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Ask HN: Non-tech professionals on HN?
If you look at the front page of HN on any given day you'll see 90% of the news leans heavily towards the tech industry.
But you'll often see great comments from people whose profession isn't directly tech. I've seen historians, doctors, lawyers,
folks in construction, agriculture, the armed forces, etc, show up here.
So the question is, what non-traditionally tech professions are represented here on HN and how did you get hooked to Hacker News?
- delgaudm 5y agoVoice actor here. I've been reading HN since '13. Mostly to stay hip to what's going on in tech as I find it interesting. More recently I've been fascinated by the AI developments in voice / TTS, voice modeling and deep fake video tech.
- thom 5y agoAny TTS tech you’ve seen yet that makes you worried (or even hopeful) for your profession?
- narrationbox 5y agoFor the high end stuff no, but many of the lower tier jobs are under threat.
- delgaudm 5y agoThe TTS raises the barrier to entry for new voice actors. Low-paying jobs that they would normally use to "cut their teeth" are being narrated even more poorly by things like Descript and it's ilk. You'll hear these particularly bad TTS narrations all the time if you suffer through enough Youtube Pre-roll ads.
- atypicalstudio 5y agoI'm a software engineer but I work with a lot of projects that require recorded voice narration etc. I've already been able to replace some small/low budget projects with synthesised speech but it definitely does lack the depth and nuance that a real actor brings to it. Is there anything you have seen specifically that you were inpressed by? The one that really stood out to me is the 'deep fake' voice synthesis (though it relies on hours of captured performance first)
- delgaudm 5y agoNot yet, as you identify it really is about the nuance, and why people like me get paid for what we do. There are some systems that are trying to add generic emotional states using a matrix of activation vs deactivation (how energetic the delivery is) and pleasantness, to try and generate that nuance. So you can end up with emotional states like "guilt"(unpleasant with moderate deactivation) and "elation" ( pleasant with high activation), but as far as I know the application of those states are not determined through machine learning, there is still a human involvement to determine the emotional state, and then try and generate an inflection that matches it. Narration is as much about acting as having a nice voice. We've only just begun in getting the computer voice to sound mostly human, getting it to act is another thing entirely.
- aborsy 5y agoAcademics visit too.
- BTBurke 5y agoU.S. diplomat. Programming is a hobby and keeping up with the tech sector is relevant to my job.
- atypicalstudio 5y agoIs that the most boring job in the comments? or the most interesting?
- simlan 5y agoChemist here. I have been working with Python for some 10 years in data related applications. Found HN through python/programming topics and like the variety of topics that are coming up here frequently.
- klelatti 5y agoI’m an actuary. The actuarial profession is increasingly coming to realise that data science will be an important skill for actuaries in future and HN is a great source for related links and discussion.
- newbamboo 5y agoEverything is tech. And tech is nothing. For instance Google is an ad business. The web, aside from ads, is publishing. I propose we drop the construct altogether. It had its place back when personal computers were novel, but the contemporary historian writes code. Unless you mean software engineering, but much of that is now plumbing and project management.
- Eikon 5y ago> but the contemporary historian writes code. What?
- newbamboo 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_history
- leroman 5y agoI think he means something like the WayBackMachine (http://web.archive.org/ http://web.archive.org/) etc..
- jackvalentine 5y agoHere is one example I know of https://timsherratt.org https://timsherratt.org
- jrimbault 5y agoI had to help a friend, who's doing their history PhD, design a database for their research. I don't quite know what for. I also directed him to some online SQL courses. There's also this website https://programminghistorian.org/ https://programminghistorian.org/
- james_in_the_uk 5y agoI see what you are saying, but I think that there's a contradiction in your argument. The fact that /much of/ (i.e. not all) software engineering is plumbing and project management implies that there's still a nucleus which is proper tech. Someone has to write the frameworks, configure the servers, do the devops etc. even if it is being further and further abstracted away from the 'typical' user.
- L0v3ly_R0se 5y agoShut up fatty loser
- JesusRobotics 5y agoCurrently unemployed. I was studying python which somehow lead me to here. Normally I surf Reddit but I find hacker news to be less toxic in the comments.
- 999900000999 5y agoI'm in the same boat. I found Reddit to be one of the most hateful communities online. Checkout the Herman Cain award sub if you want proof. In my 20s I wasted a ton of time arguing about politics and even my own life on that site. While 9/10 times I'd find someone fun, the 1/10 was spent absorbing pure vitriol. Ultimately no one cares about what I think or how I choose to live my life. No normal person will spend all day trying to degrade others or celebrating another's death. But that's like half of Reddit. Occasionally I'll still find something useful, usually related to programming. But I simply don't venture into anything else.
- 8eye 5y agodef have to agree on this one, reddit is selective about what toxicity they allow and which ones they do not. it’s become the platform of hypocrisy. way too toxic than what it use to be, aaron swartz (co-founder of reddit who died in a us federal prison) would be crying in his grave
- nusaru 5y agoAaron Swartz did not die in prison. He committed suicide. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
- jimmaswell 5y agoIf he didn't die, are you saying he's still alive?
- nusaru 5y agoHe died in his apartment.
- ARandomerDude 5y agoPhilosophy and theology student here, former military. I have a passion for history and dabble in Latin. I'm here because I pay for my masters and academic hobbies in other fields with my tech day job. I believe in the Renaissance model of trying to understand and succeed in many fields.
- sammyq 5y agoHow do you pay for school, I’m interested in more classical majors as well but schooling is expensive.
- Godel_unicode 5y ago>... I pay for my masters and academic hobbies in other fields with my tech day job.
- rPlayer6554 5y agoOff topic, but is there meaning behind your name or is it just two things you like? (Yes I know who/what Godel and Unicode are)
- Godel_unicode 5y agoI don't remember the whole story, but the original username I was going to use was going to be gödel and then something about incompleteness. Since Unicode isn't allowed for usernames here, I changed it to this.
