11 ms·
Poll: Where do you work?
Just wondering how much of HN is at one of the web majors or doing their own startup?
- fredleblanc 16y agoI work at a big-ish ad agency, but I aspire to do something more.
- sterling 16y agoParis, France - contract web programmer
- Dilpil 16y agoHigh frequency trading
- jacquesm 16y agoHow about adding 'small company, no longer a start-up'?
- frederickcook 16y agoYou must mean "lifestyle business"? (kidding)
- rudd 16y agoWhat about if we're part-web, part-not?
- nailer 16y agoContractor? Also why is Microsoft in with the web companies?
- pushtheenvelope 16y agoLet's see, they have Bing and Hotmail which are significant web operations.
- geoffw8 16y ago...but also Windows 7, Microsoft Office/Exchange... etc
- kevinstubbs 16y agoThere's also Internet Explorer...
- nailer 16y agoThose aren't internet apps.
- geoffw8 16y agoErr, yeah, thats my point
- Shamiq 16y agoAnd CRM Online! :D
- fierarul 16y ago>are significant web operations. How are they significant: by the profit they bring, by the market share or by the investment made by the company? Personally I never associate Microsoft with the web. It's either desktop OS or Xbox.
- agalande 16y agohotmail is the most popular web based email in the world, internet explorer is the most popular browser in the world, bing wich also powers yahoo accounts for about a quarter of searches in the US, and ten there is windows live, azure, skydrive, etc. Much bigger than most significant web operations imo
- evanmoran 16y agoNot to mention Sharepoint and all the new Office Web Apps.
- jbhelms 16y agoOn contract with HP during the day, but I have a startup in my spare time.
- bguthrie 16y agoConsultant/contractor/hired gun.
- hammerdr 16y agoSad that there seems to be so few of us on HN :(
- bherms 16y agohttp://igodigital.com http://igodigital.com
- huhtenberg 16y agoMay want to add "Other" as an option. Consider a smaller company that develops a couple of established products. Or one-person consulting shops. Or contract developers, etc. In short - just add "Other" :)
- j_baker 16y agoNot to mention "unemployed".
- jessriedel 16y agoOr "student".
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- pavel_lishin 16y agoOr "hey buddy, spare some change?"
- broofa 16y agoAnd the counter part to that, "Work? Already sold my company, suckers!"
- notyourwork 16y agoWhere does a university development position fall within this realm?
- geebee 16y agoI put it under non-web company, though now that you mention it, a university isn't really a "company." Seems better than "other", though, since it falls under the same general area.
- lionheart 16y agoStartup founder (and sole employee) here. Interesting poll, but at first I thought you meant "where" as in what location. That's a very interesting question that I'd like to hear answered. Especially if you're freelance, on your own, remote, or otherwise don't have an office to go to. What I've noticed is that I can't seem to work in the same physical spot for more than 2 months in a row or so. After that all my creativity seems to drain out and I can't get anything done. As soon as I move to another spot, I'm back in business. So I find myself hopping every 2-3 months between different coffee shops, tea shops, restaurants and coworking spaces in my area. I always wondered if anybody else has the same thing. Sorry, this is kinda off-topic. Maybe I should make a work-location poll.
- thetrumanshow 16y agoI have a similar experience. I work full time for a BigCo, so I have to work at finding spots off campus where I can go and comfortably code for an hour or so during lunch. It has been a non-trivial venture, living in a not-so-tech-friendly area. After a while, I become apathetic to the place I am working at over lunch and need to move to keep interest... else I will just decide to skip the offsite work and sit at my BigCo desk and vegitate.
- nostrademons 16y agoI've noticed the same thing, but found that I can get around it by simply moving to a different room in the same house. When I was doing my startup, I tended to move my primary workspace between living room floor, chair & makeshift desk, bed, and outside every month or two. And even working in a big company now, I've moved desks about 10 times since joining a year ago, and the longest I spent in any one location was about 7 months (and I felt pretty drained by the end of that).
- cperciva 16y agoI was confused too, so I decided to create the work-location: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2146037 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2146037
- blizkreeg 16y agoMy experience has been the same, though I'm only working from these locations few hours a week on my side project. Your comment made me wonder though about the the state of affairs at most workplaces. How we spend 8-9 hours chained to one desk and one office/location for months and years on end is to me, puzzling. I wonder what the results would be like if employees had the flexibility to work from wherever, for extended periods of time, back to their desk for a few months, and off again.
- bartonfink 16y agoNon-web company seems awfully broad - there's probably some interesting information lost in there.
- citricsquid 16y agoLong term contractor for a vc backed company, I think? I guess I'm not sure if that would count as working like an employee, or just being a normal contractor? Didn't vote, don't think any fit me :-(
- seamlessvision 16y agoadult industry.
- fs111 16y agoSince you get upvotes and nobody dares to ask, I step in: What exactly? Front-end? Back-end? Content delivery? Or nothing technical at all?
- statictype 16y agoSo I guess "Other web bigco" was your option.
