Ask HN: What is your job? Do you like it? What was your favorite job? - zipfle
======
davisr
I currently work at an ad agency (we call ourselves a "boutique data-driven
marketing company") in Milwaukee. My official title is Developer, but I do a
lot of things: I manage servers, code applications (HTML/CSS/Javascript, but
also C, R, and loads of shell scripting), research new concepts, automate
existing workflows, and so much more.

Before I did this, I worked as a freelancer doing one-off website jobs for
small businesses. Finding clients was easy, but I started dreading the same
work everyday. I'm much happier doing what I do now, but in a while I want to
start a non-profit with some co-worker friends.

I'd want that non-profit to be education-related. Education is a really
important space to improve, but adding "technology" to an already-bloated
space is useless. I feel too many organizations try to add tech for tech's
sake, when it's already impossible to get a class into a computer lab and make
effective use of that time. Educational software needs to be thought of
differently. Another crap webapp that tests students is a detriment to every
student that has to suffer through it. Educational software needs to allow
students to explore nature and the world around them.

~~~
csharpminor
I've been working for a b-corporation that is in the ed-tech space. There are
a lot of problems to solve here.

After two years, I feel that educational software is more about production
quality/entertainment value than about solving technological challenges.
Poorly designed content that is not engaging can't compete with other
resources on the web.

Building a platform to facilitate learning is difficult, because the user
experience will only ever be as good as the effort the instructor puts into
the course. At the same time, training/education requires a hugely diverse set
of features. You're pretty much developing a content-management system, plus a
lot of extensions for client-specific needs. Different school
districts/companies can have hugely different needs and standards that they
need to satisfy, so apps become bloated and dysfunctional. I don't think
anyone starts out thinking that they'll build a "crap webapp", but education
is a really tough problem for computers to solve.

At the end of the day, organizations choose the most "comprehensive" system,
which usually means Blackboard or one of their competitors. Established
vendors make integration difficult, and will try to scare their clients from
working with you. Also, school districts are also notorious for procurement
processes that are incredibly painful.

If you go the content route and become an eLearning development firm, you're
looking at a race to the bottom for lowest price for acceptable quality.
You'll also be going up against big companies (e.g. Relias) that already have
thousands of stock trainings on-hand that they can adapt slightly to
individual clients.

All of this said, the online learning space is ripe for disruption. Articulate
Storyline (the industry-standard eLearning authoring tool) is still heavily
dependent on flash and has numerous glitches. xAPI is almost completely
meaningless as an LRS standard. I also get the sense that many organizations
are beginning to re-think their commitments to Blackboard and the like. It's a
great cause and I wish you the best!

~~~
davisr
Thanks for your insight. I think the problem with a lot of educational
programs (not all, though) is that they intend to replace live instruction. In
my ideal world, computers would always remain _supplementary_ to the
instructor.

The idea of what a 'computer' is to most people is disappointing to me. More
people should see computers as thinking machines, as machines that allow us to
extend the reach and complexity of our own thoughts. They are not word
processors or spreadsheets, and they certainly aren't multiple-choice answer
facilitators. While they prove useful in those regards, the real power is in
the mind of the bit manipulator: the student.

I think that if we start using computers as facilitators to learning, rather
than replacements for instruction, we'll see a lot of students become more
interested in learning. Concepts are very difficult to understand from a book,
so blackboards were invented. However, blackboards are very static, so it
takes a lively animator to control it. However, it's foolish to believe that
every teacher wants to be outstanding. Computers offer us a chance to go one
step further than the blackboard, without much additional effort from the
instructor.

Visualization is a key problem. There needs to be a way to visualize things on
a computer with almost zero learning curve. Blackboards are so much simpler
than learning the syntax of a programming language. Bret Victor's work on
Drawing Dynamic Visualizations is a step in the right direction.

Students should be using computers to explore the nature, and the best way to
do that is by having them build models and simulations. Live classroom
instruction should be supplemented with these tasks, to allow students to
figure things out on their own. That builds a deeper understanding of
problems, and allows students to see connections between things.