- rPlayer6554 5y agoAhhh, I see. Good joke, you have my upvote. :)
- snickersnee11 5y agoThis is interesting! How many hours a day do you spend at work? In what position? I think it's a very good opportunity for smart, tech-savvy people to realize their dreams. It's hard for me to do it myself, my day job completely exhausts me, usually by the end of the day I have no interest in doing anything else. That's why I've always admired people who can combine work and hobbies and be successful at them.
- mdturnerphys 5y agoThere are a few experimental physicists on here. I work for Microsoft now, but I found out about HN from a grad school officemate, who found out about it from a YC grad who did a postdoc in our research facility. I credit HN with helping me have enough understanding of the tech industry to land a job as a data scientist at Microsoft, which set me up for joining the quantum computing team a few years later.
- abdullahkhalids 5y agoHey! There are some theoreticians like me lurking around as well!
- kanten 5y agoI am a physician turned drug developer and work in biotech now. I have also dabbled a bit in IT though and got hooked on HN many years ago. I keep coming back to HN for the thoughtful comments and nearly complete absence of malignant ones.
- systemvoltage 5y agoI'd argue that quality of discussion has gone down. It has become a lot more emotional, less forgiving and less politically diverse. But, I tend to criticize more things than I praise.
- Jaxtek 5y agoI work in IT but I love biotech. It was (still is) my dream. Got into IT due to circumstances. Some day I am gonna FIRE and invent cool weird plants.
- chaoskanzlerin 5y agoJust started college, no work experience. I've been looking for blogs to read when a friend (in the tech field) recommended HN. Tech industry articles still tend to provide insights, though I have no use from posts exclusively on programming. Both tech and non-tech posts/comments are quality - kinda obvious, but this is HN's killer feature.
- murphyslab 5y agoScientist in materials & chemistry. HN offers a diversity of fascinating topics without much fluff. Sure, it's heavily focused on the tech industry and professionals, but there are always a handful of other topics that are really worth reading. Plus I occasionally enjoy peeking over the fence to see what's happening in the tech industry.
- solmanac 5y agoI do inventory and paperwork at a large recreational marijuana grow site. I work with python as an amateur and found this place through python interests somehow.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Analogbullfrog 5y agoI'm a video editor and artist interested in information and consciousness. I think editors and programmers actually have a lot in common in terms of what they do (dicing and combining data in creative ways), although the editors I know definitely don't see themselves that way.
- manic85 5y agoReal Estate Developer. Software should eat my industry. I find a bit of what I read here to be quite interesting.
- MattGaiser 5y agoEh, as a dev with family in real estate development, I can see why it hasn't. Zoning and building codes alone seem like an enormous impediment to scaling anything there.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoI am in real estate development. I would be surprised to find out how software could help with the political aspect, which in my opinion l, is the most volatile and difficult part.
- manic85 5y agoThe politics can't really be addressed by software, true. However, much of development is actually process and project management with complicated non-intuitive workflows. I think there's potential for software to help. do something like - for a given municipality, what size building can I build under a specific set of planning assumptions, and what is the process for obtaining the necessary permits and approvals to build that building?
- cableshaft 5y agoSomehow there's a decent amount of tech in the healthcare space, which has a lot of codes and regulations as well. Which I also don't understand as it seems like more trouble than it's worth sometimes (I worked for a corporation that was in that field at one point, we were expected to make big changes almost every year when new laws got passed).
- MattGaiser 5y agoIn healthcare I imagine that they are at least somewhat universal across an industry or sub field or country. At the very least insurance forces some standardization. A town of 10K might have a completely separate building code and zoning categories.
- 3guk 5y agoI work predominantly in Event Production - I love to read anything tech related and occasionally some of the links posted here contribute to more creative solutions in my day job.
- midasuni 5y agoHas business picked back up now post shutdowns? Just dine my first major event in the U.K. for two years, the riggers seem happy enough that jobs are starting again.
- 3guk 5y agoBusier than ever to be honest with you - with the added difficultly that a lot of our regular freelancers have either left the industry or are being snapped up quicker than we can book people. I guess it will no doubt be chaos for another few months as the industry gets back to it's feet.
- farrarstan 5y agoHell banned, sorry
- opinion-is-bad 5y agoCalifornia farmer, mostly pistachio and almonds. The farm has been in the family for four generations now and we hope to continue that. I found HN while I worked at Google on self-driving cars from 2014-2018. At least two postings on HN have been direct material impact to me: the first about an autonomous tractor we might be experimenting with soon, and the second about water restrictions in CA that fortunately did not end up impacting us, but caused us to come up with some interesting water contingencies.
- MichaelMoser123 5y agoHow do you manage with polination? I read that bees are dying off, all over the place.
- opinion-is-bad 5y agoHasn’t been a big issue for us since we are a larger farm and have blueberries pollinating right after our almonds making us a desirable partner. The rates have gone up, but we can afford them easily for almonds. The current almond pollination actually uses essentially 100% of commercial bees in the United States, but almond acreage is almost certain to only go down for the foreseeable future, so I don’t expect it to become a big issue. My understanding is that the colony collapse disorder is not considered a huge threat by bee keepers that do things the right way.
- mattowen_uk 5y agoI've just watched season 3 of the legal drama 'Goliath' starring Billy Bob Thornton, which was ALL about almond farmers in California trying to get water. Really good show, totally recommend it.
- akudha 5y agoI second this recommendation. I actually liked all 4 seasons of the show. The games that lawyers play … sigh
- opinion-is-bad 5y ago
- Havoc 5y agoPrivate equity, but quite tech-y in a personal capacity (selfhosting, coding etc). Don't recall how I ended up on hn though
- Aloha 5y agoIt depends how you define tech. I work in the telecom sector, which is legacy tech, I always laugh when folks ask me about equity.
- sMarsIntruder 5y agoNot sure if Digital Marketing is considered tech or not, but anyway, here I am.
