work i like
posted 2022, updated oct 2024
I like working on cool problems and learning from kind people.
cool problems
A cool problem is something that makes me think “wow” or “oh damn” or “that’s interesting!”. It’s deliberately vague because I’m a noob who hasn’t experienced that much and unexpected things have ended up being cool to me.
Some traits that have contributed to me finding something cool in the past1:
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It’s about or applies knowledge from Computer Science.
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It pushes the boundaries of my own knowledge - either I’m learning something new or I’m applying concepts that I recently learned.
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I can rationalise2 that I’m making people happier. This can be as local as people my teammates sitting across me or as high-level as helping people impacted by global issues.
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It may involve contributing to Open Source.
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It has a good balance of big / hard problems and observable quick wins.
kind people
This used to be “smart people”. I did (and still do) think that smart people understand that they should be nice to work with or work for. However, I think that far more self-identifying kind people are smart enough to be good mentors, compared to self-identifying smart people being kind enough.