Ask HN: What do you like about working in software?
It seems like there’s a lot of cynicism/critiques of the industry around here so I’m curious to hear:
What made you work in the industry? What gets you excited at work? What are you passionate about?
I just started as an intern at a startup but what I really like so far:
-The creativity of solving a problem exactly how you want and designing/implementing what you see as the best possible solution given your constraints
-The fact that people are so passionate about what they do that their exists things like hackathons and OS projects (it seems kind of crazy to me if you compare it to other professional industries like civil engineering/law)
-Constantly learning new language features/frameworks/technologies every day (some people complain about this but I really enjoy trying random libraries, seeing new takes/paradigms on old problems, or stuff like nerding out tweaking a web app build chain)
-Getting to do really technical work like backend development and then jumping over to more artsy creative stuff like front end within the same day (what other kind of job lets you do that?)
-Overall a lot less BS "Do it this way because that's how we do it" than other old industries I've worked in, more room for debate and discussion over designs as people generally want the best solution to everything
-Most people you work with are pretty smart
-The satisfaction that stuff you designed and created goes out into the world and is actually useful to someone
-Having a really tight team that knows your system to the point where solving problems/brainstorming feels like you’re some NASA mission control crew
-A good whiteboard session
-People don’t seem as afraid of change/new ways of doing things
Maybe this is just the naive experience of an intern, but so far I’m blown away by how fun this kind of job can be. I enjoy solving problems with technology. A basic CRUD app can do wonders for many organisations. Its neat to see people's daily life improved with some code I wrote. In every job I had before moving into coding, I hated something about some piece of software I was using, and for various reasons, I found it impossible to address that thing I hated. So I learned to code. Now when I bump into software I don't like, I can do something about it, or learn to appreciate why it works that way! On a similar note, the joy of automating stuff is amazing. My previous non-software job was with an engineering company and I ended up having to do stuff like manually typing values from a PDF report into an excel file. I got so annoyed with doing this task that one day I rage-coded a parser in python that took in raw PDF data and outputted a CSV file. The first useful thing you ever code is really motivating. Stability, good pay, interesting work. Software is a second career for me, my first one was a lot more sexy but a LOT less stable. I am thriving with the stability of working in software and getting paid quite well for it. To me, it's less important what I'm working on than who I'm working with, and the people in software have been great so far! Out of curiosity, what was your first one? Film industry, mostly post-production but not exclusively. Mix of music-oriented projects, documentaries, corporate gigs, other random stuff. -- solve problems by code. -- enjoys the culture tech industry provides. e.g.: no 9-5 timings, work from home etc. -- learning new tech. Software does what it's told. The fact that I can work remotely.