- laky941 5y agoa
- fwn 5y agoI'm trained in philosophy and social sciences, mostly economics and sociology. I work in management consulting, we do strategic communication and some public affairs. We do have some tech mandates but my interest in technology is largely personal. My parents are both in tech and their very problem driven compsci dinner talk in the evening greatly influenced me throughout my younger years. I feel that since tech grew into every corner of society its far less peculiar to have a tech interest than maybe even 15 years ago.
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- ArekDymalski 5y agoPsychologist here, working in logistics now. I discovered HN 9 years ago, when I was involved in educational projects for startups. Got immediately hooked not only by selection of links but also informational (an entertainment) value of comments which quite often are more intresting than a linked article itself.
- phreeza 5y agoWas on HN as a physics and neuroscience student for a long time, now at google though, probably in large parts due to the time I spend hanging out on HN.
- laserphysicist_ 5y agoResearcher in optics and photonics, just hanging around HN because I enjoy both the diversity of the topics and also the way comments are moderated. I can't remember when I discovered HN, but I know I went from /. to digg to reddit them HN. I hope HN will last a bit longer then the others before jumping the shark...
- rmm 5y agoMining engineer. Actual hard rock mining though. Got sick of reddit
- slyn 5y agoI manage at a famous Chicago pizzeria. When I was young I had aspirations of becoming a programmer or otherwise working in tech and kinda grew up reading different aggregators and eventually HN. Now that I know myself better I don’t think I would do well or be happy really sitting at a desk most days. I like working with my hands, entertaining guests, and working with and developing a team of staff from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels. These days I mostly just read for entertainment but when I’m occasionally burnt out I daydream about doing IT or UX.
- james_in_the_uk 5y agoWhat's the state of the restaurant management software scene? Any scope for an open source restaurant management system? Could be a good side-hustle. Edit: Just googled and found TastyIgniter. https://github.com/tastyigniter/TastyIgniter https://github.com/tastyigniter/TastyIgniter Don't underestimate the value of someone who knows code AND has worked in the industry in helping clients implement tech like this. You could make a good consultant!
- slyn 5y agoThere’s a zillion services for pretty much anything you could possibly want to do in a restaurant, some decent and most not. I think it’s a difficult space to compete in because there are so many different options in both big obvious services (Point of Sale, online ordering providers, staff scheduling services, etc) and relatively niche services (Review aggregators, QR menu management, waitlist tech, etc.) that it’s not just that your service needs to work, it needs to be easy to use, highly reliable, reasonably priced, and with high levels of tech support. We’re multi location so as a store-level manager I’m not totally familiar with how we as a company procure new services or glue together what we use into something resembling a seamless experience for the guest. I think about trying consulting but if I did so my strengths right now are setting efficient process and development+training, not so much tech. There are times where I think to myself I should bounce around working a handful of restaurants for a few years to get a better idea of the tech available and expand my food+menu development skills.
- t0bia_s 5y agoFreelance visual artist, filmmaker, photographer. IT is my hobby that save me quite a lot of money. I found HN in March 2020 on Telegram, when I start use RSS because main agenda of news was unreliable and social networks became absolutely crazy.
- james_in_the_uk 5y agoLawyer here. I specialise in tech deals and the burgeoning tech regulatory sphere. (Think AI regulation, cryptocurrency, etc.) HN is a great way to keep my finger on the pulse. I try to contribute to legal threads where I can, but /some/ HN contributors' level of obtuseness towards the nuance of legal issues can be off-putting. As can the insistence to treat every social and moral issue as newly discovered, merely because there isn't a /computer science/ paper written on it yet. (I am exaggerating for effect, and I say this with genuine affection for the CS-crowd, but I think that there's at least a thread of truth in my last sentence. It's human nature that we approach problems from our own perspective or specialism first). Still, a fascinating place to hang out, and I have huge respect for the general level of contributions, and individual contributors, here. I hope that us non-techies patronising HN adds to the richness of the debate.
- gego 5y ago...as a historian I agree ;)
- myfrogatemywork 5y ago> As can the insistence to treat every social and moral issue as newly discovered I think this is more a quality of hackers than a quality of the CS-crowd, though they often go hand-in-hand. Hackers looking into any field will treat it as if it's never been discovered before; trying to build the field again from first principles. That's interesting, though. What are your thoughts on AI+law 10, 20 years from now? How do you lawyer colleagues feel about your specialization?
- james_in_the_uk 5y agoYes, fair observation. The hacker mentality is a good way to describe it. I think AI will keep us very busy over the next decade. There are a lot of individual issues of a legal nature where AI creates some non-trivial challenges (equality, privacy, intellectual property) and there’s also some more fundamental themes which challenge some of the liberal underpinnings of our legal system. There’s a lot of hyperbole around AI but at least some of the wild predictions of change will probably bear out in practice. I think that my colleagues see the value in the advice I give; either that or they’re too polite to tell me otherwise. Clients seem happy to pay for the advice, which is a good indicator, although I now work in-house because in private practice it is a difficult area to scale. (This is more a reflection on how much of private practice has become about leveraging a lean team of junior lawyers to transactional work at bulk scale; even multi-million dollar corporate M&A or real estate deals can be very repetitive in nature. AI will eventually eat this type of work. Ref: Richard Susskind.) There’s still a bit of scepticism that tech is a standalone discipline. I can see the argument both ways. I believe that it is helpful to have lawyers who understand all of the legal implications of e.g. AI, across multiple legal disciplines, and so can give general counsel. I practice elements of privacy, IP, contract, discrimination, regulatory law etc. etc. all as they affect tech. On the other hand, there are situations where it might be better to have deeply specialist advice with a tech overlay. Where necessary, I will partner with my colleagues. The idea is that the client gets legal advice that is correct both as a matter of law and on application to the technology they are working on.
- Engineering-MD 5y agoI’m a surgeon but enjoy dabbling in programming/computer science and engineering and found the conversation on HN a bit more insightful than most other websites.
- I_complete_me 5y agoCivil Engineer here. I found HN after coming across an article by a programmer who had found a way to crack a captcha to access something called "Silk Road" using a Ruby script. I found that fascinating and followed a trail that led here. I like the community. Maybe I picked the wrong profession!