I agree, it's a matter of content. However, it's not that the content isn't
entertaining enough, it's that it isn't participatory enough.

~~~
csharpminor
_More people should see computers as thinking machines, as machines that allow
us to extend the reach and complexity of our own thoughts._

This is already a well established instructional strategy called Blended
Learning
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blended_learning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blended_learning)).
Blackboard even has a product page devoted to using technology to supplement
face-to-face training ([http://www.blackboard.com/k12/blended-
learning.aspx](http://www.blackboard.com/k12/blended-learning.aspx)).

 _Concepts are very difficult to understand from a book, so blackboards were
invented._

This is not really the reason blackboards were invented: [http://education.cu-
portland.edu/blog/reference-material/the...](http://education.cu-
portland.edu/blog/reference-material/the-history-of-the-classroom-
blackboard/). Many classrooms could still benefit hugely from low-tech
solutions like leveled readers.

 _Computers offer us a chance to go one step further than the blackboard,
without much additional effort from the instructor._

I disagree – creating effective blended learning is incredibly time consuming.
It nearly doubles the effort of teaching a lecture-based class because
teachers must also prepare digital content.

Introducing computers is also a huge logistical hassle (e.g. getting every
student logged in, getting them all doing the same exercise/simulation, etc).

I have friends who are teachers at schools with well-equipped computer labs,
and they claim that they regularly have to spend 20-40 minutes of their
instructional time doing IT to get students up and running. This also echoes
what I've found in my professional experience: most blended learnings require
an additional instructor to help troubleshoot IT problems.

 _I agree, it 's a matter of content. However, it's not that the content isn't
entertaining enough, it's that it isn't participatory enough._

Agree to disagree, but the way I see it, if content is not entertaining (maybe
intellectually stimulating is a better phrase), students will not participate
in a productive way.

------
fruzz
I work as a software developer on a product that provides a remote desktop
environment whose activity is recorded. This isn't the main business of the
company I work for; they do contracting work and use this environment for
auditing purposes. I mainly do JavaScript/HTML/CSS and some C/C++/Python work.

I neither like nor dislike my job. I like the people I work with, and I get to
architect things and play with new technologies, but I'm not in love with my
work. I accept that, I don't think I'd find any other work environment in this
field to be that different.

Honestly, I was happier when I was serving coffee. My favourite job was when I
was in the geophysics field and was sent all over the world on mapping
projects. The mining/oil industry crashed though, and that's over for me
unless I amp up my education. It wasn't the job itself I liked; it was being
sent in these wonderful locations that I'd never get to travel to otherwise,
free of charge.

~~~
herdrick
Ha! I used to work in field geophysics too. Same thing - got to know lots of
interesting places.

------
jo909
I sit in a chair, in front of a panel with many lights, and another panel with
many buttons. And I press the buttons rapidly in some specific order to make
certain lights go on or off.

~~~
staticautomatic
You work on the USS Enterprise?

~~~
jo909
No, but we also call what we do "enterprise".

I forgot that I also push around a little puck on the table that also changes
the pattern of the lights depending on its position, and I have to push it to
a different specific place and press a button. I repeat that many thousand
times per day.

------
bane
I help run an general purpose applied computation R&D lab for a medium sized
non-profit. In the last year we've worked in fields as far reaching as
bioinformatics to cyber defense to finance.

In the meanwhile, we've helped develop faster disease detection assays to
improving safety in transportation.

We get to play with lots of big computers, pitch new ideas, and can have
immediate impact on people's lives.

I love this job, it's probably the best job I've ever had. I've even turned
down some less appealing jobs at Google because of the range of cutting edge
things I get to work on in a normal day and the Google positions weren't
offering that. I've never been so engaged, on a daily basis. I'm long past my
honeymoon with this job and can't see an end to it. Knowing that I'm helping
people with my work makes it extra rewarding.

