Ask HN: At what company were you happiest and why? - maruhan2
======
PakG1
Honestly? This warehouse where I was repacking lumber. The lumber would come
from the sawmill on a big flatbed truck. However, the lumber would be stacked
in a formation that made it impossible to fill up the shipping containers
optimally for shipping the lumber overseas. So my job was to (with a bunch of
other guys):

1\. Unpack the lumber. 2\. Restack the lumber in a formation that would allow
for maximum lumber loaded into the shipping containers. 3\. Rewrap the lumber
in plastic and staple the plastic in place.

It was mindless work where I didn't have to think about anything, had no
deadlines, and I got physical exercise to boot. It paid $12 Canadian per hour.
Long-term, it would have sucked because the wage was too low. But short-term,
it was exactly what I needed at the time to recharge my batteries.

In terms of real career work? Just after I graduated from university, it was a
team of young hotshots that made custom .NET apps for improving work processes
at a telecom company. Ton of freedom, ton of competence, ton of stuff that got
done. Still possibly the best team I've ever worked with.

~~~
xupybd
I really miss my first job after school. I was working in a factory. No
responsibility, no thinking, just some mindless labour. I worked physically
hard enough to be tired at the end of the day and got to talk to my coworkers
while the job was pretty much done on autopilot.

But the pay was not great and the career options were non existent.

But I don't think I'd be able to be very happy outside of work on that sort of
money now days.

------
keeptrying
Autonomy, relationships and mastery.

Its never about the company or the work.

You'll be happy if you have a boss who trusts you completely and colleagues
that aren't a-holes. If you have this you will find the work thats
interesting.

~~~
quickthrower2
Amen. I'm on my third job move in the last 6 yrs to try and harness this
elusive situation. Hope I've found it this time.

~~~
keeptrying
Its very hard to find such situations.

The only way that comes to mind is knowing someone well enough in a company
that needs your skills when you need a job. Its a very small intersection in
time/space/relationships.

I've always lucked into these situations. And honestly I never really realized
how lucky I was because I didn't have anything to compare it to.

Not joining teams with bad bosses is one way to go about this. This is also
very very difficult because these guys will offer you a ton of money.

Honestly, the best advice I think is to follow your best boss when he moves
once you've found one. (Again this advice only "works" in SV where there are a
massive number of growing companies where people move very frequently).

~~~
apohn
>I've always lucked into these situations

Given that you know to look for a good boss and you know to resist offers
purely based on financial terms, I think you are helping yourself to make your
own "luck" :)

------
hijinks
As a teenager during the summers working for my father driving frontend
loader. I sat in a AC cab and screened top soil all day. I went to work at 7am
and left around 4pm. I didn't have a care in the world after 4pm.

It wasn't just because I had no bills to pay, I just didn't worry about work.
I knew the pile of dirt wasn't going anywhere and the area we were digging out
was going to be the same when I got back to work.

I never brought work home. It took me a good 14 years to re-learn that in
tech.

~~~
maruhan2
I always find it somewhat ironic that I spent all this time preparing myself
to get a good career in tech when repetitive manual labor seems to be the
happiest

~~~
hijinks
couldn't agree more.. 10 years ago I was at the Apple store in Manhattan with
my wife getting an iphone. There was this guy who's job it was just to sweep
the stairs going down to the store.

I told my wife.. If I could somehow make a tech salary doing what he does, I'd
do it in a second. She questioned me like why? I just said what I said before.
I could come home and not worry about anything.

~~~
zuck9
What are some of the worries you bring home?

~~~
hijinks
I do ops work so it was always worrying about i'm on call 24/7 since I mostly
worked for startups.

Are the backups working. Is that new HA solution I rolled out working. I have
this lingering problem with disk latency I can't get to the bottom. List goes
on and on.

------
somethingsimple
My first industry job back in my home country (I live in America now). The
company did outsourcing work for a large multinational technology company, and
for me it struck the perfect balance between having to be too emotionally
involved with the product and getting step by step specs of what needed to be
done.

The work was like this: they gave us access to the product's source code and a
set of high level requirements (i.e. support standard X, write a new tool that
enables automation of Y, add feature Z, etc.). It was up to me and my team
members to figure out how to actually implement those things according to the
requirements they gave us.

I absolutely loved that setup and really, really miss it. It was challenging
in the sense that I had to learn a code base, learn new stuff, read RFCs, and
figure out real solutions to real problems. But the problems were handed to me
- I didn't have to come up with them.