- civeng 5y agoCool! And another civil engineer here, specifically structures. Lurked in HN for at least 5 years, I appreciate the perspectives in comments and articles. There seems to be a very high talent density here. I love to dabble writing code and hire coders for special projects, it's part of the secret sauce of a successful small business. The other part is culture which always comes up here. Keep it coming!
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- tldrthelaw 5y agoTax attorney, was a general IT guy/systems administrator/software engineer in a previous life and I maintain an interest.
- garagemc2 5y agoWhat made you switch?
- tldrthelaw 5y agoSomething like preemptive burnout. I didn't work long enough for it to be burnout per se, but I did work long enough to know I didn't want to turn my interest/hobby in to a career and wind up hating both.
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- sungam 5y agoDermatologist, Mohs surgeon and clinical academic. I do lead research related to AI though so there is some relevance!
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- loufe 5y agoUnderground mining engineer, working in the Canadian far north. I've always been a computer geek, even did some internships as a developer, but I realized needed a career that would pull me out of screens. Still a hobby programmer and love tech. The tech industry has a dynamism and pace that contrasts even modern mining sharply. I'm not sure when I stumbled upon HN but I was hooked immediately. Also helps that HN is very data-light so I can load it reliably via our old satellite connection on-site.
- technological 5y agoWow that’s awesome. Is there any blog which you have where I can learn more about your work and experiences
- loufe 5y agoHey thanks that was nice to hear. I don't have a blog myself if that's what you're asking (but do check out my latest project on YouTube "LED Dreamcoat"). If you mean about mining in general, any blogs or information sources for mining engineering information online tend to be exclusively commercial in nature. I wish it were otherwise but I feel it's a symptom of the amount of practitioners being relatively small compared with other professions. I have been thinking about creating a forum or Wiki lately, could be a fun project.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoI have been thinking about creating a forum or Wiki lately, could be a fun project. If you do, please drop me a note.
- LinuxBender 5y agoI am also interested in this area. It is really hard to find miners that make videos on their work. I suspect the foremen probably discourage it. This guy made some videos. [1] I want to get into hobby tunneling. [2] [1] - https://www.youtube.com/c/JoryDion/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/JoryDion/videos [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling
- echopurity 5y agoHN bans anyone outside of tech bro ideology.
- fattybob 5y agoGeologist, these days mostly involved in team and operations management, but it’s helpful to have familiarity with a wide range of technologies from networks to cutting edge technology for analyzing formations (usually in extreme environments- a few km deep at high temps). Familiarity in tech is very helpful, but certainly not essential.
- cull 5y agoI’m a cultural historian and professor. My early work was on the development of video synthesizers by artists, engineers, educators, and technologists—mainly for non-commercial and artistic purposes. I visited HN for a decade before creating an account. Now, I find thoughtful and engaging conversations on HN. It reminds me that while many of us do not work in the same profession/field, the inquisitive nature of the posts and comments speak to our common interests and curiosity. I also get to learn from amazing people who have played a part in pioneering their fields respectively.
- TheBaddest 5y agoI'm a cancer clinical research coordinator and browse HN daily! I like to keep up to date with technology and people building the future. The site has been a great discovery tool for some awesome blogs!
- 1ibsq 5y agoStudent in civil engineering. It's been several years now and still no end in sight. My decision on this profession wasn't very well thought out because I wasn't able to back then. Right now I'm in the position of a gambler who invested a lot and can't really jump of the train. I want to learn coding, but haven't been able to start for quite some time now. But I have interests in tech stuff and that's why it's interesting to read HN nevertheless. Anyways, every time I start talking about myself I feel like self pity is taking over and I hate that.
- amcoastal 5y agoIf it's an undergraduate degree just get it done, you can do all kinds of things with a civil engineering undergraduate degree. It seems you might imply you picked your major when you were young and had no idea what you actually wanted. The same thing happened to me, and from the UG student perspective it seems like your degree type will define you, but reality is with something as broad as civil it won't. You could get into graduate schools for basically whatever you'd want to do. From marine science to graphical design to creative writing, and of course engineering.
- 1ibsq 5y agoIt is an undergraduate degree (bachelors). I appreciate the reply, but "just get it done" is easier said than done for me - but you couldn't know:) I do what is possible for me. Sooner than later things get sorted out by themselves when I either make it or they kick me out. I don't know what's next then either way. But you're definitely right, civil eng is quite broad and I have done jobs within it that I was good at and where I had fun. Bachelors thesis will be something about printing concrete.
- NamTaf 5y agoMechanical enigneer in transport & logistics. I like keeping abreast of the tech industry and I'm a nerd at heart with an interest in a lot of things posted here. I get more out of it from interest's sake than from a career perspective. I think like several others here that had I pursued this hobby as my career, I'd enjoy it a lot less and probably wouldn't even post here. That said, occasionally there's some nice cross-over content that gets me thinking, generally in the deeper soft-skills such as the contrast between the consequences of systems and process management in tech vs my industry. One particular example for me is the criticisms of perceived bureaucracy and red tape in tech (particularly in start-ups), and the idea that it is the scar tissue of former corporate mistakes. That example is interesting for me because the criticisms often levelled from the tech scene are frequently benefits in my industry - slowing down and forcing multiple checkpoints hinders iterative process, but it's really important when making a mistake results in a multi-fatality and the cost of rectification is going out and modifying thousands of assets rather than pushing a new code update. I think there's value in general in taking off the blinkers and looking over the fence at other industries. It's a healthy way to ensure the groupthink isn't being too blinding.
- zxcero 5y agoTransport and logistics seems to be a tried and trodden industry compared to Software. Another thing is that developers are not against careful consideration of tech choices. They are rather against old legacy code that cannot be refactored or changed or bureacracy ignores developers concerns to the detriment of the company's future. I've seen where tech decisions were made on a whim in a startup and new engineers had to suffer the decaying legacy code. It depends on context and circumstances.