I've worked in similar applied R or D fields, did a stint at a couple software
companies and worked as an analyst from time to time, working on some very
hard problems. But nothing with this kind of positive impact potential.

Will I help change the world? Probably not, but I'm pretty sure I'm helping
make it a better place.

~~~
circlefavshape
How did you get this into kind of work? I've been working in dev for 20 years,
web dev since 2000, and it's pretty depressing that doing good work just means
extra profit for a shareholder :(

~~~
bane
I wouldn't think of it that way at all. Your work helps support you and your
family, and your coworkers and their families! Kids get to go to school,
parents get to provide nice homes for them, and non-kid folks get to have nice
lives, all because of your work. Sometimes, even if the work is prosaic, it
enables wonderful lives for the workers.

If you are interested in it, I would highly recommend looking at working with
National Laboratories, or companies that work with or manage National Labs.
FFRDCs are another great place to look
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federally_funded_research_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federally_funded_research_and_development_centers)

Be prepared to take a salary hit, but the work can be really rewarding (if you
end up in the right place).

------
dweekly
I run a small R&D lab for an unnamed subsidiary of the company that owns
Google. Our mandate is to come up with new technologies that change the
economics of telecoms, which, if we are successful, may help get hundreds of
millions of people online. My coworkers operate a carrier neutral metro fiber
network in Kampala and other coworkers are busy building crazy fast internet
for America.

I like this job.

~~~
mylons
well, that sounds fun.

~~~
dweekly
Yes indeed! If you'd like to know more feel free to ping me @google.com with
my HN username.

------
anoaznr
I make coffee, drink it... I also eat biscuits. Sometimes they make me write
some code, so we can buy more and better cakes. This is only the morning,
afternoon it's wine. My official title is Developer, but I call myself
"Responsable cuisine / employé du mois"

This is my first legal job, so I don't know if it's my favorite.

~~~
it_learnses
haha my favourite response.

------
begriffs
My favorite work is writing open source software. The variety of people
interacting helps make the project more general purpose. Creating software for
strangers enforces better docs. You get to work with people around the world
whose programming ability and knowledge is humbling. Everyone is intrinsically
motivated by the project and puts their best effort into what will be publicly
visible code.

I'm currently working on PostgREST, an open source server that turns any
PostgreSQL database into a RESTful API.
[http://begriffs.com/about.html](http://begriffs.com/about.html)

~~~
filsmick
How do you make money?

------
lior9999
I'm a hardware engineer at Apple on the Accessories team. This is my first job
out of college (dropped out of my PhD program to join Apple) and I absolutely
love what I do.

My team is great, everyone here is insanely knowledgeable, and the work is
very meaningful. I honestly feel like I've learned so much more in the last
year working for Apple than I have in my entire life.

------
toumhi
I currently work in a French administration predicting which companies are
likely to hire in the next 6 months (in France).

It's a long-term freelance gig in a joint venture between the french secretary
of economy and the national unemployment agency.

My job title is officially Lead Developer for the project but since we're such
a small team (the idea is to borrow the organisation and process of a startup
in a big french administration, bypassing their hellish processes), I also
help in copywriting, system administration, monitoring, and the most
interesting : machine learning using a huge amount of economic/recruitment
data to predict which companies will hire. We have pretty good results!

It's a great gig and hopefully of social value to France which needs it at the
moment (unemployment is at an all-time high right now).

~~~
gedrap
What are the use cases for this kind of data?

~~~
toumhi
The main objective of the product is to help job seekers identify which
companies are worth spending time for sending an open sollicitation.

75% of the job market is "hidden" (jobs that were filled without the company
ever posting a job ad). We help the job seekers to identify this hidden job
market.

------
ggambetta
I'm a Software Engineer at Improbable
([http://www.improbable.io](http://www.improbable.io)).