Every job I've had since then comes with the IMO unreasonable expectation that
I be super involved with the product and come up with new ideas and features
for it as if I owned it somehow (which I don't). I absolutely loathe that - if
I wanted to have that attitude towards work I'd start my own company (which I
haven't since I have no business ideas). I'm much more of a "tell me what's
the problem and I'll fix it" kind of person, but I haven't been able to find
any jobs like that after my first one.

------
GlenTheMachine
I have never been happier than I was in grad school (the Space Systems Lab at
the University of Maryland).

Which might sound surprising, given the pay and work hours... but there's a
lot to be said for working with a group of people you love with all your
heart, who have your back, in a field you are passionate about and have been
since you were a kid.

Grad school was incredibly hard work, and the pay sucked. But I wouldn't give
back a single day of it.

~~~
dasmoth
Probably PhD work for me, too. It's a slightly different experience in the UK,
I think, but did afford me quite a bit of autonomy. Has been hard to match
since.

(I get the impression that the trend has been gradually towards more structure
and less autonomy in "doctoral programs" \-- from my point of view, that's
sad).

PS. did you follow Akin's Laws?

~~~
GlenTheMachine
I am the source of one of Akin's Laws.

37\. (Henshaw's Law) One key to success in a mission is establishing clear
lines of blame.

------
abstractbill
Justin.TV during the first 3 years or so. Honestly, because we were in "cowboy
mode", and that's what I enjoy the most. The site was growing and changing so
fast it was often hard to keep up, and we were all just doing whatever it
took.

~~~
pjdkoch
Cowboy mode sounds horrible to me (no offense). What did you enjoy about it?

~~~
godot
It's not for everybody. It's for certain types of people, and even certain
stages in their lives.

I also worked in a hypergrowth unicorn from the early days and I would also
call those first couple of years there my happiest job, even though it was
tons of work and full cowboy mode.

That was when I was in my mid-20s and single. I am 100% sure that I wouldn't
enjoy that right now in my current stage in life. (mid-30s and married now)

------
schneidmaster
At my current company (Aha!). Fully remote which is great for me because I'm a
night owl. Interesting and technically challenging work in my favorite stack
(Rails/React). We use our own product so I get to see my new code/features in
front of me the next day. Great environment to learn about running a seriously
profitable and successful startup from the inside. And the engineering culture
is right in the sweet spot -- independent and self-directed but with brilliant
colleagues available to bounce ideas when I get stuck; committed to quality
but pragmatic about reality for a large codebase; forward-thinking and open to
new technologies but cautious about balancing value and benefit vs. the
inherent risks introduced by change.

------
fillskills
Sorry to digress - What I want from life keeps changing over time. Maybe
evolving as I grow/change as a person. While I was happiest at certain
roles/companies in the past, I don't think I would be as happy there now.

~~~
sgs1370
Yeah, and memory is a fickle thing. I want to say "job X" but then as I really
think about it, I realize I am disregarding some bad times there, too.

~~~
nailer
I think it's really important to analyse the current situation and think about
what's good. We (or at least me) only ever seem to know what we have when it's
gone.

------
quickthrower2
Not working at all is my happiest. I don't like working for money. It's always
a compromise. Working for fun is something different.

------
throwaway0071
I was pretty happy in my first job as a system administrator for a small B2B
ISP in my hometown. Full autonomy, engaged coworkers and challenges that kept
increasing.

Unfortunately, I like getting paid and I've been let down in that regard. I
was there for 5 years and left for a job at a big 3-letter corporation and
then some other corporations. I've been soul searching for a decade now.

~~~
keeptrying
Autonomy, relationships and mastery. Yep

------
decasteve
Right now: self-employed as a software consultant. Flexible hours, working on
average 20 hours per week. As a single parent I'm there for my kids when they
need me. When I'm working it's very intense and focused. I'm more productive
with my time than I have ever been in my career.

I went through a period 15 years ago where I would work 60-80 hour weeks and
be on call 24/7\. I learned a lot from that experience and it helped get me
where I am now--but it was difficult.

------
beefman
Apple was the most rewarding in many ways, but I was happier working retail at
Nestor's sporting goods in Quakertown, PA. I was young and full of vigor, we
went camping together many nights after work, rode bicycles together every
Sunday, and all was well in the world (year: 2000).

------
na85
I used to get paid surprisingly well to play capture the flag and hit children
with dodge balls, then we'd do stuff like make electric pianos out of 555
timers and paper clips, and popsicle stick trebuchets that could throw a rock
several hundred feet.

Easily the best job I've had.

------
jejones3141
Microware Systems Corporation--it was fun to work with really good people on
compilers for an operating system that, at the time, was one of very few pre-
emptive multitasking OSs one could get for relatively inexpensive computers.
It didn't require memory mapping hardware, and thus couldn't use compilers
that presumed knowledge of some absolute address where code and data lived (or
could be made to appear at with memory mapping). Probably the most fun was
modifying the compiler to take advantage of the "as if" rule by avoiding the
"usual arithmetic conversions" where possible. I kick myself periodically for
not trying to get that published.

------
byoung2
My current company, because it's 100% remote and I can work on my own
schedule.