- jccalhoun 5y agoI'm a college prof in communication. I've been a techy for a long time. Started with slashdot and eventually moved here.
- throwaway-PII 5y agoStaffer at a labor union. I'm interested in tech and how we can use it to further labor organizing.
- kenni 5y agoI work in a similar field. I’d suggest reading “Change: How to make big things happen” by Damon Centola. It’s not exactly tech, but it does provide a more analytical/algorithmic perspective of things known qualitatively in the political campaigning space.
- amcoastal 5y agoI'm a physical science researcher on coastal processes, with particular interests in using ML to solve inversion and flow problems that cannot be sufficiently modeled with linear algorithms. I honestly can't remember how I found hackernews.
- tcpekin 5y agoPostdoc in Materials Science/Physics currently at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. I guess it's tech adjacent, but I did my PhD at Berkeley which exposed me a lot to tech and therefore this site.
- tirrellp 5y agoI run a consulting firm that focuses on strategy, ops, and org for life science industry. I spent the first 10 years of my career in tech (worked at a few big names, ran a couple startups with nominal success). I still like technology for its applicability to business problems. Ive been on HN since 2007ish
- ufmace 5y agoInteresting thread! I am a tech professional now, but I started my career working in oil and gas, so I know a lot more about how that industry actually works than most. One of the funny things about tech is that only a small percentage of tech workers are doing "pure" tech, where that's all you really need to know about. The great majority of the jobs involve developing a lot of knowledge about whatever line of business you're working in, so that you can implement the business rules and workflows correctly, and fix things that address the problems your users actually care about. I've done tech in several completely different businesses, and I always enjoyed learning how they work.
- acaz 5y agoIndustrial engineer, working in emergency medical services in operations research to help optimize the service (i.e. figuring out where to let EMTs take their breaks in a metropolitan area to increase coverage of potential critical calls, short term demand prediction, employee scheduling and planning etc..). Been lurking on HN for a long time, and stumbled on it by chance and got hooked instantly. Like many others said, its a great way to stay on top of tech related issues/topics.
- algoatecorn 5y agoMy background is a combination of horticulture + molecular biology = plant breeding/genome engineering. I have other prior experiences as well and intend on switching my career once again. I've always been interested in tech and started programming in my younger teen years. My next step will probably be something cloud-related since I love learning about it and believe it's only going to grow exponentially.
- dm319 5y agoClinical haematologist / cancer researcher here. I work mainly 80% clinical work and try to fit in research into the rest of the week and evenings. My PhD worked on bigger data than could be analysed in the regular biological sciences way (excel + stats software), so I learnt R. That led me down a rabbit hole of learning linux, bash, bit of Go, python etc.. I can't remember how I ended up here. I think maybe the instructor for the Go course mentioned it. I stayed because I find the science-based articles interesting and I like to draw comparisons across different disciplines. The quality of the discourse is high here, so I'll stay as long as that's the case!
- mihaitodor 5y agoHey, that’s awesome! I’ve been working as a software engineer in various companies for years now doing mostly Go development these days. I’m very interested in switching my career to cancer research and doing a PhD, potentially on immunotherapy. May I ask what you’re using Go for? Also, I’d be curious to learn more about your research work.
- dm319 5y agoOh sure - biomedical research is in real need of a combination of programmers / statisticians / bioinformaticians and regular scientists at the moment. The latest research techniques are terrific at maximising the amount of information extracted from precious samples. While definitely a good thing overall, it introduces new problems, like multiple testing and simply crunching lots of data. My PhD was in cancer-immunology. I was looking at the interaction between the immune system and lymphoma cancer cells. It was a particularly interesting area because the cancer cell and the reactive immune response were, once upon a time, the same cell. We used several high dimensional techniques to identify cells, including single cell sequencing, which can measure the production of up to 20'000 genes per cell on several thousand cells. I also used something call mass cytometry which binds around 40 antibodies to individual cells looking at what's on their surface. It was great stuff and I'm still working on some of my data from it (analysing it is still a bit of an unsolved problem!). I learnt Go because I realised that I was using R without understanding programming. I loved using Go, it's a great imperative language, but maybe not that suited to run-once analyses of numbers (I know writing this someone will prove me wrong!). I did a bit of mathematical modelling in Julia too, and really enjoyed that. I'm actually a big fan of R - once I got my head round using it in a functional style, it's very elegant for my work. If you wan to do a PhD in cancer research, probably worth contacting Professors to see if they're aware of any interesting projects and talking to the people supervising them. My advice is to do something you're genuinely interested in and have an adviser that you will be able to get along with even in times of acute stress! Good luck!
- bjoli 5y agoI am a bassoon player in a professional ochestra. I have been programming since I was 7, and apart from building a few small programs for small companies run out of a garage and one place where I got paid for consulting in a small common lisp project (although I am more of a scheme user these days), very little of what I have written has left any traces online. Anyway, now I program to relax. Recently I have been working on this: https://git.sr.ht/~bjoli/goof-loop/ https://git.sr.ht/~bjoli/goof-loop/
- math-dev 5y agoThats great! Do you find music and programming are complimentary pursuits? I listen to a lot of music when I code and I know others who do that too
- bjoli 5y agothe way I use programming it is! music can always be better. I can always practice and polish scales, work on sound and improve in general. programming for me is like crosswords: I see a problem, I ponder on it, I solve it. The horizon is so much shorter I feel it is something that keeps me sane. But in many ways they are the same. You learn a technique or a tool, and suddenly it makes some things that were previously impenetrable seem easy. The difference is that the horizon for my playing is usually 6 months and upwards, whereas programming is at nost a couple of days. Both can be frustrating, though. For bassoon I want to improve my circular breathing and stamina, which takes forever and is hard work. In programming I want to implement RRB-trees (a superset of clojures immutable vectors), but I am sadly a bit too dumb at the moment.
- math-dev 5y agoThanks for sharing, that’s awesome to read
- tomcooks 5y agoJack of all trades here. I lurk for tech news, snarky comments about corporate drama, niche blog links, interesting tools. I wish there was a HN for most of my passions.
