
Ask HN: Where can I add value? - hessp
Pretty junior dev here (27). I&#x27;m trying to figure out where the best path to take my career is, and I&#x27;m not sure it&#x27;s dev. Trying to figure out where I can best fit &#x2F; add value.<p>I started out learning philosophy in college because I wanted to understand esoteric questions (&quot;What is consciousness?&quot;). Midway through, several friends encouraged me to do something &#x27;practical&#x27;, so I added a CS BA as a second major.<p>I did alright through the CS program, but I didn&#x27;t really like it, unlike many in the HN crowd. Felt like I was perpetually swimming to catch up, which was very stressful.<p>Got internships in two small companies, and one of them hired me after school. Over time, I&#x27;ve moved away from dev work, and towards pre&#x2F;post sale implementation work (We are a small B2B vendor, selling to large software companies. Our software is typically installed on-premise).<p>I&#x27;ve found that I&#x27;ve liked the following things:
* Learning vim (I have pretty damn deep knowledge of vim at this point. It&#x27;s occasionally helpful.)
* Setting up Arch Linux from scratch.
* Learning some functional programming concepts on the side.
* Teaching people (I often coach clients on how to change system configurations for the software we install).
* Explaining complicated concepts to people.
* Finding clever ways to break things.<p>I&#x27;m neutral towards, but pretty good at:
* Task organization and prioritization.
* Documenting things in a manner that is clear to users.<p>On the flip side, I&#x27;m not very good at the following:
* The boring parts of industry software work (java, reading code, reading long documentation)
* Actually building stuff. (My GitHub has stuff like essential-scala and a partial workthrough of &#x27;The Little Schemer&#x27;. Most recently, I&#x27;ve been working through overthewire&#x27;s bandit.)
* Office politics (although I&#x27;m not terrible).<p>Would love any ideas or suggestions about what paths I might best fit into.
======
TrinaryWorksToo
Have you considered writing tests?

~~~
hessp
It's a thought. Or QA Automation.