~~~
senatorobama
Sounds cool, but is the salary ~SF Bay Area?

~~~
mtmail
I thought the question was about happiness?

~~~
na85
Wasn't there a study published recently showing that money really does buy
happiness, up to a certain point of diminishing returns?

~~~
grzm
The one I recall being referenced is from Angus Deaton and Daniel Kahneman (of
_Thinking Fast and Slow_ fame):

[http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/150671/Happiness-Is-
Lo...](http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/150671/Happiness-Is-Love-
and-75K.aspx)

~~~
byoung2
I can attest that I was much happier at $80k than I was at $30k, but not much
happier at $110k or $140k, less happy at $155k, miserable at $175k (becoming
director of engineering). Now I'm at $200k but it's the remote part that makes
me happiest.

~~~
senatorobama
wow, that's an amazing salary for remote. what company?

~~~
byoung2
The company is Surge, LLC
([https://www.surgeforward.com](https://www.surgeforward.com)), and they offer
developers for hire. It is 1099 contract work with at least 40 hours a week
guaranteed.

~~~
RepressedEmu
Just curious, what tech stack do you use?

~~~
byoung2
You get matched to projects based on skill set. I only advertised myself as
PHP and Node, so that's what I've been assigned to (75% node/angular/mysql,
25% PHP/angular/mysql).

------
webscalist
Bell Lab: a private office with a secretary.

These days, every office is open office. Kids so crazy.

------
zapperdapper
First four years of my career I worked in seismic oil exploration. I worked in
Sudan for about 18 months, then Nigeria for about the same. Also worked in
Tanzania. In Nigeria we lived on house boats. In Sudan aircon trailers. In
Tanzania we slept in tents besides crocodile infested rivers and lakes.

Mostly I drove a LandCruiser through all kinds of conditions, checking cables
and geophones and swapping out telemetry boxes. Occasionally I would get a
week or two in the "Veribo" \- which was an air-conditioned room full of
automated test equipment. There were long sessions of component level
troubleshooting, swapping out components like voltage regulators and power
transistors and so on. I became a Senior Observer and moved to the "DogBox"
where the main telemtry system was and operated and troubleshot from there -
it was much less fun than "running line".

In the rainy season in Sudan we were flown to work every day (and returned
home) by an Vietnam Vet who I'm pretty convinced thought the war was still on
- attack take offs, landing in clearings with only a few inches between rotors
and trees.

It was my first job out of Polytechnic, back in 1984. It was a HELL of a lot
of fun. Some great friends made, and sadly lost, in those years.

------
xianshou
Square was great. During my time there, the company doubled in size, tripled
in valuation, built a plethora of new products, and experienced all the
chapters in the adolescence of a successful startup. Everyone was intelligent,
most of them treated their coworkers well, and nearly all felt a sense of
camaraderie and loyalty to the company as a whole. Left for YC, but if I had
to do it all again, I might choose to stay! Those were good times.

~~~
jes5199
I was there, too, but I wish I had left earlier. I really didn't enjoy
anything about it.

------
mettamage
My work at a coding bootcamp. I found that I find teaching about programming a
lot more enjoyable than actual programming. The reason for that is:

1\. Much more interaction with people

2\. If I didn't sleep too well on a particular day I can still teach but with
programming I'm not productive enough

3\. Deadlines and pacing is easier

4\. Much more free time when students are doing an exercise or don't need you
that much anymore (after 2 months)