- Griever 16y agoGovernment contracting. Can't wait to get out.
- leftnode 16y agoAt a company that was once a startup, is now highly profitable, but venture backed. And my side businesses, all of which are profitable because they're bootstrapped.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- klinquist 16y agoCisco
- klinquist 16y agoCisco
- everyplace 16y agoI'm the Director of Design Technology at WSJ.
- lukejduncan 16y agoFord
- revorad 16y agoWow, I didn't expect so many (max right now) votes for Non-web company. It'd be nice to hear more about these companies for a change. Who are you guys and what companies are you running?
- englishVoodoo 16y agoi'm the art director on the digital department of a publishing house. Many non-web companies do web as well, just not their primary business.
- thetrumanshow 16y agoFire up another poll and link to it here.
- TeHCrAzY 16y agoI fall into that category: I work for a medium size company earning a fairly high wage, and simply enjoy the huge amount of knowledge that can be gained from here.
- krschultz 16y agoDefense company, designing complex things out of exotic materials that survive big explosions. Don't really want to be more specific than that. I used to work for Bug Labs during college, but actually graduated as a mechanical engineer and went into that industry for at least the time being.
- stonemetal 16y agoDefense company, distributed sensing and targeting.
- atlantic 16y agoFreelancer. Working from Europe with web startups in the US. MS stack only.
- heresy 16y agoWorkflow systems for defense contractors (awfully vague, sorry).
- prawn 16y agoSmall web company with some side-projects. Not really a startup though.
- philikon 16y agoMozilla
- st3fan 16y ago<AOL>ME TOO</AOL>
- Luyt 16y agoParttime in-house developer at an educational/training company, parttime independent freelance developer.
- msy 16y agoMajor Newspaper.
- cwb71 16y agoI can’t decide whether to pick “non-web company” or “other.”
- bhousel 16y agoyou can pick both
- kunley 16y agoI wonder how many of us are bootstraping own product while feeding the family by consulting.
- sterling 16y agoI am
- kunley 16y agoWell I for example am doing third round of consulting (several months each) to fund my thing and not become crazy or bankrupt. I'd say - it teaches patience over other things.
- webjprgm 16y agoMy strategy is get $ at a good company first while ideas gel since my nerves just aren't good enough to try the consulting + start company thing. (I did consider it though!)
- zwieback 16y agoHewlett Packard
- leif 16y agotokutek clicked "startup (employee)" and "non-web company"
- rednum 16y agoI think adding student would be a good option.
- x0t 16y agoConsulting by night to bootstrap a couple of products while working a day job as the "Infrastructure Administrator" (read: netadmin managing linux boxen) for a small municipality to feed the wife and son. Not sure when the day job will end, but it's soul sucking work.
- eitally 16y agoSanmina-SCI
- blankenship 16y agoI'm going to guess I'm in the HN minority—Design Director for a Southern East Coast church.
- fs111 16y agoHold on! Churches have Design Directors in the US? Wow, just wow!
- brc 16y agoI sell plenty of web software to churches. My experience is that many are big into web as a way of both organising and delivering content to their existing congregation, but also as a low-impact way of extending their reach both within and beyond their communities. Then there's all the side-charity-businesses that churches often run, like adoption services, funeral services, education, etc etc etc. While some are often done by a tech-savvy member of the church on a strict budget, others are built by teams and seemingly have healthy budgets. In short - www and churches is a growing segment in my anecdotal experience. Put it this way, I see more churches than, say, auto mechanics or pet shops.
- vehementi 16y agoSAP
- optimusclimb 16y agoSigh, these poll options seem to confirm to me just how myopic many HN and startup people are about the software world. Believe it or not, there is a LOT of software that gets written that either is not "web", or related to a startup. Additionally, the people that write it do find the content at HN relevant and interesting. I found myself at a party in SF on New Years at an apartment that housed a startup as well as its founders. While meeting someone there, the conversation went like this: "Oh hey, are you part of the company here too?" "No, I'm in a different startup" "Oh cool, YC?" "Yeah, what YC class are you?" "Actually, I'm not in a startup, I work for..." The guy turned his head and walked away. Sorry boys and girls, but you're not all Mark Zuckerberg just because you're doing the startup thing, and the rest of us that write code aren't relics of another era. Happy hacking.
- jacquesm 16y agoWould you wager there is more software written that is not web related and that it collectively makes more money than the stuff that is?
- treeface 16y agoHow would you even begin to collect the data necessary to make an informed decision on this?
- jacquesm 16y agoI'm aware of one side of the equation, many millions of dynamic websites. My wager would be that websites and web related stuff (also intranet) now makes up the bulk of the software written but that the money is still made on the other side.
- eru 16y ago> websites and web related stuff (also intranet) now makes up the bulk of the software written [...] Are you going to measure by line or byte or syntax-tree node or similar? Are we going to include throw-away scripts? What about zeroth order functional programming (i.e. spreadsheets)? Anyway, I'd also wager that there's more money made outside of the web. (Though, how do we classify, e.g. Apple app-store sales?) For the wager about for what the majority of software is written, we'd need some clearer vision of what we're talking about before. Let's agree on some definitions (and an arbiter), then we can put up some odds and money.