Before this I worked at Google for four years, and before that I ran a small
game development studio
([http://www.mysterystudio.com](http://www.mysterystudio.com)) for almost 10
years. Improbable gives me the best of both worlds -- the speed and the impact
your day to day work has in a startup, and the world-changing ambitions of
Google.

I get to work on very challenging technical problems, building core systems
from scratch, within an engineering culture and people of a caliber comparable
to Google's, but perhaps even more motivated because we're more invested in
the success of the company. I'm enjoying every minute of it!

~~~
anoaznr
Hey, are you the guy who wrote some articles about lag prediction in game
networking ? If yes, thanks. Helped me a lot. I'll send you cakes someday.

~~~
ggambetta
Yes, I am _that guy_! Glad to hear you enjoyed them :)

------
cruhl
I left college at the end of freshman year to work as a product/software
developer at a vehicle data company. It's an absolute blast; my team is great
and the environment couldn't be better. After 4:30, I have total freedom to
work on side projects without distraction. I'm learning more than ever before
and I'm meeting all kinds of interesting people.

~~~
gedrap
That sounds interesting! Could you tell what problems are vehicle data
companies trying to solve? Haven't heard about this field before :) thanks!

------
engi_nerd
I work as a flight test instrumentation engineer. This is an electrical
engineering equivalent of a "full stack" position because I do everything from
troubleshoot individual strain gages to analyze test data to look for trends
and causes of problems. I like this job and it's definitely my favorite
job...but then, I've only had three different jobs.

------
eldavido
Current job: leading four-person, client-focused software development/design
company. I'm the "managing partner" and spend ~80% of my time writing
code/technical architecture and 20% on personnel/payroll/admin/marketing/etc.

I'm trying to take the best parts of a law firm (explicit focus on mentorship,
got-your-back partnership mentality, treating people like skilled, autonomous
professionals, good pay) and apply it to software dev. I expect a lot out of
people but give them the tools and space necessary to get things done. We're
going to build a product in 2016.

I have about 8 yrs experience as a working dev. Last job was at a startup that
grew explosively but had massive tech/architecture problems of its own making.
I wore a lot of hats at this place over 3 yrs including dev, ops eng/head of
ops, and some product management on our API (we were a developer tools
company) but ultimately got sick of shoveling shit behind repeated poor
decisions made over many years. I was a founder before that for a company that
had a small acquisition, and before that I worked at Microsoft for a while.

Favorite kinda depends on what you value. I get the most professional
satisfaction out of my current job; we do things at a reasonable, sustainable
pace, and don't have "crunch time". OTOH there's a thrill at "up and to the
right" you get in venture tech that's hard to replicate. You'll probably make
the most money in bigco tech, but if you save and invest well in your 20s, you
can start to replace a lot of wage income with investment income pretty
rapidly in your 30s.

~~~
pinkunicorn
Curious, what % of time do you spend for admin/payroll/personnel? Would
something like Zenefits/Gusto reduce the time?

~~~
eldavido
I spend approximately 5 minutes per month on payroll - Gusto user (former
Microsoft officemate/friend is eng hire #2 there). There may be better tools
than Gusto, but it's good enough that I don't think about it.

Another point: running any kind of client service business, to a first
approximation, is 100% about getting the right kind of clients. I spent a
while a few years ago doing "contracting" for bottom-of-the-barrel Craigslist
wannabes and other jokers and it was horrible. Going from being a pure dev
employee to contracting because you 'hate office politics' is a route to
failure; it requires a lot more planning, especially over cashflow, and client
relationships.

------
RobertKerans
I do design and development at a very large electrical wholesalers. Very small
team, and internal politics works in our favour, giving us quite a lot of
control over that web part of the business. It gives us time as well; the
company is slow moving. The nature of the business means I'll hit a wall in
terms of where I can go in, I guess, the next year or so, which makes me a
little sad; I've learned a great deal, and the team is very close. I can speak
several computer languages fairly fluently now, make real things that actually
constructively help people, make their jobs easier. Eg, outside of work, I
just built a graphic UI interface/API backend for a very time consuming data
entry task my (very work-stressed) girlfriend has to do every few months,
going from photocopied pland and spreadsheets to a webapp, cutting the total
time it takes her from days to minutes; she was really happy, I was happy she
was happy. It took me an afternoon, and I couldn't really have done that a
couple of years ago without serious effort. That's due to my work environment,
mentors etc. Small things.

As an aside, programming knowledge has made me a far, far better designer;
vice versa maybe as well, maybe

------
danso
I currently teach journalism at Stanford, with a focus on computational
methods and programming. It's a good school and I like working with students,
and I can work on research and my own learning. But I'm not used to the pace
and lack of deadlines and I don't like the Bay Area compared to New York. My
favorite job at this point was working as a developer at ProPublica, for the
kind of projects we did and for being in New York.