~~~
vosper
How was the pay, relative to what you could have got coding fulltime?

~~~
mettamage
More or less the same. It was a standard junior freelance rate that would be
acceptable in The Netherlands [1].

[1] The source is in Dutch but Google Translate works good enough to
understand the gist, see: [https://uurtarief.tips/nl/zzp/ict/uurtarief-ict-
zzp-freelanc...](https://uurtarief.tips/nl/zzp/ict/uurtarief-ict-zzp-
freelancer)

------
mod
I worked as a summer camp counselor and I loved every second of it. We ran a
competitive sports camp with kids aged 8-13 years. It was well-run, action-
packed, and my co-counselors included some close friends that I still keep in
touch with. We laughed, cried, sweated, and laid it all on the line for our
weekly team of kids, which was re-drafted every new week. Team loyalty was
fierce and the competition extended to include team spirit, sportsmanship, and
being a good citizen.

We had enough time to really connect with and influence the kids. I also keep
up with a lot of "my kids" on facebook, and they are all grown and many are
married with children of their own. I'm very proud of so many of them.

Working with children is incredibly rewarding, but there was no obvious career
path where I was. When I was promoted I hated it, and quit.

I was young though, and I didn't care about the money at all while I worked
with the kids. It was the best time of my life, so far. Development pays
better, but it's really drab by comparison.

------
swighton
My current company - Formlabs. I get to build really good hardware (3D
printers), working with ~seven different engineering disciplines. Smart
people, high levels of autonomy, and very little politics. People are there to
build great stuff.

~~~
mhb_eng
If you don't mind my asking, what field are you in? I've been fascinated with
3d printing for a while(built my own printer etc) but haven't quite found the
right place to apply and you are certainly selling the formlabs experience!

~~~
swighton
We do Software (embedded, desktop, web), mechanical, electrical, process,
systems, optics, and manufacturing engineering. It's a pretty fun mix.

Since you asked, I personally work directly with all of the above (as a
product lead). My expertise is in software, mechanical, process, and systems
engineering.

------
normalocity
With few exceptions it's always the place I'm currently working, because
happiness in work is a big priority for me, so when I move from place to place
I always try to make an improvement in how much I enjoy work.

When I'm unhappy, I ask myself why, and how much effort I think it will take
to change what I don't like (which often is something I can change in myself,
rather than expecting the environment to do it for me), and if I think it's
worth the effort to change (myself or my surroundings) I do.

Otherwise I stay where I'm at until I can figure out how to improve things.

------
nstart
My first real job at an ecommerce company in Sri Lanka. It had a trifecta of
awesomeness. A team that cared. A company that at least at the start had a
cohesive mission and till my final day there I had a 95% autonomous role.
Obviously there were certain overrides but I never felt rank was pulled on me
except by 1 person in that entire time. Funnily enough that 1 person was
largely responsible for the downfall of the company culture, something that he
too admitted.

Regardless, that was easily the most creative period of my life. I would work
on one project after another, investing into productivity tools. The company
was at the time doing daily deals. I wrote a suite of tools that would take a
word doc which was the terms of agreement with the merchant, and convert it to
the relevant HTML blocks to be pasted into our ecommerce CMS. After that was
done it would cross-check the site against the doc to see if everything was
pasted in correctly, and then use a set of defined resources to generate
newsletters.

I passed that autonomy down to the rest of my team and it resulted in people
tweaking workflows to be more efficient and learning things and taking on
other jobs around the company without having to consult me.

Easily the best work of my life for now. By far.

------
enf
Danger, Inc. Good people, making an important thing (the Sidekick), under
hardware constraints that were neither too limiting nor too generous.

~~~
multimedial
German user here, I loved my Hiptop/Sidekick phones! IPhone functionality way
before Apple got it!

Loved also the skiing game easter egg. Had the first and second phone, was
crazy in love with them. Still have them in a box somewhere, was thinking
about resuscitating them for hipster purposes.

Seriously, I loved these phones, one of my best gadgets I ever had.
Unbreakable, full of functionality, clever design... i hated to see them go.
Had a Nokia Blackberry clone afterwards that I couldn't stand.