- lt_kije 16y agoUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.
- harryh 16y agofoursquare! (ps: we're hiring! http://foursquare.com/jobs/ http://foursquare.com/jobs/)
- evanmoran 16y agoThis company rocks!
- kevinburke 16y agoJust sent in my resume.
- mikerg87 16y agoHave Laptop, Will Travel I work wherever I am when I need to get something done. Office, patio, airport waiting area, starbucks, DMV...
- jonhendry 16y agoHarvard Med.
- sradnidge 16y agoDeutsche Bank
- larrik 16y agoNo one here works at Apple? No wonder iTunes is so bad on Windows.
- raminnaimi 16y agoTinyPrints
- sudonim 16y agoLol... there are more startup founders than startup employees. A lot of 1 person startups out there?
- eru 16y agoGood analysis. No `lol' necessary, though.
- njharman 16y agono it was crap observation, lol is appropriate. 2 or more cofounders per startup is so common that there are regular cycles of "how to pick ur cofounder" articles followed.
- arn 16y agonot necessarily. startup founder with any number of employees may be more likely to read the site than his/her employees.
- phlux 16y agoMaybe the employees aren't on HN whereas the founders are.
- russnewcomer 16y agoI work for a non-web IT services company in the midwest. I hack a couple of side projects, and would like to get back into software development. Is there anyone else here that's in the midwest, or is it all coastal?
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y agoTwin Cities and Chicago areas seem well represented here. I'm at a Minnesota medical devices manufacturer writing controls software.
- russnewcomer 16y agoI'm in Omaha. I know of a couple of startup type companies here, but most development jobs are for BigCos. Not a big IT community here that I know of, but I just moved here.
- dave_h 16y agoSt. Louis, MO
- idrinkmusic 16y agoMulti national company
- notyourwork 16y agoOhio State
- marlinduke 16y agoA top 10 medical school's surgery and genomic sciences departments
- danieldk 16y agoUniversity of Groningen, The Netherlands
- wensheng 16y agoA Semiconductor company (mxim)
- fierarul 16y agoWhat's the difference between 'Non-web company' and 'Other'? Is Microsoft a 'web bigco'?
- njharman 16y agodoes ms derive the majority if its revenue from the internet? does ms predate the WWW? no, ms is not a web bigco.
- dholowiski 16y agoMissing option: None
- fs111 16y agoGPS/mapping business
- bourbaki 16y agoI'm a dreamer. (Kidding, poor startup founder)
- thesteg 16y agoAustrian Beverage Company. Any guesses? ;-)
- bpyne 16y agouniversity IT department
- kessler 16y agoSeatGeek
- adamdecaf 16y agoWhy isn't there an option for students?
- forwardslash 16y agoMicrosoft Vendor
- justin_vanw 16y agoeBay (ex-milo)
- joxenford 16y agoRovi
- sasvari 16y agoaerospace industry
- weicool 16y agoIt's lovely that the creator of this poll neglected to put down Apple as an option.
- lhnn 16y agoLarge insurance company with a niche member base, multi-billion dollar revenue. Web/Voice is the only client portal we have, though, so you could almost call us a web company.
- netik 16y agoTwitter.
- scottnguyen 16y agoIBM
- knitsu 16y agoApple
- gaustin 16y agoOther in my case means walking around in bad neighborhoods, hoping to get shot so I don't have to go to my crap job. Every cloud has a silver lining.
- pluies 16y agoNow for "other", there's something: I work for the IT dept of a French administration while finishing a software engineering degree. :)
- statictype 16y agoAmazon deserves to be listed here, I think.
- atuladhar 16y agoWhat's the difference between "Non-web company" and "Other"? I work in the financial services industry, for example.
- Semiapies 16y agoHmm. When "Other" is the highest result (at the time of my posting this), this clearly needs better categories.
- mbowcock 16y agoAcushnet company. Sporting goods manufacturer most famous for Titleist golf balls.
- brudgers 16y agoOther: architect
- elliottcarlson 16y agoI work for a pharma to medical professional agency - this includes web development, desktop applications, mobile development (both web and app) as well as convention related applications (kiosks, booth entertainment, etc). While the subject matter might not be overall interesting, I get to use interesting technologies; for example I am currently playing with the Kinect and RFID technologies to do R&D for convention use.
- webjprgm 16y agoApple. How do you count that? (B/f that I would have selected "Startup (employee)" for Real Estate Data X-change, inc.)
- qusiba 16y agoI can't find a work.
- kashif 16y agoDirecti
- mbesto 16y agoDoes someone want to just conduct a google spreadsheets poll?
- pqs 16y agoAcademia.
- avstraliitski 16y agoMobile video specialist.
- retro212 16y agoI'm working at http://jupiterit.com http://jupiterit.com , company behind the http://javascriptmvc.com http://javascriptmvc.com
- ompemi 16y agoCERN