.

Me...I usually like every job. I worked at a factory job that consisted of taking a stack of 100 cups and putting them into a box - about 12 stacks in a box. I did that every day, I was a machine, doing the same exact movements all day. I really dug it, it was so zen. Hypnotized me for 12 hours (I worked 12 hour days - 3 days on, 2 off, 4 on...that kind of deal). I love working retail, which I know people hate, but I love it. I loved working at McDonalds for my first job ever. That was the best job I ever had. I liked working as a programmer. I liked pretty much everything.

It kind of reminds me of a story. A man was driving down the road from one town to another, was moving to the second town. He was driving and saw a farmer working in the field on his fence, so he stopped and asked the farmer what were the next town's people like as he was moving there. The farmer asked him what the last town's people were like, and the man said that they were horrible. The farmer said that the next town's people were horrible, too.

Later that day, it so happened that another* man was driving down that same road and stopped to talk to the same exact farmer. The man asked the farmer what were the next town's people like as he was moving there. The farmer asked him what the last town's people were like, and the man said that they were great people. The farmer said that the next town's people were great people, too.

So...the moral of the story is that all jobs are great, or all jobs are boring. Just depends on you.

i worked in audio, hifi streamers, synth keyboards, etc, you get HW to play with and these companies can be so small you get to do different things once in a while

Speaking from Australia, I'd probably command enormous respect if I taught some kid programming. Compared to the median wage I'd be roughly doubling their earning power & I could get them a good desk job if they are smart-ish and try hard.

However, I'm legally barred from becoming a "teacher" because I don't have a masters degree in education.

This is probably the heart of why they don't command respect like they used to - it used to be that people worthy of respect became teachers. Now people worthy of respect become some other profession and aren't allowed to teach their high-value skills without jumping through hoops.