Ask HN: If given freedom to choose, what full-time job would you choose and why?
If given freedom to choose, what would you like to work on as a job and why? In what field/domain would you like to work and what present skill-sets of yours would you use on that job?
41 comments
[ 1.1 ms ] story [ 89.2 ms ] threadI would then spend the rest of my time attending to hobbies like playing magic cards, hanging out with family and anything else my mind conjures up.
musician
zookeeper
I'm a physicist and have worked on rocket science before, but the pay was a pity and the boss was shitty.
SaaS is the only way to make an ample living in my country, the only jobs where competence makes a change instead of which university you graduated...
I’m extremely introverted, but for some reason I have no problem talking to people in a problem-solving context (like at work). I enjoy it, in fact. In a social setting though, I’m off in a corner.
I also just like the idea of diplomacy and making meaningful contributions to a community. Besides that, the superficial things seem like a lot of fun too (ribbon cutting ceremonies, parades, etc).
I like the idea of going to work and making things every day.
I've done a lot of training with my own dogs that would definitely allow me to handle the basics of training, but I'd want to train under someone much more experienced so as to be able to work with highly aggressive dogs and others with extreme challenges that make them unadoptable in their current state.
My last dog had super high-prey drive and was also a fear biter.
Both drives were incredible. You could play train her to do almost anything in a very short period of time with classic behavior shaping. It was unfortunate that her fear drive was higher. But this mostly meant proper space management and patience were required along with never assuming that a situation was "ok" by default.
We worked with a number of animal behavioral specialists (including university veterinary behavioral practices), all of whom concluded it was just her default personality. Much of our success in keeping her with our family was building environments that minimized her fear drive impulses.
Still a great dog in many situations. She passed after a pretty healthy 15 1/2 years and I'm currently on a break from pets.
I just feel that most of the high paying jobs don’t have as much of a helpful, important impact on the world, whereas those hard science fields have more opportunity to impact humanity in a positive manner, even if not as well paid.
My time was largely used to fix things around the park, perform landscaping, and working on new / existing trails. It was great to be outside, work with my hands, and being mentally engaged having to come up with solutions to problems with sometimes limited resources.
But the actual treat was seeing the work being enjoyed by visitors and knowing that for years to come untold amounts of people from all walks of life will be able to do the same.
I've often thought the us should have a large group of kids out of high school or college from all over the country do service work in local, state and national parks around the country. They'd first spend 4-6 months training similar to the army to build discipline and then go maintain trails/fix buildings/remove invasive species/rehab are back to a roughly natural state/etc. There are so many people willing and interested to help improve natural areas and it's a shame our government doesn't recognize that.
But if I have to pick something else, probably a chef. I love slicing and dicing. I love doing one part to mastery, e.g. finding a better way to cook steak, toast burger buns, make better mayonnaise. I did quit the tech industry once to do a cafe and we had a blast researching recipes. I got quite frustrated that my partner wasn't looking to cook better, only more profitably. One of my favorite documentaries of all time is Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and I apply a lot of those techniques to my current work.