~~~
chubot
Hm that's interesting -- what kind of programming are you teaching? Is it for
journalists per se or the people who work with them?

I would imagine there is some overlap between journalism and "data science".
Many articles about the world would benefit from statistics derived from
online data sets to back them up. But I wonder if this is really journalism,
or if it's the primary source which the journalist relies on?

There also seems to be a lot of interest in journalism and computer
security/privacy, because journalists are targets for spying. But that doesn't
sound like what you're talking about.

~~~
danso
I would define the kind of programming I focus on to be general
scripting...the coding to do a variety of information gathering (e.g.
scraping) and publishing (e.g. visualization)...I was mostly a Rubyist but
decided to go with Python for teaching because it's a lot more consistent.

The other focus I have is on SQL, which I make all of the students learn in
the required course I teach. For many students, it's the first programming
they've ever done...and it's directly applicable in data journalism work.
Here's a couple of sample midterms:

\- [http://www.padjo.org/2014-10-23/](http://www.padjo.org/2014-10-23/)

\- [http://2015.padjo.org/assignments/midterm-wsj-medicare-
walkt...](http://2015.padjo.org/assignments/midterm-wsj-medicare-walkthrough/)

------
manigandham
I'm a software developer who's built the tech for a few startups, mostly in
ad-tech, and now a founder of a new ad network focused on making better ads
and changing the ecosystem (especially fun since everyone hates ads).

In between past startups, I worked for boutique software firms making custom
software for x-ray machines, vaults used in banks and jewelry manufacturers,
and even machine vision tech used in movie production.

------
porsupah
I've been involved in a fair variety of projects, but amongst my favorites
would have to be:

\- an experimental video codec based around contours, with some fairly
tremendous potential. It works, but there's still a few years more work
required to turn it into something commercially useful. (But, with no further
funding for now, it's on hold)

\- an embedded project, developing some audience response keypads and base
stations. Nothing world-changing in the least, but a lot of fun. No OS
involved, and everything had to fit into 256K of flash, with 64K RAM
available. Designing the bootloader, a robust audio link, a scriptable
accelerometer engine, and more, with plenty of hardware involvement - mm, that
was good fun.

\- the 3DO and Mac versions of The 11th Hour, sequel to The 7th Guest. What an
amazing place to work that was.. arriving for my interview, the sense of
enthusiasm was nigh palpable. Everyone knew they could be earning way more
down in the Bay, but nobody left. Plus, coaxing 40-70fps video playback out of
an 8MHz ARM6 core was quite gratifying. ^_^ (The result of some careful
alterations to the datastream format, and a lot of assembly)

------
edoceo
I build a company, love it. This is my favourite job. Before I had one boss,
now I have 100s all asking for little things to make their lives easier. Very
gratifying.

------
dijit
I work in the video games industry;

I prefer it to every job I've ever had- but mostly for the talented people I
work with and the meritocratic mentality of the senior management at the
studio I work in.

the company also pays very little but there's a real sense of being taken care
of; things like paying my health insurance (EU; Private healthcare), matched
pension contribution, matched sum investment on my behalf, free company cinema
events every so-often, health care contribution (massages/gym allowance) along
with relocation cost and giving me a place to live when I was getting settled
in Sweden.

There is a twisted downside to this though. My job title does not say
"developer", I'm the "ops" side of a devops team handling online backend for
an upcoming video game. -- And being the bridge between the studio and
institutional bureaucracy imposed on us by a very thick layer of incompetent
control freak managers which sits above systems administrators who only sit on
2 extremes: great or utterly incompetent- which is imposed on us by the
publisher... makes my job an absolute nightmare.

It's actually enough that I'm probably going to resign very soon. Despite the
studio being awesome.

------
cdcarter
I work for a B-Corp consultancy that works exclusively with non-profits. We
implement databases and the general motto is "help you take control of your
data". My portfolio is currently all supportive housing organizations in San
Francisco (though we are a Seattle firm). We work primarily on the Salesforce
platform, thanks to their deep deep discounts and grants to non-profits.

I love my job, because it's a great blend between strategic work and technical
work. Since our clients are often running shoe-string operations that have
evolved instead of been designed, a lot of my job is convincing the client
that they could change their process instead of paying me to build a feature.

I also get a lot of time to work on open source projects. There's a quickly
growing open source community for non-profit software on the Salesforce
platform.

I used to work as a professional union stagehand, programming and operating
projection and media systems for musicals. I loved that job, but the work
wasn't stable and the hours sucked.

------
rudenoise
I'm a software engineer. I work on a contract basis, contracts last 3 months
to a year. I've recently made CI pipelines, Win 8.1 apps, IOS apps but mostly
web-apps. The pay is good and the people I work with are cool.

I don't love it though. It's OK. It'd be better to code 20% of the time and
observe, talk, think the other 80%. I think that this might make me more
efficient and more productive.

My best job was my first. A guy had a profitable web-site and no technical
knowledge, there was no notion of best-practice, and he hired me to do
everything/anything. The environment was smokey, the equipment shoddy and the
business practices disordered. I was straight out of uni and free to make any
decisions I saw fit, any mistakes were on my head.

[edit] Thinking about it, it was the shear honesty of the place. I don't think
anyone even tried to dress up what they were doing in jargon or exaggerations.
Words like 'passion' were never applied out of place.