Nice to see someone from Danger. Whatever happened to the company, rumour was
it was bought up by Apple? I also heard Steve Wozniak was somehow involved?

~~~
enf
Steve Wozniak was on the board of directors, so we met him once at an all-
hands meeting. (The other major celebrity appearance was from Thomas Dolby,
who was involved with the Beatnik Audio Engine that we used for sound.)

The SnowBored easter egg was the subject of some internal controversy because
it wasn't part of the standard QA testing process. There were initially some
bugs in invoking it from localized keyboards where the asterisk wasn't on the
8 key.

The company was bought by Microsoft, and the Kin was the ill-fated result.
Many of us went to Google and made Android; others went to Apple and made the
iPhone; still others went to Palm and made the Pre.

------
gtbcb
I've been at Segment for 2.5 years, and it's been pretty amazing. The founders
have done a good job of establishing a solid, but not cultish, culture. Karma
is a value, and it's pretty well expressed. Yes, there's plenty of room for
improvement, but it's been a terrific ride, and I'm excited for more.
#datkoolaid

Secondarily, every time I've volunteered my hard skills, it's been a lot of
fun (and oftentimes has a positive payoff down the road). Eg back in Atlanta,
I volunteered at a local private school for a couple of months which turned
into a $50/hr * 20hrs/week gig.

When I first moved to the Bay Area, I met with a friend of a friend, and when
he said he had kids, I casually mentioned that I'd be happy to tutor them if
they ever needed any help. This blossomed into a great relationship, and this
person is now a good friend and mentor that I've kept up with for the past 6
years.

I suspect one reason that volunteering is so fun is because it's low stress
because you can't really get fired, and if you do, it doesn't matter because
it's not your primary livelihood. I might sort of say the same thing about
some second jobs (in that it doesn't really matter if you lose the second
job); however, if the second jobs pays really well (or you really need it),
then that stress of keeping the job can creep in.

Driving for Lyft was also a lot of fun. I only did it part time for a few
months, but it was great meeting people and exploring the city. The limited-
time casual conversations are very interesting because people are more willing
to overshare because chances are you'll never see each other again. Back when
I drove, it wasn't as mainstream, so the clientele was mostly tech-savvy early
adopters, so most conversations were very interesting. I wish I had done it
for longer so as to better learn the city's nooks and crannies and also to
meet and chat with more people.

------
cirgue
The outfitter that I used to work for. I taught whitewater kayaking. Great
people, play outside all day, interesting clientele, sense of accomplishment
at the end of the day. It never once felt like work. The pay was not good by
software industry standards, but it ticked every other box you could imagine
for a great place to work.

------
BlackjackCF
When I was working as a lighting director at my university.

It was mostly student staffed, but probably one of the best, most professional
crews I've ever worked with in a technical production capacity. The equipment
was also pretty top notch. It was probably one of the better-equipped venues
in Los Angeles.

My coworkers/fellow students and I were pretty dedicated. A lot of us worked
full time on top of taking a full course load because we loved what we did. We
also socialized a lot and partied together a lot. Most of the friends that I
still retain post-college are those folks.

I've really been missing and seeking out that kind of tightness among a group
of coworkers ever since. I don't think I'll ever find a dynamic like that ever
again, and that's okay. People in the "real world" have their families to go
home to and other social lives.

------
peckrob
I've had a few jobs that I was really happy at. In fact, most of my jobs have
been on the happy end and the ones that weren't, I've moved on quickly. I
generally like smaller companies where there's a "family" atmosphere.

1\. My current company has been pretty good to me. During the 2011 Super
Outbreak [0], when my city lost power for a week or so, they took all the
employees and their families and put us up in hotels in Nashville for a few
days until things stabilized and we could return home. We didn't even have to
work if we didn't want to. After a stressful day of tornadoes and a few days
with no power, a nice hot shower was very welcome. Stuff like that is pretty
normal here. They take good care of us.

2\. I worked for a company that did e-learning materials while I was in
college. Our product was basically a self-contained website with videos,
subtitles, tests, etc, distributed on CDs. This was the early 2000s, so pretty
bleeding edge then.

The owner was a business professor full time and this was his side project. We
were always small, and him and his wife always took an interest in all the
students that worked for them. Getting a home-cooked meal and a night of poker
once a week was a nice perk for a poor college student.

The cool thing, though, was there was no pressure to stay. They knew we were
students, they knew we were going to graduate eventually and take jobs
elsewhere. It was a mutually beneficial scenario where they got relatively
cheap labor (but compared to my friends I was making bank), and we got good
experience before heading out into the world.

3\. I was a park ranger for the NPS in Yellowstone for a few seasons as well.
And that was a _fantastic_ job. I wrote about that in another HN thread [1].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Super_Outbreak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Super_Outbreak)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14390927](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14390927)

------
muzani
My first job as a junior. I worked with really smart coworkers. I got to build
things that were used, and things that made money.

Most other jobs after that I ended up building things that were never used, or
used to get some kind of grant or impress investors, and wasn't even what the
user wanted.

A lot of the more senior jobs I get, I end up doing a lot of management and
getting little work done. Sometimes when someone else does the hiring, I get
complete idiots in my team, the kind who typo variable names, spend 3 days
discussing specifications, but don't do them, refuse to use source control.

I would really love to get back into a job where I can just build things that
people use, with smart people.

