Ask HN: Who has an interesting job?

Well, it's interesting to me.

Job title: network engineer

What I really do: code, solve a wide variety of problems MacGyver-style[1], debug other people's code, work on a vast array of systems from embedded to HVAC to electrical to cloud, crawl around in tunnels, attics, roofs, and spaces.

It's pretty demanding and intellectually-stimulating. It demands I be a generalist with a decent level of expertise about a wide variety of topics. It took decades to get here. Now I get joy out of mentoring younger colleagues.

I don't think I could work on any one thing for even a year.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGyver

I discovered the world of medical devices by accident and it’s great. When the bosses are nice, it’s pure heaven.

I write code in C# or C++ (but also Python, pipelines, scripts, JS, etc.) and it needs to be somewhat efficient. We all follow the same rules (62304 especially), we must write unit tests, and make sure that my features are properly integrated at all steps of the development up to the release, and even after when you must validate it with the authorities, when you have bugs, etc. If you're in a small company, everyone can be involved in all the processes and it's fun because you go much further than mere development (like preparing reports for various agencies all over the world, or helping PhDs integrate their code in the application).

We have commit hooks to check and format code, pipelines must be green. You cannot cheat because someone will find out. And you can’t pretend that your code worked once on your computer because the test team will refuse your code if it breaks anything. It’s more rigorous at all steps of the development.

Last but not least we have specifications for everything because it’s the law. Overall it’s what software engineering should have been all the time. It feels like working at NASA even if it's only a stupid desktop tool or application.

Of course everything is not perfect, you can stumble on assholes like every other company, but it's not everywhere. I’m happy to go to work every day, I may have saved a life or two with my code, and that's a good feeling.

My experience comes from having worked with the biggest assholes on the planet at different companies. To answer your question, I would say that an interesting job is rigorous, peaceful, and has some kind of meaning.

Edit: as another guy said, I too settled for lesser wage to work for a company that would not destroy my soul and spirit. That's important too.

I went from software engineering to navigating people through German bureaucracy. It started as a simple blog, but applied a lot of software engineering knowledge to the problems I face. Simple things like using calculated variables in my content, monitoring German legal texts for changes, and building calculators and letter generators for my readers. I also implement more complex things like a custom static site generator that lints content. It keeps the work varied and fun.

More and more, I also build contacts in and around Berlin's government to effect change at a lower level, instead of building a nice layer on top of a crap bureaucracy.

It has been my full time job since 2020, and it's still going pretty solid. I absolutely love it, in part because the work itself is fun, and in part because I have a kind and grateful audience.

I describe the why and the how here: https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/all-about-berlin

I was a helpdesk dude, worked as domain admin for a handful of companies and have worked from my homedesk. I gave it up, settled for lesser wage to break out that boring chore every day. Now i am a service technician for copy machines again. That job i did 20 years ago and re-entered that business. For me its more interesting to deal with people face to face and to leave the house. Gone are the days i had to stay on helpdesk phone until evening, even when nothing was to be done. Sure, the machines are heavy, i have bring them to the customers but its a free workout. This job demanding that i plan my working day on my own, collect parts, read manuals to solve problems and using my experience of the old days, which surprisingly works. In between i have coffee breaks, talk to customers and also sell new machines by just advocating them. The service dude sells more than the sales agent. Sure, its stress sometimes, up to 6 service calls i got every day, including driving to customers, traffic jam etc. But, now, for the sake of the OPs questions, i am happy with what i am doing. In my early 50ies, i plan to retire with 60 years. That long i think i can do that job. My company can offer me a part time job for delivering toner and ink cartridges, a part time job when i am officially retired. Its germany here, my pension funds will be payed when i reach 67 years old, but i am free to quit full-time every moment, but pension will be deducted so that part time job will compensate it.

Not me, but I knew a guy who liked tuning pipe organs. He was working with a Master and said it paid better than being a musician.

For a while as a student I worked for a nursery that supplied plants to restaurants we would go to when they were vacuuming the floors and stuff. Pick up all the plants, take them outside for water and light for a couple hours, and set them back up. Just reminiscing about it last night at a dinner where they had poinsettias everywhere.

