Ask HN: What do you do?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6030596

by rlu • 13 years ago

18 36 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Clearly we all like technology given that we browse this site. But I'm curious as to what we all actually do for a living. Do you like it?

And, if your career isn't technology focused, how did you find out about HN?

agibsonccc2• 13 years ago

Web/data mining freelancing. Working on bootstrapping a scraping/data transformation product leveraging a text analysis platform I built.

Overall, I can say I wouldn't be doing if I didn't like it. There's something empowering about throwing mass input at a computer and having it auto extract things you want to know in milliseconds (not talking about just search either!).

jmsbrwr2• 13 years ago

How did you pick your specialty? I've toyed with the idea of freelancing, but I have no idea what my niche would be. I don't have any professional experience, so I suppose that makes the decision a bit more difficult, but only because it adds so many options.

agibsonccc2• 13 years ago

You'll laugh at the story. 2nd year of college I created a spider for the first time and loved the idea of a computer being autonomous. Took some classes, took it up as a hobby and it became a profession.

Other than that, I asked a lot of questions, read papers in different areas to find what was interesting. (Not necessarily understanding ALL of the math behind it immediately, but enough to get an overview of what the intended functionality was supposed to accomplish.)

It took a long time to get to a level to where I could do it professionally, so I started out with a web dev background, went through an incubator to learn how a business works and started taking more specialized work. Lots of it was in distributed messaging/finance and I went from there.

My best advice is to experiment with different areas. I'm not talking about your typical socket.io/long polling app written in node either.

Don't be afraid to step outside your comfort zone. Computer vision or even graphics programming with Web GL aren't so hard you can never do them if you just step enough in to an area such that you get a feeling for whether you enjoy it or not.

I might add that what you enjoy might not be super complex, but I would say take time to understand different areas (it might be making CRUD apps for a certain industry) enough to understand what work would be like in the field and work from there.

jfb• 13 years ago

I build video processing and streaming systems, currently back at Apple. And while it can present singularly frustrating problems, it's also really cool. I love it.

bartonfink• 13 years ago

Hope everything went well with your surgery and your recovery is speedy. I found HN because Slashdot changed their UI one too many times and programming.reddit didn't offer very high quality discussion.

I work as a software developer, mostly doing web apps (currently in RoR and node). In the past, I worked on simulations of vehicular networks in grad school. I found that far more interesting than web development, but only because of the problem domain and not necessarily because of the work itself. There's very little sense of "pushing the envelope" in most web development, and while the simulations I was writing and running weren't exactly doing that either, I had more sense that I was actually producing something than I get by burning through code to resell flights and hotel bookings.

I enjoy software development, but I feel conflicted about it at times. I used to be a professional landscaper, and I found my life much more intellectually fulfilling then when I compare it to now. There's something to be said for a job which only requires bodily presence but leaves your mind free to do whatever you want, and I really enjoyed that. I did not, however, enjoy working for subsistence level wages under constant threats of being replaced by immigrant labor - noone wants to work in an environment where they're treated as if $7 an hour is an outrageous wage.

eddyparkinson• 13 years ago

Been programming since I was 13, a hobby that became my Job. Yes, love software.

davyjones2• 13 years ago

I work for a supermarket in Japan...doing some IT grunt work + db admin + CRUD apps. Itching to try out new things...preferably remote.

Trying to get pgxplorer.com off the ground as a side project to "vacation" profitability.

AndrewLuke2• 13 years ago

I was actually looking for something like that today. Looks very good. Will try it out.

davyjones2• 13 years ago

I shall be adding some killer features tonight (JST): grouping, windowing AND pivoting from inside Tables with a couple of clicks on average.

Please raise issues and let me know if you face anything. Glad to iron it out.

ishbits2• 13 years ago

I sniff packets and write analytic/metric applications on the data, as well as protocol analysis.

iSloth2• 13 years ago

Cool, I assume for some kind of network analyser?