- bookofjoe 5y ago>snarky comments about corporate drama Season 3 of "Succession" starts October 17
- nataz 5y agoHmm...I can't remember how I got here. Currently in Federal government. Grew up building my own computers, lan parties, etc. Lots of friends ended up in the tech world/start up scene. Lots of overlap between federal gov and technology. HN also reminds me a little of the old digg, and a bunch of other early 2000's online communities. I probably got here through a PG essay or mention on a tech podcast.
- spython 5y agoArtist here. I see art as a way of thinking that is often missing in tech. At the same time, the role of art is not just to create aesthetic experience but to explore and participate in what the world is becoming. Can't do that without tech. HN is just such a friendly place, with interesting and interested people, and a mostly honest and level-headed discourse. It's fun to be here.
- bobowzki 5y agoAnesthesiologist. Although I have also worked as a software engineer.
- dgoodell 5y agoI’m an engineer at NASA working with nuclear space power systems. I ignore most of the more trite software / internet / money making bullshit. Some of that stuff is legit but most of it feels like “advances in advertising technology” or media delivery. I’m old enough to remember the earlier days of the internet and it’s sort difficult to admire the people that worked hard and made a lot of money turning it into what it is today. Luckily, there are a lot of smart people here who are interested in many other things and that’s what I’m here to get exposure to.
- dcow 5y agoI agree it’s especially disappointing knowing that it was the very stewards of the internet who ultimately turned it into an attention sucking money centric ad platform. For who else would it have been than those who wield the power to manipulate its fabric?
- MichaelMoser123 5y agosounds like a very cool job. Can you tell us more about your work at Nasa?
- dgoodell 5y agoI’m involved in the development of the free piston Stirling engines for space power production. Ideally, we would like to replace the current solid-state thermoelectric energy conversion system used on the MMRTG and its precursors with a piston engine energy conversion device. This has the potential to increase the conversion efficiency from 6% to 25-40%. This would allow us to use less plutonium 238 so we could either produce more electricity or use less plutonium and do more deep space missions, since the plutonium is in limited supply. I’m also involved with the much more preliminary work into a fission power for nuclear electric propulsion, which is a much more difficult problem. I could speak a lot about this stuff. If anyone really wants to talk, email is in my profile.
- MichaelMoser123 5y agoFascinating, I thought that the ion engine powering Deep Space 1 was already powered by a nuclear cell, am I wrong? Is your nuclear electric propulsion project connected to an ion engine, or is that something different?
- gidorah 5y agoI'm an accountant, currently head of finance for an ecommerce business. About 10 years ago learnt Python as a bit of fun. I have now developed a niche of IT/Accounting. New accounting systems need IT assistance, so being conversant in IT stuff helps the implementations go smoothly and I can write some of the integrations.
- bookofjoe 5y agoRetired neurosurgical anesthesiologist with no recall of how I found HN
- warner25 5y agoAfter reading HN daily for years, I finally registered to answer this question. I'm a military officer. I spent the first half of my career flying helicopters and doing general management stuff, but now I work on IT (not software development, sadly) within the military because I have undergraduate and graduate degrees in CS. I still do some programming as a hobby. I guess I straddle both worlds, like others who've already responded, but I'm definitely not in the originally intended audience of Silicon Valley startup founders and employees. I used to read Slashdot and various subreddits to keep learning and stay current on computing, but I ultimately found that HN is the best place on the Internet for that. Now that I have an account, maybe I'll start adding my own insights to threads that touch on military matters.
- tailspin2019 5y agoWelcome! I was a long-time lurker too but it’s much more fun when you engage in the comments! :)
- torstenvl 5y agoLawyer and military officer. I self-studied programming in high school and did a minor in CS in college. Always enjoyed it as a hobby. Found HN because Metafilter was trashing on it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- milkcircle 5y agoPhysician in internal medicine with a background in computer science, math, and genetics. Got hooked on HN in college after searching for a like-minded community sharing more relevant news to me than the vast majority of other websites.
- rasikjain 5y agoI am in Tech and following HN since 2008. Seen very talented people on HN and quality of comments is really good. I like this thread and good to see people from different industries and verticals. Going to bookmark this URL :-)
- mimac 5y agoHi! Biochemist with a PhD, leading a group for bioprocess development and scale up. Been following hackernews for a few years now. Probably found it via digg or reddit, don't remember really. The things I like about NH is the minimalist UI and very high signal/noise ratio in the comments. I have also played with the idea to switch professions for quite some time, but my programming skills include only basic python and microcontrollers. But in the end I always realise I'm very good at what I do and have a PhD in the field so it would not really make sense to switch and start over.
- cbfrench 5y agoAnglican priest here. (I would guess the only one?) IIRC, I ended up here during one of my sporadic attempts to teach myself to code for fun. I stuck around for the diverse and interesting content plus the thoughtful and sane discussions. I don’t participate that much, but I always enjoy reading the comments on here.
- jseliger 5y agoI do grant writing and research for nonprofits, public agencies, and some research-based businesses: http://seliger.com http://seliger.com. The blog speaks to a part of the world many don't realize exists.
- zfxfr 5y agoI am not even a professional. I am an uneducated French house-husband in his late 30s. For some reason I have always been considered a "geek / nerd" by my surrounding but I did not really work in "tech" that much except for some web developpement gigs. One of my last job was forklift driver. I believe I am not part of the typical HN demographic. I like to create things that involve programming. I love and follow the demoscene since I'm sixteen. I guess reading HN came naturally. edit: precision and apologies. I know my English is not that great and I am sorry for that. that is also why I don't comment that much. But I do read a lot.
- UncleEntity 5y ago> I am a French house-husband… That is literally my dream job, if only I were French…
- vessel 5y agoYour English is great. I too follow the demo scene and got hooked on a JS1K thread on HN several years ago, and stayed since then. I like how the top rated comment isn't the lowest hanging fruit, which seems to be the case on every other internet forum.