~~~
Nuzzerino
Have you thought about getting into consulting? A lot of companies, to me,
have the kinds of problems you describe. Being an employee at one of them is a
no-win situation.

~~~
muzani
I've been doing that for nearly 3 years. Part of the problem is that usually
the client cares more about getting grants or ticking off some buzzword like
"machine learning" or "uber for X". But things get better throughout the years
as I learn which projects to avoid.

------
SubuSS
My current company (Snap). I have the opportunity to shape huge things and
effect millions of dollar worth of changes every year. I personally believe in
the innovation potential here. The perks/package etc. have been pretty great
as well. I work out of Seattle and fly into LA once in a while. Again, two of
my favorite cities in US.

To be fair, for most of my career it has been my current job: Whenever it got
to a place where I wasn't happy (mind you - not even unhappy, just chronic
normalcy or lack of exciting work), I usually left either the team or the
company. It has worked out so far :)

------
halfnibble
4DK. A cool startup later acquired by Radius Networks. That's where I got the
"bug" for coding. It was sometimes stressful and occasionally caused a great
deal of anxiety. But everyday, I felt challenged and engaged to the max. Plus,
I loved flying out to Chicago to meet the rest of our small dev team and drink
beers. It was more about camaraderie than anything else. It was just us, 5
developers and a UX director, against the world. People were trusting me with
their livelihoods. And I still feel honored to have been a part of the 4DK
team.

------
bsvalley
None. Haven't found a company that would meet my standard. And we're talking
about class A companies. I should try to start my own company, I think it's
the only way to get what I want.

~~~
stuartaxelowen
What do you want?

~~~
bsvalley
Less micro micromanagement, room for innovation over productivity, freedom to
move from dev to product to design, etc. Ability to work from home whenever,
communication skills over whiteboarding skills when hiring new folks.

------
YouKnowBetter
At every single company! But that lasts for about 1 week to 12 months. Then
everything is automated or routine and becomes boring really fast.

------
metaobject
As a contractor, building 3D simulations for the military. It was for man-in-
the-loop simulators where we simulated various kinds of ground vehicles and an
assortment of sensors (IR, visual, I^2) and our simulation entity had to
interact with and/or engage other man-in-the-loop as well as computer-
controlled simulation entities.

Had to quit because I was moving out of the area.

------
carlmr
Best temp job: Cycle courier. I liked cycling and it paid well (for a guy in
high school that is). Winters were a bit harsh though.

Best full-time job Consultant for embedded systems software, mostly
prototypes, short projects (2-3 months), jack-of-all-trades work, often going
to cool places. Long hours and often in horrible places, away from family and
friends, too though.

------
Bretts89
I worked for a small digital marketing and PR agency in NYC. We worked with
clients mostly in the music industry. The environment was very collaborative
and it felt like a family in many ways. The work was creative while also being
relationship driven. Overall I'd say it was the environment that made me enjoy
the job most.

------
chanlvh
My current company - Asana. They just have an awesome work-life balance that I
never had to worry about work at home.

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jgalvez
Stratum Security was my best experience to date. They're very welcoming and
provided a lot of guidance. I became a better programmer after working with
them. And the way I was let go after the project ended, with a glowing
LinkedIn recommendation and a bonus MacBook Pro... beats words.

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jes5199
I was happiest when I was working for someone who I really liked as a person

(that's only happened the once, though)

~~~
mythrwy
self employment?

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ZanyProgrammer
Working at a non profit in SF. I had almost full autonomy doing both tech
support and dev, and by the time I left I had the job down pat. People liked
me, and I liked working there.

Alas the obvious downside was not making nearly enough to live on remotely
comfortably in the Bay Area.

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quickrepvn
[https://quickrep.vn](https://quickrep.vn) This is a website of our company,
its size is quite small with 10 employees. However, we often talk to each
other a lot about work and life. Everyone is quite friendly and fun!

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rocky1138
My most recent job at the Canon Innovation Lab in Kitchener made me the
happiest because of the people I worked with. Incredibly dedicated team that
were great to be around and working with University of Waterloo students kept
me young at heart.

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sachin_janani
My second job with Snappydata Inc. Best work environment and great people

~~~
vishalrao
I second this. Was short but sweet. Fun while it lasted.

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xapata
Clerk at an art supplies store. Fun colleagues. Low stress.

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jf22
Funiture delivery.

Load truck with furniture, take furniture off truck.