It's a tough job but somebody has to do it :)

Edit: Also when I was in college in north Florida, we used to drive rental cars back from points south where the popular destinations and resorts were. We would crowd into one car and head down to Tampa or Orlando and come back with half a dozen cars or more.

I have gone from being an Infrastructure Team Leader looking after 120 servers to a Lecturer and teach around 120 students.I get a much greater sense of fulfillment working with people.

I'm also surprised to find teaching is harder work than a 24/7 saas. You can become removed from your users in IT. Your users in teaching are right in front of you with all their joy, stuff of life, and drama.

Two things come to mind… my work and my involvement with FIRST robotics.

I’m the Director of IT Operations for a contract research organization (CRO). While that might not sound inherently interesting it’s deeply fulfilling. My role involves building and maintaining software that help facilitate critical research for NIH and NCI, often supporting breakthroughs in healthcare and science. I love the intersection of technology, problem-solving, and enabling teams to deliver life-changing results by helping change the standard of care for people affected by cancer.

Outside of work, I’m heavily involved with FIRST robotics, which is a worldwide competitive robotics program for high school age students. It’s an amazing initiative where students design, build, and program robots to compete in team-based challenges. And it’s very fun. I mentor students, guiding them through the technical challenges we come up against and help them discover their own potential. Watching young minds light up is very rewarding. Being a small part of that community is one of the most rewarding things I do.

Patent attorney here. I think fulfillment comes from people whom you work with first than the work itself. Rarely does one find good work with good people. I've been lucky that way. My work allows me to use my technical skills, my writing skills, and my 'laywering' skills during prosecutions. Every day is a new day discussing ideas, inventions, or just writing about it - what we call 'patent applications'. To add to that, I work with the best team one could possibly ask for where we demand the best from each other always and we're always learning from each other. Our offsite outings are a blast as well each year!

I closed out a successful investment career to go to college (never went) and ended up a professor of engineering. Then job is mostly testing new ideas and technologies and writing about it. Its a lot of freedom to play, the ability to mentor hand selected students through undergraduate (1-2yr) masters (2 yr) and PhD (4-6 year) sets of projects. Thank to my background I don’t work too hard to find funding, and because this is my 2nd yolo career, I’m not stressed in the way many academics can be. I started my academic career at MIT, but while my work thrived the place was a pressure cooker. Note I’m at a growing regional research university. I use the time this gets back to start a lot of side projects in areas totally unrelated to my PhD. I travel a lot.

It’s fun. I’m never bored. I’d never have imagined this would be my life.

I have switched a few jobs already. I have never had job fulfillment which led to my conclusion that there is no perfect job. perhaps I should focus on my side projects.

I went from engineer to manager to director to VP of Eng to advisor. I am now bootstrapping a startup alongside the advisory work.

I love building and coding has always drawn me in. I also love working with people so managing engineers and later whole teams turned out to be fulfilling. Now as an advisor I get to pick projects that have particular aspects of management that I liked and companies need. Along the way I learned that I like being a teacher and enjoy recruiting. Both of these things surprised me.

Also I have more time left over and am getting back to the roots of building things.

Along the way I learned a ton. I had to change my mindset numerous times. It was not easy going and there was a lot of effort and frustration along the way. Building a business involves marketing and selling and those are the things that come hardest to me. However, I even found those parts to be fulfilling in the right ratio with building.

Key thing is realizing that past a certain point more money does not translate in more happiness. If you can define what you might like doing, and can build up some cash reserves, give the new passion a go. It feels dangerous and will require a lot of work, but if it works out you’ll be glad. If it does not work out you can always go back to what you did before.

"Interest" usually comes from within, when you have agency and see the results of your work.

One of the most interesting periods of my work was when my cross-border e-commerce business grew too fast, and we started to outgrow our warehouse. We designed so many ideas to save space and optimize work, it almost doubled our efficiency. I remember drawing some sliding rows and robotic shelves, though it didn't come to that. I was tired but happy, and the work was one of the most interesting in my life. Now, if I say, "I have an interesting job, it's in Warehouse Automation", you'd think I'm crazy, right?