- tailspin2019 5y agoYour English is very good. You should comment more!
- searchingalways 5y agoI’m a dentist. That’s non-tech I think. I like HN for the fairly diverse things they get posted. I don’t read a lot of the deep techy stuff because I don’t understand any of it. But the discussions are often pretty interesting and it’s a (in my head) better use of browsing time than Reddit.
- kcrx 5y agoI’m a manager at a smallish community bank. I ended up here because I was looking for a place to keep up with the world that wasn’t the google news main page, twitter, or facebook. I got hooked on the condescending, presumptuous, all knowing commentary. I’m kidding! I really got hooked on the many, many gems I’ve found (links & comments) about many of the various things I’m interested in: music, nutrition, leadership, psychology, even religion, etc, etc, etc. I’ve learned a lot here. I’ve been lurking for a couple of years, but finally made an account the other day. This is my first comment!
- UncleEntity 5y agoProfessional driver, currently drive long haul but pre-COVID was hauling around people (who don’t like to be referred to as “freight”) and before that non-human freight. Started as a temporary job (just a couple years to save up some money) in ‘98. Always been interested in tech stuff and around ‘08 or ’09 taught myself to program properly so I could contribute to Blender since I enjoyed using it but aren’t really that good at 3D art. Kind of wish I’d signed up for an account at slashdot at the turn of the century for some ‘hacker cred’ but looking at my account over there my first post was in ‘05. Incidentally, that’s where I’d learned of this Linux thing since windows ME was such a POS I was super happy to find a replacement…thinking back that had to have been in ’01 or so. Also remember messing around on the interwebs in my college days in the mid-90s but didn’t do too much techie stuff, mostly just whatever your common person did on the web in those days. Now I just read HN to get my news fix when I get an off moment here and there…
- jonjlee 5y agoI’m a pediatrician. I studied electrical engineering and did software for about 6 years before the career change. I still enjoy programming. It’s a different experience that’s more focused on growing your trade inwardly, while my job now is interacting with people all day! There is so much low hanging fruit in medicine that technology can / should have already solved. I would love to see medicine delivered more efficiently and for doctors to have freedom to focus on patients and doing medicine, rather than wrestling with our digital tools. I’ve mostly lurked on HN, but I know there are a number of others with the same passion here. I’d love to get to know you!
- howLongHowLong 5y agoI play guitar in a traditional jazz band. Found HN while self-teaching computer science as a quarantine hobby. I love the random interesting links and substanitive conversation. A lot of the conversation in the comments gives me direction in studying.
- z3ther 5y agoI don't fit as a marketing person, but still find HN pretty and swung over here and really interesting during the reddit disporia of a few years ago. Found the Telegram bot for HN and that's something that's kept me coming back when I see some interesting stuff. I wish there was a HN for marketers, you have a really engaging community.
- 16Sinker 5y agoStudent and hobbyist programmer. I actually found HN through the programmingcirclejerk sub on Reddit and got hooked. I like learning new things, and Reddit isn't the best place to do that, so I've started browsing HN more.
- doodles526 5y agoHelicopter pilot here, currently wildland firefighting flying for a US Forest Service contractor. Found HN as a uni freshman in CS. Had a 5 year mini career as a dev in tech, but wanted more fulfilling(for me) work - hence the transition. Back then, I was an HN reader for what I would call "career development" learning, trying to keep on the bleeding edge. Now I'm here for the tech-adjacent conversations and reading the more nuanced insider discussions on breaking tech news(eg: recent FB stories). Another reason for my keeping up with HN is occasionally a post will inspire a new side-project to improve either my personal or professional life outside of tech.
- benatkin 5y agoIt's just a quadrant in a model I use. There is how technical a role is on one axis and how much the company or organization you work for is considered to be in tech on the other axis. If there are a lot of data points in the three quadrants that have something tech about them, there are going to be some in the fourth quadrant as well.
- rewgs 5y agoI'm a former film/game/TV composer. Last year I developed a condition of the ear that stopped my career in its tracks. Always had an interest in tech, so I'm currently in process of switching careers to programming. In the meantime, I'm continuing to work in tech support for other composers.
- rapht 5y agoMid-thirties, CFO of a largish French/European (non tech related service, brick and mortar) service business. Always been a geek, used to code, love to think in terms of systems / data / interfaces... kind of missed that natural "tech" path in my career, went to a top business school out of what you'd call laziness (achieving a top business school in France is much easier than achieving a top engineering school)... so reading HN in a way is a way of fulfilling my passion for tech and my curiosity for all those geeky areas from engineering to physics to maths to whatever you'll find on HN any given day. I have to add, carrer-wise, that being able to have an educated opinion on IT matters when you're not the IT guy in the room is actually extremely valuable, and one good excuse to keep reading!
- mbrodersen 5y agoI am curious if you have any advise for software consultants advising/selling to Senior management? How best to present your case/discuss issues so that it is perceived as a win-win?
- pkilgore 5y agoBefore I quit my job as a lawyer I was on here at least once a week keeping in touch with the industry.
- Bluestein 5y agoCOO, law firm, heavy on the legaltech.
- simonswords82 5y agoI am the founder/managing director of software company and ex-technologist. HN is a perfect blend of business and tech for me. The comments sections are significantly less toxic the rest of the Internet.
- georgeoliver 5y agoI'm a carpenter who's always been a programming enthusiast. I guess it's like programmers with a woodworking hobby.
- baremetal 5y agoim a programmer who quit and got a job framing to learn to build my own house. i really enjoy it. bought a farm and now slowly building out. just finished first barn.
- franek 5y agoI'm a freelance performance and theatre artist. This means (in my case) that I stage/create performative works of my own, perform in other people's pieces and sometimes build special effects using electronics and programming. I used to study physics before I got serious about theatre, and my dad is a programmer. I think he introduced me to HN at some point a few years ago, and today I am using it daily to indulge my curiosity, laziness and procrastination. (; This is an awesome thread to read, thanks for posting the question!
