7 ms·

His problem though is not with side projects is it? It's the 40 hours cranking out meaningless crap in the office that's the issue here. I've had no problem fi

• agentultra 8y ago
  I think it does have to do with side projects if that's the avenue OP wants to take to find meaningful work. > I would love to contribute to such a project and I always envy and look up to Jeff Dean Instead of being jealous, be the Jeff Dean you want to be! > Maybe I should get a job in a company which has a well established product (preferably something used by developers) and has some room for creativity? I'm being glib but it's honest advice: one way to get the kind of work you want is to be the expert people need. Rarely does a team hire someone from outside with zero knowledge of a critical, low-level system and pay them to learn it. More often than not they want to hire someone with the skills and experience they're lacking. The hard part is finding the motivation. A good chunk of line-of-business applications are valuable but do not require, "creative solutions." They need people who understand the problem domain so well that they can translate business rules into systems and can anticipate users' needs. The low-level work is a lot more fun and personally satisfying for people but you have to be pushing the envelope to get it. If you have the personal motivation to be obsessed with LevelDB for a couple of years before landing that dream job... success may be much more likely.