Ask HN: Do you work on interesting problems? - Austin_Conlon
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sethammons
For work, my team has been moving legacy architecture to a new stateless model
while continuing to support billions of events going through our system. Our
software runs on thousands of machines. It is very much switching out parts on
a moving vehicle. High scale, high availability, updating arch, etc. I think
it is interesting. You can't just start a green field thing and move over
wholesale. You have to move over parts and for subsets of users. You have to
incorporate years of bug fixes and learnings in the legacy stack to the new
stack, and the new stack has new and different scaling challenges.

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ltmi600
You shouldn't have to work on interesting problems at work because Life is the
most interesting problem. You should have as much time and mental resources as
possible to handle that problem/puzzle.

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stagas
Everytime I discover the meaning of Life, they change it. My point is, Life
isn't a well-defined problem, and it shouldn't be, so it is more like a never-
ending puzzle that you are free to go as deep as you want.

But there are parallels, and for example, multiple solutions can apply for the
same issues, with plenty of different outcomes, positive or not.

Work, usually, comes with well-defined requirements which require specific
solutions. Working on well-defined problems, and solving them, gives you
knowledge and experience, which you can often apply to solving Life problems
as well, but in a more systematic way than you did before.

It's an exercise for the mind which generalizes, the mind can then reuse those
new skills out in the real world. Even more, solving difficult problems in a
team environment, requires certain levels of communication, coordination and
accommodation, which are also very important, if not the most important skills
you can reuse to understanding and solving the puzzle of Life.

~~~
ltmi600
That is a very inspiring perspective on how work aids in dealing with life. I
hope you do find work that provides challenging and meaningful problems for
you to solve. You deserve it.

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AwesomeFaic
At work I work on problems that are interesting to other people, but not to
me. At home I work on problems that are interesting to me, but not other
people (or so I assume).

Feels like a healthy enough balance.

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gshdg
They may not be technically difficult, but they sure are challenging in other
ways, and that makes them interesting to me!

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billconan
At work, no. But I have side projects.

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slipwalker
sure, to keep my bills payed on time is the most interesting problem ever...
:)