- Metacelsus 5y agoI'm a stem cell biologist. I still do a little coding though so that's why I found this place
- xekul 5y agoI'm a consulting hypnotist (hypnotherapist), albeit with a strong technical side (e.g., I've trained my employees to use desktop Linux for remote work). I'm essentially in the business of thinking clearly about client problems and communicating that thinking as effectively as possible, which means that I gravitate toward communities that take pride in the same. Although this is a technically oriented forum, I find many of the discussions here to be intelligent and thought-provoking, especially when they have to do with philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics or business -- those topics that we all must be concerned with, whether we work in tech or not.
- sliceform 5y agoI run the education department of a large makerspace in southern California and also teach a 3D printing course and run a 3D print farm as a side hustle. I enjoy reading the comment sections for the thoughtful commentary. Hacker news is my go-to news aggregator.
- willsoon 5y agoI am lawyer and a writer (mostly unedited), a math fanboy --and sort a script-kiddie. English' not my native language. There's no other site in the entire net most interesting than that. True is that 80% of the posts I can't follow: there are too technical for me. But the rest that I can read, change, in no time, the way I seeing things and doing things. You guys are amazing, even for a total newbie uneducated reader. Like if you have a link in your front-page it's mostly the true for me. I also enjoy reading about topics I can barely understand. But now in the office we are trying to use git for working together, not only our overleaf's local installing. Tell me to lurk moar. I am considering myself the last of your brother. And even if I can't improve my tech knowledge, and, then, with the time my 80% becomes 90%... I'm very happy for this site to exists. And I'm 45 years old.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoI've been programming since I was 13 years old. Chose not to pursue a career in technology because I felt like I would never get to work on the really cool stuff like a programming language, a virtual machine, an operating system, a kernel... A future working on business systems and websites just didn't appeal to me. I wanted to work on the infrastructure that powers everything. Ended up going to medical school. Now I'm in the process of specializing in occupational medicine. I still wonder what might have happened. My friends always tell me I would have made it. Who knows.
- TrackerFF 5y agoEngineer by education, now analyst. I think HN is a great and simple looking resource for keeping up to date on various news in tech and business world. Admittedly, I have little interest in some of the topics that pop up - that goes into the politics of open-source software, controversies surrounding some of the languages and tools, etc. But there's so much different stuff here, so it's cool.
- susiecambria 5y agoI'm a social worker by training and a public policy wonk/advocate/lobbyist turned quilter for work. I can't recall how I found this most wonderful place but I love it! I get to read things here I wouldn't otherwise find and the comments add, well, are the real value!
- grvdrm 5y agoI’m an analytics guy in the insurance/reinsurance industry. Most people think of that description as falling under the umbrella of the actuarial profession But there are lots of us that can code, understand numbers, and help execute much of the same work. Just didn’t spend 5-10 years taking tests. HN is a place I visit to understand some of the latest tech I should/should not use to get my job done. Also it’s an honest place that tells you clearly whether your comments/submissions are useful or not. I like that kind of feedback. Also I like this site because it allows me to gather and evaluate viewpoints I both don’t have or don’t agree with.
- usnelson 5y agoI work in global logistics and supply chain. HK news helps me to think in the future/now. I also enjoy checking it on the weekends. The community is helpful. I love that the site is simple and doesn't add new unwanted features.
- erterbest 5y agoEconomist consulting government entities and NGOs on labour and knowledge markets and reforms. No ties to tech other than through hobbies and as a tool for doing my work. I sometimes wonder if there should be more social science courses in tech studies, seeing that there's a lot of already open doors being barged through by some popular CS papers and discussions... But maybe that's unfair:)
- lambdatronics 5y agoPhysicist working on nuclear fusion. I do scientific programming. I'm also interested in understanding what makes the difference between good & bad leadership/management. I kept seeing interesting search results/links pop up on this weird orange website, so I finally started reading it on the regular.
- MilStdJunkie 5y agoI'm a Content Architect and sometimes content developer working with several dozen (hundred? I have lost track) over-engineered aerospace and mil-std specifications. Technical Publications software has been a garbage fire since I entered the workplace (at least), and I hope that, at the end of my career, I can look back and say I helped some. I wouldn't call this high tech. Most of the time I'm working with very primitive IT environments, trying to introduce little bits of technology as strategically as I can. Other times I'm trying to bring in tools for dealing with other data formats. Half of the day is just training people on stuff you dev types might take for granted (i.e., regex). HN keeps me abreast of the latest movements of the content software stack. It's what clued me in to Asciidoc a few years back. For whatever reason HN seems to have built an insanely good commenter culture. How they've avoided brigading with such an open system I have no idea.
- auxym 5y agoI'm a mechanical engineer by trade, but like many others here, have been a "computer geek" since a very young age. We had dialup internet and a 486 running DOS at home in the early 90s when I was around 8 or so, which wasn't very common. I learned python by myself at around 14 /15, in part because I wanted it to do my boring, repetitive math homework for me. I started reading Slashdot around that time. I was also very interested in mechanical things, built a tabletop trebuchet, working on small engine machines (minibike, old snowmobile which I bought by working by working retail at min wage) and eventually chose mechanical engineering as a career path over CS, for no very specific reason (it's tough asking 18 year olds to make a career choice). I kept kept reading Slashdot and toying with computers and eventually migrated to HN with many others around the time of the redesign and acquisition. Today I have a job I actually love as a mechanical research engineer, which is varied and lets me program and play with electronics from time to time. I still program in my free time, though it's getting scarce these days (as a father to a 2 year old). That works pretty well as a job/hobby combination as programming requires no space and is pretty much free, which isn't really the case of, say, machining robot parts (have access to a lathe and CNC mills at work). I did try working as a developer for a year ("DevOps" for an accounting software company) but was pretty unhappy and quickly started looking to move back into ME. However, I'd be lying if I said reading about the astronomical total comp numbers that are casually thrown around HN didn't make me question my career choice sometimes.
- Graffur 5y agoI sometimes feel there's more non-tech + manager types here than there are tech types.