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Ask HN: I love paying attention to detail. Is there a career for me?

2 points by ghantila ↗ HN
I'm a 23 year old guy. Currently jobless and trying to figure out things for me. I've realised that I love fixing things.

By that I mean, I love making things better. I pay attention to the smallest detail in whatever I do. Be it cleaning my room, cleaning dust from CPU, I clean each and every part. I absolutely take care of spacing, new lines, tabs while I'm coding if that makes sense. You know kinda like Steve Jobs who paid extreme attention to each and every detail.

I know a little bit of code, HTML, CSS, C, C++, Win32 API etc. I'm not really good at it but I'm more than an average programmer. I also know a bit of reverse engineering and web application hacking. And I've also been listed in various hall of fames (Google, Microsoft, Facebook).

The thing is I'm not able to find a specific career. Can people at HN suggest some good career choice? Thanks in advance.

7 comments

[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 19.4 ms ] thread
rubyfan
QA Testing.
CuriouslyC
I don't think I've ever met anyone who enjoyed QA.
lsiunsuex
Not programming related, but extreme attention to detail could be used in art restoration. That's a very intricate job of trying to find the exact colors / formula of paint used / how to repair it properly, etc...
danielvf
Assist someone wiring up a data center?
sigmaprimus
From your question it sounds like you have already decided to have a career in the tech sector and in particular programming/coding. That is a good choice but keep in mind that choosing to go down that road will require constant learning and effort to maintain your relevance as things change very fast in that field of work. Here is a link to a newish article on data science jobs. https://github.com/tobigithub/tensorflow-deep-learning/wiki/... Also as a fellow person who pays attention to details I have infered that you are still living at home and I am assuming you are around 5 years out of school, and the fact that you enjoy doing repetative tasks most likely means you also play games that reward this, such as mmorpgs and as a person who has lived a little I can tell the best thing you could do for yourself is stop playing all video games and learn how to live or you will find yourself left behind in the real world. One day you will wake up and realize most of your highshcool friends have families with good careers and looking forward to their 10 year highs cool reunions while you are still living with your parents unable to support yourself let alone a family. Even the "Dumb guys" that were less than average in school, learned a trade, worked hard and bought a home and are enjoying their lives while you still struggling. This might not happen to you but it happens to people all the time so don't fall into the trap of gaming, no one will care how high you were ranked in a game at your reunion if you even go.

Sorry for the rant, you seem to be on the right path by asking for advice here and I just wanted to give you some from a guy who was "too smart" for his own good at your age.

ghantila
Thanks a lot for taking time to write a valuable advice. I'd love to learn more from you and your experiences.

I've not yet decided what exactly I want to do but I love computers. I can spend hours and hours trying to do stuffs on it. I also love helping people. I'll tell you what I do mostly, whenever I have someone visit my home, I ask for their phone, connect to my W-Fi and update their apps from Play Store or App Store, enable/disable some settings for privacy.

I don't know but I love doing it. I'm thinking of starting a computer repair business and I'm damn sure I'll rock at it. But somewhere I'm lacking confidence.

I don't play video games but I spend a lot of time watching videos on YouTube, some educational and some just for fun.

In short, I'm just in this world. No idea what to do with my life. Please advice me more on this.

mamaniscalco
It sounds like you feel rudderless to me. Perhaps you should invest some time into finding yourself rather than a career. Work does define us for sure, but, you should clarify yourself to yourself before you invest time and energy into a career. Consider travelling and experiencing the world Then you will know the answer to your question for yourself and by yourself.