

Ask HN: What do you do? - rlu

Clearly we all like technology given that we browse this site. But I&#x27;m curious as to what we all actually <i>do</i> for a living. Do you like it?<p>And, if your career isn&#x27;t technology focused, how did you find out about HN?
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bartonfink
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.

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japhyr
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](http://opencompetencies.herokuapp.com)

Code:
[http://github.com/openlearningtools/opencompetencies](http://github.com/openlearningtools/opencompetencies)

~~~
thisisdallas
>I'm a high school math and science teacher

>I teach an intro programming class each year

God bless you.

------
gadders
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...

------
mindcrime
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.

------
iSloth
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.

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agibsonccc
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!).

~~~
jmsbrwr
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.

~~~
agibsonccc
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.

~~~
jmsbrwr
You'll laugh at home close to home you hit.

I am just finishing up an HTML5 anonymous IRC client that I originally planned
on using Socket.io for. I decided to use Firebase in the end.

Also, I think the Oculus Rift is one of the coolest inventions I've seen in a
long time because it takes an industry that has a pretty consistent history
(video games) and turned it on it's head. Oculus VR is taking what most people
believe to be science fiction and making it a reality. I have a lot of respect
for those guys. (And I might have sent them a job application last week. ;))
Computer vision/graphics is an interesting field that thrives because of the
type of math I enjoy: linear algebra.

My training is also in web development, but the high tech side of things is
where I want to end up.

------
pathy
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
I am working on [http://makerops.com](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
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.

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davyjones
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.

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

~~~
davyjones
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.

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mdturnerphys
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.

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stakent
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.

------
Casseres
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.

------
centdev
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.

------
tylermac1
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.

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urish
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.

------
AndrewLuke
I own and run [http://andrewluke.net](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
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!

------
zachlatta
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.

------
Peroni
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.

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jfb
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.

------
jeffblake
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.

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

~~~
iSloth
Cool, I assume for some kind of network analyser?

What software stack do you use?

~~~
ishbits
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.

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

------
dreamdu5t
Lead web engineer at a startup. Love it.

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

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

~~~
lifeisstillgood
[http://www.mikadosoftware.com/bizplan/busplan](http://www.mikadosoftware.com/bizplan/busplan)

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

Let me know your thoughts