~~~
eldavido
Have also experienced this. More of a "blue collar" feel of "it's just a job",
rather than all this loaded mission/passion/vision BS that seems to accompany
many white-collar jobs. I also find it refreshing.

Anecdotally, I've found this "honesty" more frequently in owner-operated
companies, family businesses, etc. than in "white collar" "professional"
settings. I like when people have the honesty to say, "we're doing it this way
because I want to" rather than having to dress it up in some quasi-rational,
quasi-scientific "we've evaluated the costs and benefits, and concluded that
this way is superior" when the decision was 100% emotion/preference/it's my
friend's company/we did it this way before/other silly reason.

------
noisy_boy
I currently work as a software engineer in a hedge fund on their datawarehouse
platform - most of it is written in Perl. I also code in
JavaScript/JQuery/HTML/CSS. I code all day long in Vim on a Linux system. I've
developed significant sub-components of the system and learned tons doing
that. It is pretty great.

------
Galit
I'm an entrepreneur, my current project is TimelyPick. I like my job, because
it it challenging, and I do it with passion. My current challenge is to
promote [http://www.timelypick.com/play-
solitaire](http://www.timelypick.com/play-solitaire) \- a new way to play
online solitaire card games, and I find it fascinating because it's not just
doing seo, it is also understand the world of solitaire players, what they
like and what they don't. When I tried to understand their world, I thought
why not share my findings with others, and then started to write about it, and
writing is also challenging for me.

------
aashu_dwivedi
I work on a product that monitors the client website's performance and fires
alerts when some problems are found. My official title is software engineer.

I am also a student pursuing an MS program part time. Haven't had a favorite
job yet.