What software stack do you use?

ishbits2• 13 years ago

C, custom drivers.

For storage, PostgreSQL and some custom stuff, also playing with Cassandra. If a web interface is required, SpringMVC - it's not cool but works.

mdturnerphys• 13 years ago

I'm a PhD student in experimental physics, working in a group that does precision tests of gravity and possible new forces. I like it, but I'm also hoping to graduate soon. I've decided that I like designing and prototyping hardware, so I'm looking for an industry job in R&D.

I found out about HN from an office mate, who probably heard about it from a former research prof at our lab who co-founded a YC startup.

mindcrime• 13 years ago

I basically have two jobs:

1. I work part-time as a consultant for a company in Durham, NC named Open Software Integrators. There I do things ranging from working on greenfield, custom-code-from-scratch projects, to architectural consulting, to training, to performance tuning, to writing articles and blog posts, to mentoring / training junior employees. As a company, we focus on open source enterprise engagements, mainly focused around the open source Java ecosystem: JBoss, Tomcat, Activiti, Hadoop, and other technologies of that general nature.

2. I am one of two founders of an Open Source Enterprise Software startup called Fogbeam Labs. We develop OSS products for the enterprise, with a focus on tools that foster the application of collective intelligence, and support better and faster collaboration, problem solving, decision making and knowledge transfer. The product we are most focused on right now is an Enterprise Social Network named Quoddy. Quoddy brings together aspects of Social Networking, BPM, Machine Learning. and the Semantic Web to that end. Over time we plan to offer products in several areas, including Enterprise Search, BPM, "Big Data", Business Intelligence / analytics, SOA / integration, etc., where everything fits into our vision of IT as a means to enhance the collective intelligence of the organization.

As the original founder, and one of only three people working on the project (counting an intern) I do a bit of everything: writing code, developing product vision, writing marketing copy for the website, sales, customer development, strategy, market research, you name it.

AndrewLuke2• 13 years ago

I own and run http://andrewluke.net, a software/hardware development firm. In there I mostly program all day, but do take time to talk to clients. Love it.

dome82• 13 years ago

I am a programmer in Norway for a company making a digital asset management software. It is very interesting and challenging. Before that, I was a coder in both healthcare and e-learning.

I love what I do every day!

japhyr• 13 years ago

I'm a high school math and science teacher, in a small alternative school. I teach an intro programming class each year, which I am slowly starting to integrate into core classes.

I also want to apply what I know to long-standing problems in education. I want to bring core concepts of programming workflow, such as forking, into education. I am currently working on a project called Open Competencies, which allows:

- schools to develop and maintain their own bodies of learning standards;

- new schools to fork another school's competency system, in a matter of minutes;

- schools to define different "pathways" through the curriculum.

Demo project: http://opencompetencies.herokuapp.com

Code: http://github.com/openlearningtools/opencompetencies

thisisdallas• 13 years ago

I'm a high school math and science teacher
I teach an intro programming class each year

God bless you.

lifeisstillgood2• 13 years ago

transitioning from coding to running a business of coding.

Have never done anything as cool as every other commenter here - wondering what I have done with my life :-)

meadhikari• 13 years ago

>>transitioning from coding to running a business of coding.

You understand many people dream of what you are doing right?

lifeisstillgood2• 13 years ago

http://www.mikadosoftware.com/bizplan/busplan

This is still rough draft, but I am publishing anyway.

Let me know your thoughts

Casseres• 13 years ago

Merchant Mariner.

I'm just glad the ship I'm currently on has a good satellite Internet connection. I don't remember how I found out about HN.

Peroni• 13 years ago

I'm the Tech Recruitment Manager for a large social networking company and I run hackerjobs.co.uk as a side project. I also organise HN London in my limited free time.

dreamdu5t• 13 years ago

Lead web engineer at a startup. Love it.

gadders• 13 years ago

I'm a contract IT Project Manager, mostly working for banks. I found out about HN when Michael Arrington covered it on TechCrunch the first time.

