I’m so bored of my job, I need a programming job that has actual math/algorithms :/ I’m curious to hear about people here who have programming jobs that are more interesting. In college I competed at a high level in ICPC, but I got into my head that there are so few programming jobs with actual advanced algorithms that if your name on topcoder isn’t red you might as well forget about it. I ended up just taking a boring job at a top tech company that pays well but does very little for society and is not intellectually stimulating at all.
Have you read https://www.benkuhn.net/hard/ ? Curious what you think. (Disclosure: I started the company that Ben works for, which does not have hard eng problems but does have a high potential for social impact)
I feel happy pulling up kattis and doing some algorithm questions so there is definitely joy to be had chasing technical questions. Ben doesn’t seem to be disputing that but is offering two other things you can chase.
Rather than competing for an A+ on a hard problem, I could try to solve an easy problem as quickly as possible
I don’t know if this is different person to person but for me gamifying a problem can make me care more about something but it can’t make me care about something I don’t care about at all
So don’t look for hard problems—important ones are ultimately more fun!
This has been in my head for months because everyone* gives a variation of this advice and it feels like it’s missing the hard part. It started when I saw a clip on Reddit of Dr. K from Healthy Gamer saying something along the lines of “If you don’t know what you want to do, get a piece of paper and write down everything wrong with the world. In 5 minutes the paper will be almost full” and… What? No? I mean, things are problems in that they make people’s lives worse. But I notice very very little actually changes how I feel. So why would I expect anything I do to change how someone else feels if nothing they do can change how I feel? There are only two axis that actually change how I feel about life: lonely VS belonging and bored VS engaged. I don’t really have a reason to expect other people are very different except that people in worse life situations also have an unsafe VS secure axis. So the problems are “loneliness” and “listlessness”. Everyone acts like there are important problems everywhere. You see people saying ideas for side projects are a dime a dozen but here I am where I actually have the funds to quit and make something I thought had value and just nothing I can think of that seems to have any value.
*Everyone except one friend on Paxil who assures me the solution to my problem is Paxil and one friend who is convinced LSD is the solution to all problems. I remain unconvinced.
Quantitative finance has use for people who know advanced math and algorithms. (Though they are not known for doing great good for society.)
You can also get around this problem by starting your own ML startup. (I did this.) The startup route takes work and risk tolerance but provides high positive externalities for society.
I’m so bored of my job, I need a programming job that has actual math/algorithms :/ I’m curious to hear about people here who have programming jobs that are more interesting. In college I competed at a high level in ICPC, but I got into my head that there are so few programming jobs with actual advanced algorithms that if your name on topcoder isn’t red you might as well forget about it. I ended up just taking a boring job at a top tech company that pays well but does very little for society and is not intellectually stimulating at all.
Have you read https://www.benkuhn.net/hard/ ? Curious what you think. (Disclosure: I started the company that Ben works for, which does not have hard eng problems but does have a high potential for social impact)
I feel happy pulling up kattis and doing some algorithm questions so there is definitely joy to be had chasing technical questions. Ben doesn’t seem to be disputing that but is offering two other things you can chase.
I don’t know if this is different person to person but for me gamifying a problem can make me care more about something but it can’t make me care about something I don’t care about at all
This has been in my head for months because everyone* gives a variation of this advice and it feels like it’s missing the hard part. It started when I saw a clip on Reddit of Dr. K from Healthy Gamer saying something along the lines of “If you don’t know what you want to do, get a piece of paper and write down everything wrong with the world. In 5 minutes the paper will be almost full” and… What? No? I mean, things are problems in that they make people’s lives worse. But I notice very very little actually changes how I feel. So why would I expect anything I do to change how someone else feels if nothing they do can change how I feel? There are only two axis that actually change how I feel about life: lonely VS belonging and bored VS engaged. I don’t really have a reason to expect other people are very different except that people in worse life situations also have an unsafe VS secure axis. So the problems are “loneliness” and “listlessness”. Everyone acts like there are important problems everywhere. You see people saying ideas for side projects are a dime a dozen but here I am where I actually have the funds to quit and make something I thought had value and just nothing I can think of that seems to have any value.
*Everyone except one friend on Paxil who assures me the solution to my problem is Paxil and one friend who is convinced LSD is the solution to all problems. I remain unconvinced.
Quantitative finance has use for people who know advanced math and algorithms. (Though they are not known for doing great good for society.)
You can also get around this problem by starting your own ML startup. (I did this.) The startup route takes work and risk tolerance but provides high positive externalities for society.