------
jonathanjaeger
I work in performance-based marketing, running lead acquisition campaigns on
Facebook. I really like it because it feels like you're playing a stock market
with the fluctuating prices and algorithm changes in the market. Plus there's
the creative aspect of making the ads while also figuring out the different
targeting options that will convert.

It's my first job out of college and have been doing it for 4.5 years. I also
run a creative/music community on the side called HypedSound (soon to be
hype.co) -- hit me up if you're a Django dev ;)

------
kelt
I do general tech support for office day to day issues.

A little of everything, from printers to network/servers for the past 14
years(2 job switch so far). I love helping people resolve their issues, I
would say I love my job but a recent switch to a oil and gas company seems to
have been a bad choice.

Headcount cutting and all means I have a lot less support issues to deal with
and more HN time.

I have this impression that most developers in any company would be more or
less quite 'technical'. Is there any need for tech support role in bigger
corporations?

------
FigBug
I currently do contracting, mostly in the Pro Audio industry. I do VST/AU
plugins, control surface software, digital mixers, speaker processors, effects
processors, etc.

I do enjoy it, even though it pays less than most other industries.

Favourite thing I worked on was a 48 channel touring console. Unfortunately is
was cancelled shortly after launch and all released units (except 1) were
purchased back.

I also worked on some pretty fancy digitally controlled line arrays and
subwoofers. The aiming they could do was pretty cool.

------
notnownikki
I help run a CI system based on the openstack-infra CI components, for a major
provider of openstack based services.

The great thing about it is meeting with the developers, asking them "What CI
problems are holding you up? Anything we can improve?" and making their
answers my priorities. We always end up improving things and making people's
lives easier.

It's not so much the technology, although I do love that; it's being able to
make a team's working life easier and more enjoyable.

------
TurboHaskal
I did CRUD for some local shop as a solo developer.

I quickly got bored because of the lack of intellectual stimulation. Fourteen
monad tutorials later the whole stack was written in Haskell.

I wish I had a job.

~~~
tome
I hope you mean you _wrote_ fourteen monad tutorials.

------
TACIXAT
Security Analyst. I audit applications and security related designs in order
to find flaws in them. I enjoy it a lot. I get to exploit a lot of interesting
flaws in a wide variety of applications.

I used to reverse malware. That job had a lot of other tedious
responsibilities, so I'm a lot happier where I am.

I'm also building a web application in my spare time. Getting close to
launching it. This is probably the most fulfilling work I do.

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drakonka
I work as a build engineer at a game development company. I do like it because
I have a great opportunity to learn and grow, which is possibly the most
important thing to me in a job. I'm encouraged to think about what I want to
be doing long term and move in that direction. Right now I deal mostly with
build tools and automated testing.

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Overtonwindow
I am the Director of Government Relations for a hospital. I enjoy it very
much. My favorite job was being a stay-at-home dad.

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haseeb1431
Develop different financial products and provide business intelligence.
Software Development manager with 4 direct reports in 3 sparsely geo-located
engineering team.

It is OK as long as I am earning enough to have good life.

I love to develop products that are being utilized by common people and it
improves their lifestyle.

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Zanta
I'm a mechatronics designer at a robotics startup. It's a junior 'jack-of-all-
trades' position: mechanical design, testing and automation, and hardware
troubleshooting. I'm still pretty new but I like the project and I like the
variety of work.

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gmays
I'm a product manager at GoDaddy and love be the level of influence I have and
role I play in making our customers successful.

My favorite job is a tie between what I'm doing now and my time in the Marine
Corps. The Marine Corps was more fun, but it wasn't sustainable.

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a3n
SWQA on medical devices. All manual testing. It's pleasant enough, but I'm
really gratified by the social contribution.

My favorite job was writing test software at Boeing for 747-400, 757, 767 and
777, in the early nineties.

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ycosynot
I make little websites which I don't know if people will care about. Enjoyment
will depend on the millions I manage to rake in.

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awl130
why do you ask?

