Ask HN: What has been your most rewarding job or project and why?

Not quite startup or hobby project material, but some of the most gratifying work is making non-critical, easy to implement changes in your business's workflow!

Sometimes users will have minor (or major) issues with the way a tool works - database takes 30 seconds to retrieve a certain type of information, there's no clear path from point A to point B in a frequently used business tool, certain jobs take 2x as long as they should, etc.

These issues don't have much of an impact on management or the bottom line, so they won't be assigned to anyone to fix. But if you spend two hours speeding up that tool or streamlining a frequently used process, the 'work done' to 'that look on their face when you make their life easier' ratio is incredible.

My most rewarding project was as a consultant for a big client that trusted my team completely. It really came down to just that, combined with my team consisting of really, really good people. So we could make any tech choice, work with any equipment and work from remote whenever we wanted. We delivered really good work, but whenever we did miss a deadline the client still believed in us. It was a very inspiring environment.

Contributing to big open source projects like the Linux kernel since one learns a ton of new things from the code every day and it's run everywhere in the world, which is a nice reward that ones contributions can make an impact.

Nonprofits are relatively underserved by tech workers. I've tried to get many of my friends to join me but the allure of bigco paychecks is simply too much. This is a pretty general answer but so's your question :)

I think if you pick a nonprofit with a mission that you feel passionate enough about to really give it your all then there's a good chance for you to quickly become a double-digit percentage of global technical productivity in a particular charitable domain.

For me it's been developing tools (mobile app and website) to help people with substance abuse issues communicate with their loved ones, themselves, and medical professionals.

For me, the satisfaction from a project is approximately 50% process, 25% recognition and 25% cool factor.

Cool factor is just working on cutting edge stuff or with some tech I'm super excited about.

Recognition comes from the community your are doing the project for (team, manager, etc.) recognizing its importance. This typically only happens if you pick projects which solve a business need and communicate that. Preferably lead to higher revenue.

Process is the end to end process of systematic identification of the problem via concrete quantitative metrics, formulating a solution using a scientific process, building the system following sound design principles, etc. It's kind of difficult to concretely define. What it is not is putting out fire after fire everyday.

This is the recipe of successful project I enjoy nowadays.

The recipe changes from person to person and time to time. The way to figure out your recipe is to introspect. Cut out the noise of FOMO, hyped tech, etc.

A good article I have read recently about deciding what you want is https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html. This will explain how to introspect in great detail.