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Most people are probably best off with good jobs that sound boring but are highly demanded. Could be plumber or software engineer or accountant or whatever. Pe
by chmod600 5y ago
Most people are probably best off with good jobs that sound boring but are highly demanded. Could be plumber or software engineer or accountant or whatever.
People are happy to see you, happy when you do your job, and pay you well. People work as a team rather than compete. Don't underestimate the value of pleasantness in day to day interactions.
Cool sounding jobs are competitive and you are likely to be treated poorly unless you rise to the top (normally through brutal competition). All you get is a cool sounding job to mention at parties (when you have time to go).
- thewarrior 5y agoDoes software engineering sound boring ?
- wincy 5y agoSure, people don’t get excited and ask me more when I say I work on mortgage software. If I said I’m a game developer you can bet that’d be way less “boring” sounding.
- ipaddr 5y agoMortgage software actually sounds interesting and complex. Game developer working for someone else sounds boring.
- afavour 5y agoThere is no way that being a game developer does not sound interesting and complex. I say this as someone that doesn’t even play many games! But it’s something almost everyone has a point of reference for and has (hopefully?) enjoyed at some point in the past.
- tharkun__ 5y agoI would say it depends. Never say never. Personally mortgage software sounds complex but boring to me. Game developer sounded interesting and complex before I knew more about it. Now it's more boring as in after knowing the death march culture I don't want to know more. I guess your parent meant that too by 'boring'. If you work for yourself or with like minded indie developers that sounds more interesting to me. It can definitely be complex.
- nitrogen 5y agoHaving also worked on mortgage software, there are ways to "sell" it -- the people your software helps are getting homes when they might not otherwise have been able. That's pretty exciting for them.
- ipaddr 5y agoWorking by yourself (or with friends) you get to make the engine and that's where the fun is. You can write really unique stuff that may or may not work. Working for a big studio is like creating a movie with directors and for some that feels like fun but working on mortgage software is about data normalization which can offer it's own high.
- pugets 5y agoNot to the average person. Even CS freshmen seem to think game design means playing early prototypes of Grand Theft Auto 6.
- toast0 5y agoYes. Sometimes, when my spouse is really having trouble sleeping, she asks me to tell her about something I'm working on. About 30 seconds in, dead asleep.
- thewarrior 5y agoWhen I have trouble sleeping I stay up to read HackerNews to find out what others are working on :P
- MonaroVXR 5y agoYes and it's 7AM. Hackernews is interesting
- rcfaj7obqrkayhn 5y agothe opposite for me: reading HN before bed just make me feel like a lazy slob and makes me feel motivated and demotivated at the same time
- analog31 5y agoIt doesn't have to be boring to you. But I will admit that as a college student, when I had a summer internship in a government computer facility, I came away with the impression that while I enjoyed programming when I could do it on my own terms, an actual programming job would be boring. But instead of boring, you could substitute unpleasant or unglamorous, and the point still stands pretty well. For instance, fixing a toilet is usually not particularly hard, but something that most people are repulsed by.
- Gibbon1 5y ago> boring In 1983 I spent a few months working on a crud app. Finished it and never worked on another.
- the_only_law 5y agoWhat have you done since?
- Gibbon1 5y agoElectronics and firmware. I'd be better off financially if database stuff didn't make my eyes bleed.
- renerthr 5y agoWhat about SQL makes your eyes bleed?
- fellellor 5y agoEverything. It certainly isn’t as sexy as CSS and JavaScript. It doesn’t have the arcane mystical aura of Haskell and Brainfuck. Nor the fanatic intensity associated with Rust and C. Nor the stupid simplistic charm of Go and Ruby. “Select a from b where x join blah blah”. What about that isn’t boring? It’s like ordering around a servant who has to do the real planning and stuff.
- Ocerge 5y agoYes, it's boring as hell. But I value stability more than a stimulating job.
- miked85 5y agoIt doesn't just sound boring, it is boring.
- aesyondu 5y agoI think it depends. The problem solving aspect of software engineering is definitely exciting to me.
- the_only_law 5y agoA vast majority of software engineering jobs do.
- neonnoodle 5y agoSo I’m an animator and I’d like to work on my craft. I’d also like a comfortable living, nothing outrageous by American standards. I’m not interested in the “job” of animator (unless something really wild came along), because these jobs don’t sound very appealing. It is very competitive, a “dream job” that attracts lots of young artists willing to work to death for a chance to break in to the business, but with relatively low pay and low jongterm job security. I have a day job doing computerish things and I produce films in my spare time. I envy the industry people for: - the creative community - the opportunity to make complex projects - access to production funds, assistants, software, etc. - the distribution and marketing apparatus to get the work seen The internet solves some of these problems but not all. Generally speaking, YouTube is a terrible deal for animators. Patreon is great but you can’t bootstrap a new thing without having built an audience elsewhere. I’m still searching for a good ecosystem for indie stuff.
- analog31 5y agoI'm a musician with a day job. This is a widely familiar approach to a music "career." I've learned to satisfy myself with playing for a live audience and not trying to do any kind of recording or publishing. There are things that a "day jobber" misses out on, such as more elaborate projects that require rehearsals that are held during the day, or anything involving travel. On the other hand I have the freedom to play fairly esoteric music that is not commercially viable.