Do I like what I do for a living? It has it's crap moments but I'd say it gives me a certain amount of satisfaction. I like the variety, and the fact that there is a tangible change that's evident after I complete my efforts. I'm not running a line function that is the same day after day.

However, if I ever win the lottery you wouldn't see me for dust...

tylermac1• 13 years ago

Undergrad in CS at a midwest public university. Currently a Software Dev intern at a rapid-prototyping company in the Twin Cities area, working on in-house 3D modeling software.

I'm only a few years into programming but I love every minute of it. I'll be graduating this spring and am very excited to start searching for jobs.

pathy• 13 years ago

I am currently a master student at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam studying "Information & Knowledge Management" which is a business administration specialization. Currrently finishing up my master thesis on ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system implementations. I am studying the relativity of implementation success, simply put: The success of an enterprise system (ES) depends on who you talk to, and when you talk to them. Consider the high failure rate (complete or partial) of large scale ES implementations it is a very important topic to research. Not to mention that these are usually very expensive and require massive business process reengineering. I should hopefully finish in a month or two.

Once that is done, I am returning to my native Stockholm, Sweden to find a job. Hopefully it will be something interesting haha. Time will tell, thesis takes priority over finding a job at the moment.

makerops• 13 years ago

I am working on http://makerops.com, part time with the hope of it replacing my 9-5 income (along with consulting); the 9-5 has slowed progress though, which entails writing a ton or ruby (puppet), and managing critical infrastructure systems.

terrykohla• 13 years ago

Mechanical/Aerospace Engineer. Not very challenged at work and fascinated with what some people on this site are doing.

While reading news articles I usually google whatever I wanna know more about, that's how I stumbled upon HN and I've been a regular reader since.

stakent• 13 years ago

I do industrial maintenance management for a living. I make sure the machines work as intended, media flow trough pipes and wires from small to rather big ones. I lead several people, do some office work, look for some more or less obscure spare parts.

In my spare time I look for methods to make work easier for people like me and sell these methods as a product or a service.

I found about HN on Jeff Atwood's Coding Horror.

centdev• 13 years ago

I'm the CTO of a company that I co-founded 13+ years ago that designs and builds mobile and web apps. I'm also the CTO of a digital media publisher handling scaling, infrastructure, tech initiatives to grow the company. And in my spare time I built and launch a number of web sites and apps to address problems I had with other apps.

iSloth2• 13 years ago

Core network technical specialist for a local incumbent telecommunications company; my time is mostly spent managing the multiple (IP/IMS/Mobile/SS7/SDH/DWDM...) networks and integrating new projects into the core infrastructure. Recently also been building some lighter web applications (PHP) for interfacing with the network, so that staff throughout the company can check things without using CLI or complex Java applications supplied by the vendors, saves time for everyone, and makes my job easier :)

Yes I enjoy it, I would much rather be self employed working on my own projects, however as a job until that point it's enjoyable with many different challenges, just still looking for that perfect idea/project :) Also considering freelancing however no clue where to event start, any tips?

Found hacker news through Google, can't remember what I was looking for but the post was fairly interesting, hit the home page and found loads more interesting posts, visited back probably daily since! Found my self no longer browsing other sites like Slashdot, Tech crunch, Lifehacker, as any decent posts on there will probably pop up on here.

urish• 13 years ago

I'm a PhD student working in machine learning, on the border of mathematical optimization. I also have a research project about mapping influence and innovation in the history of contemporary music, with ML tools.

I heard about HN from my brother, who's a psychiatrist. I wonder how he got here though.

jeffblake• 13 years ago

Own a SaaS (my baby) and also do contract work: primarily iOS apps for the biggest brands in Canada, and the occasional RoR app too.

zachlatta• 13 years ago

I make things.

Most of the time they have to do software. I'm currently working at a small game studio on our flagship iOS game, but I've also done my share of other stuff.

Ask HN: What do you do?

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