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If you expect the interesting work to land in your lap you are either one of those people that redefine (maybe invent) entire fields of research or you're incre

If you expect the interesting work to land in your lap you are either one of those people that redefine (maybe invent) entire fields of research or you're incredibly lucky. In other words, your work speaks for itself and people want to give you more of it. For most people we need a job in order to keep up with the rising costs of living. If, however, you're like 99.99% of people and are good at what you do then you'll have to find what is interesting about the job. I've worked at a company that replaced clipboards with iPads in a factory. If all it was to me was a form-builder application and the technology under it I would have been turned off ages ago. But I was incredibly curious as to why the product as successful and growing, what our customers liked about it, and I pushed for developers to visit the factories and see how people used the app. The results were quite surprising and it fed out team with dozens of ideas. Technology for technology's sake is fun for a while but will eventually bore you. It helps to have a reason to work on what you do. Which I think is part of what OP is saying but I think you can find the reason in a "boring" job as well. You just have to be curious and look for it. Although avoiding working at feature factories where the developers are just cogs in a Kafka-esque Agile Machine is a whole other can of worms. The OP's strategy seems like an interesting way to avoid it. Best of luck!

exikyut 6y ago
Random idle/curious question: "a factory" doesn't describe the roughness of the working conditions, but assuming a baseline of a mildly industrial context, how did you mitigate the risk of dropped or damaged iPads? (As an aside, it's kind of a pity that there isn't a standard drop-proof tablet out there that can be deployed without thought in these kinds of situations.)
- jorvi 6y ago
  Probably iPads encased in rugged cases / mounts.
  - agentultra 6y ago
    That was what most of our customers did for on-the floor tablets. They would also use mounted TVs and have their scrum around our app's dashboard page which was something none of the developers had thought of.
- falcor84 6y ago
  I'll just put this here: https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-rugged-tablets https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-rugged-tablets
  - exikyut 6y ago
    Date: Dec 2020 Header image: stock photo showing tablet running Windows XP and Java application Article relevance to market: 101% In all fairness, this is *closes ad popup* an interesting page, thanks.
bumby 6y ago
>you'll have to find what is interesting about the job. This reminds me of the advice that one needs to cultivate their passion rather than expect to stumble upon it.
- codethief 6y ago
  Funny, the comment reminded me of a slightly different piece of advice which goes like this: Decide not what passion you should follow or what goals you want to achieve but what problems you want in your life. I think the first time I read about this idea was in this article by Mark Manson: https://markmanson.net/question https://markmanson.net/question
z3ncyberpunk 6y ago
So you were able to find something interesting in (somewhat meaningful but still) boring work. that speaks to you in a positive light but it doesn't change the overall point that the OP was trying to make
manquer 6y ago
It doesn't have to be interesting in a field defining level always. Purely technical problems interests some people too, it really depends on the person finds finds interesting and boring as your examples describe. You can find it, or as OP is trying it can find you . I am not sure I agree with premise that most of us have put up with the dullest job to keep up with cost of living. There are plenty of tech jobs out there beyond the valley, in other parts of the world which are definitely interesting and pay reasonably above cost of living requirements. It is not so clear cut to me that mpst don't have some freedom in choosing what kind of work to do without going to the highest paying boring one, tech is not minimum wage sector where we have little to no choice and limited in mobility. The cost of living is not that high that we have zero choice, other sectors don't pay as much in the same areas and they are able to manage after all.

exikyut 6y ago

Random idle/curious question: "a factory" doesn't describe the roughness of the working conditions, but assuming a baseline of a mildly industrial context, how did you mitigate the risk of dropped or damaged iPads? (As an aside, it's kind of a pity that there isn't a standard drop-proof tablet out there that can be deployed without thought in these kinds of situations.)

jorvi 6y ago
Probably iPads encased in rugged cases / mounts.
- agentultra 6y ago
  That was what most of our customers did for on-the floor tablets. They would also use mounted TVs and have their scrum around our app's dashboard page which was something none of the developers had thought of.
falcor84 6y ago
I'll just put this here: https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-rugged-tablets https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-rugged-tablets
- exikyut 6y ago
  Date: Dec 2020 Header image: stock photo showing tablet running Windows XP and Java application Article relevance to market: 101% In all fairness, this is *closes ad popup* an interesting page, thanks.

bumby 6y ago

>you'll have to find what is interesting about the job. This reminds me of the advice that one needs to cultivate their passion rather than expect to stumble upon it.

codethief 6y ago
Funny, the comment reminded me of a slightly different piece of advice which goes like this: Decide not what passion you should follow or what goals you want to achieve but what problems you want in your life. I think the first time I read about this idea was in this article by Mark Manson: https://markmanson.net/question https://markmanson.net/question

z3ncyberpunk 6y ago

So you were able to find something interesting in (somewhat meaningful but still) boring work. that speaks to you in a positive light but it doesn't change the overall point that the OP was trying to make

manquer 6y ago

It doesn't have to be interesting in a field defining level always. Purely technical problems interests some people too, it really depends on the person finds finds interesting and boring as your examples describe. You can find it, or as OP is trying it can find you . I am not sure I agree with premise that most of us have put up with the dullest job to keep up with cost of living. There are plenty of tech jobs out there beyond the valley, in other parts of the world which are definitely interesting and pay reasonably above cost of living requirements. It is not so clear cut to me that mpst don't have some freedom in choosing what kind of work to do without going to the highest paying boring one, tech is not minimum wage sector where we have little to no choice and limited in mobility. The cost of living is not that high that we have zero choice, other sectors don't pay as much in the same areas and they are able to manage after all.