Write code for an Acoustics firm. They are specialists in acoustic design and control systems for large spaces (Airports, Amusement Parks, Auditoriums, Cathedrals etc). Requirements change from site to site. So get to travel to really cool places and hang out with creative types (architects, musicians, artists etc) the whole day. Avg pay and unpredictable business cycles but work is super satisfying and fun.

I work with technology and research management at a multi national industrial company. This includes strategy and roadmapping for specific products, but also broadly following research trends and networking with universities. I did a phd in theoretical computer science and stumbled into by accident. It is interesting following research but also see it applied and working with business from the ground up. It is a lot of stakeholder management and knowledge dissemination which I enjoy. Lots of internal networking and relations and informal power. Besides job, I am on the board a handful of volunteer organizations or non-profits. Last year I also taught a semester which I missed a lot from academia. I need many different things to keep my interest so the job works well for me.

In this thread: typical jobs, nothing really that interesting…

I work for a FAANG, and I really like it so far. I spent the first 10 years of my career working at shitty non scale up startups, the next ten years in and out of big companies and (somewhat unsuccessful) scaleups, and I'm enjoying the challenges of working on a big cloud computing platform.

I've never minded working with old legacy code and tangly messes, and there's a lot less (definitely not zero!) bullshit at a FAANG.

By good fortune I happen to join a multi-national organisation at the birth of our cloud migration strategy and quickly established myself as SME on IaC, pipelines, observability, etc.

Now I'm tech lead in numerous cloud projects, hold workshops to share my knowledge (reduce the bus factor), and even adopted some eager mentees along the way.

It's interesting to me and certainly fulfilling to be laying the foundations of such an epic journey at a multi-billion Euro company.

I really enjoyed being a DevOps consultant some years ago. Traveling to many different states (and that one time I traveled to India), spending time in different workplaces, and giving engineers an excuse to work on some really cool shit while leveling them (and myself) up in the process was deeply satisfying.

Traveling and working with others face to face was a big part of the job I enjoyed; COVID destroyed that.

I swing between hating my job and loving it. Sometimes it’s super interesting, but other times it’s either too boring or too demanding. I am an anaesthetic assistant. If I’m learning how to master a new piece of technology, or showing other people how to use new technology then I’m usually pretty engaged and find it interesting. If I’m doing stuff that requires me to be alert at all times whilst simultaneously ensuring maximum efficiency then I enjoy the challenges that come with that. If I’m seeing an unusual surgical procedure for the first time I can find that interesting. However, if I’m helping in a 12 hour craniotomy, then I’m usually bored out of my mind with very little to do. Equally, if I’m helping with an acute clot retrieval in a 94 year old with dementia who’s case bumps a healthy person waiting for a knee or hip replacement, I think it’s shit and that healthcare doesn’t spend enough time reflecting on the fact that just because you can do a procedure doesn’t mean you should. Not everyone can or should be saved, and when healthcare works hard and wastes resources on prolonging suffering so a few family members can avoid experiencing the feelings of loss and grief for a couple of extra days, I absolutely hate my job.

I suspect this is meant as "interesting to others". I find my job interesting in software development. Many others doing the same job may not. Somehow I have always found interest in it: from self-learning on 8-bit home computers, and co-op internships, all the way for decades in my career.

Currently, I'm 'de-obfuscating' a codebase that was unintentionally obfuscated by having a list of 'steps' that are composed into 'pipelines' and share a communication datastructure. People in general are really bad at making DSLs (see Greenspun's tenth rule[0]). If you've ever used a framework that encodes coarse instructions in JSON, you get the gist of where this was headed. The direct way would be to have humans write out the equivallent in plain statically-typed code without shared mutable state. Using an LLM may be of help but still needs human checking. So I instead made a code generator that uses the DSL structures at runtime and self-inspection to write the equivalent plain code. It's not perfect, so always generates from the DSL structures and compares that to the hand-made implementation by showing a diff of the overridden sections. This way it stay's in sync until we flip the switch to use the new code.

TL;DR - There are no small parts, only small actors.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule

My work is my work.

My jobs are my jobs…day jobs. No matter how much I love them.

I am lucky to have work and jobs that enable me to pursue it.

Good luck.