- alspacka 5y agoI’m an animator and the complex jobs == production hell. Every facet of the industry is a race to the bottom, just a matter of how insulated you are from it. Luckily I’m in medical animation where things move a little more slowly
- phamilton 5y ago> I’m in medical anus room Can you elaborate?
- 5y ago
- afterburner 5y ago> People are happy to see you, happy when you do your job Never had a bad manager huh?
- chmod600 5y agoMaybe your manager is mean, but maybe customers, coworkers, or partner businesses are happy. I don't mean it's all roses, but usually someone somewhere is happy even for fairly simple tasks. But not necessarily for, say, a starving actor. Nobody really appreciates that you delivered a one-line part as an extra in a B movie. Anyone you work with is likely to either be jealous that you got a line, or feels you owe them for the priviledge of allowing you to say the line. And the viewers don't notice or care.
- afterburner 5y agoOK, it's just that you mentioned "software engineer" in the list and they rarely speak to the "customer".
- setr 5y agoSysAdmins fit this bill, but I know them as having a pretty terrible social position — no one cares about you until something goes wrong, and then they’re pissed at you. Fix it, and go back to your dungeon.
- neovive 5y agoI've worked in IT support for many years and this generally comes with the territory. Although some users/customers value your contributions and are very grateful, the majority unfortunately view IT as dial-tone service; only interacting with IT when something "doesn't work for them." As an IT professional, patience is highly-valuable skill.
- nitrogen 5y agoIn addition to just really liking the IT people at some of the places where I've worked, I've found that the people who are hostile are really shooting themselves in the foot when they do need help. Making friends across all departments goes a really long way, and there are cool people in most every walk of life.
- rcfaj7obqrkayhn 5y agodoesn't sound bad tbh. who cares if some random person at work is pissed at you? most colleagues are not friends, they're just professional acquaintances
- wiseleo 5y agoRenaming my extension to "Dungeon" :)
- spfzero 5y agoThis is so right on. If you care about the remuneration, then you'd best do something highly valued. If you care about doing something you "love" instead, that's manifestly not highly valued, then don't complain about the money.
- ehnto 5y agoHighly valued is subjective to humans but not the economics of employment, which I think is worth noting because being a doctor in the middle of nowhere is highly valued by the people you help but not monetarily. Versus online advertising which makes disgusting amounts of money and yet most people hate to see it.
- _moof 5y agoYes, the term for what you're describing is "glamor industries." From experience, they are absolute hell to work in.
- ransom1538 5y ago"Cool sounding jobs are competitive" Also! The problem with Animators is projects being canceled. Animation takes forever. A project getting cut a year in is normal. That takes a huge toll on you mentally. THEN, you have the art experience problem. Do your art skills scale with time? I bet not.
- Lio 5y agoLearning to do new things is fun. Doing them the same over and over becomes a tedious chore. That’s got to be part of the reason for churn in software libraries and frameworks.
- ornornor 5y ago> Do your art skills scale with time? I bet not. I’m not an artist in any way, but I would think it does? The more you do something (anything), the better you get at it. Why would art be different?
- ransom1538 5y agoDiminishing returns. Example try doing Golf, tennis, etc. IMHO you wont be any better at it in 10 years vs 20 years. Most likely you will be worse. This is why 16 year olds win Wimbledon. Experience matters in the beginning, but if you took your animations from year 10 to year 20 - you wouldn't see a difference. EG. Try looking at Rembrandts over time. Do they get better? No. OTOH there are huge differences in a lawyer with 10 vs 20 years experience. Because experience matters.
- fighterpilot 5y ago> Cool sounding jobs are competitive Cool sounding jobs (e.g. actor) have an over-supply of labor because people are attracted to it on the basis of either passion or prestige instead of expected earnings. This drives down wages unless there's a regulatory body that artificially constrains supply (e.g. the case with surgeons). There's an under-supply of tradespeople because it's gritty work, not very high prestige, and rarely lines up with anyone's passions. This drives up wages. It's also a very difficult thing to scale due to geographic and other constraints, so it doesn't have a winner-take-all dynamic. The result is many a large number of tradespeople that each get compensated very well.
- dcolkitt 5y agoI’ll also add that many things which seem boring from an abstracted and removed perspective can be quite fascinating when you get into the weeds. I’d say this is because “reality has a surprising amount of detail”[1]. There’s a ton of intricate detail in a field like tax accounting. Even if it seems boring, once you’re immersed in it, you realize all the intellectual challenges. [1] http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...
- vishnugupta 5y agoThis is spot on. An additional factor worth mentioning is the target segment for plumbing and software engineering is huge. Specifically to software engineering and CRUD type of web apps we are just getting started. Wherever I look around I see a business process that could potentially be automated. Much of the clerical work is still repeatable manual work parts of which could be automated. I like that you mentioned plumbing alongside software engineering because they are similar to each other in more than one way. People think software is build it shut it, but no. Similar to plumbing it also needs routine maintenance work (preventative as well as reactive).
- nvarsj 5y agoI'm not really sure what you're saying applies. Animators in the US make good salaries and a good living in contrast. Japan has an unusually exploitative structure and culture where animators can produce huge amounts of value, but see only the tiniest fraction of it. It's a highly specialized job that takes a huge amount of training and work to get good at. Almost all these animators have university degrees and spent significant amount of time in apprentice roles to even be able to start working.