Ask HN: How do I find a meaningful software engineering job?
Try ecommerce. Build online shops for businesses that would otherwise go out of business. Enable them to trade nationally and internationally. Put the customer first and put in place excellent procedures and systems for customer service. Solve real world problems such as excess inventory, waste and getting products to market first.<p>This isn&#x27;t to put shop assistants out of a job, get the website right and people will &#x27;Google first&#x27; before stepping in store.<p>Ecommerce has only just got going and I got into it after my niche skills in realtime 3D meant that I only had options in military or computer games. I threw out all that good stuff I knew and started over, ecommerce being my choice as I liked retail as a kid and did a fine job of selling bicycles as a Saturday job. I figured that the 30 mins+ spent advising a customer in store could be better spent advising many more customers online. Also, nations that trade don&#x27;t tend to go to war with each other and being able to trade is what enabled us to survive the ice ages that finished off the Neanderthals.<p>You can be picky with who you build websites for, you don&#x27;t have to be selling widgets for the fracking industry, you can help sell bicycles instead. It is that simple.<p>The problems in ecommerce are not difficult. However, solving simple problems in ecommerce can have real world benefits. Much to my embarrassment at the time I once helped build a website for a fabric shop - yep, bits of cloth for women who make dresses and what not. Not really my bag. However, they now have no problems with staying solvent, the shop is doing very well and the new ecommerce department has grown to take on many members of staff.<p>One thing we did for this fabric shop (&#x27;we&#x27; I mean &#x27;me&#x27; in this instance) is that we made it so end of roll fabric, e.g. when there is only 0.5m left, automatically went into the special section of the store called remnants. There you had to buy the whole remnant albeit with a 10% off incentive. Not only did this simple bit of code result in actually shifting the left-over-cruft, it also meant that we had a &#x27;sticky&#x27; page, so customers would check in regularly just to see what was in the remnant section. Once they added that 0.5m scrap to their basket they might also buy some other stuff - lining, all the other bits of trim etc. Consequently what was once a loss making aspect of their business became a winner.<p>I did have to fix a few things on the customer orders - VAT going wrong and such like, however, in so doing I was quite surprised at how international the reach was. I also noticed that the Nigerian fabrics that had been &#x27;hoarded&#x27; over the years by the owner were top sellers. Before they had just piled up in a back room, nobody knowing they were there. But online the demand that was never imagined was realised.<p>Most customers were essentially &#x27;makers&#x27; and before they were not &#x27;making&#x27;. With our efforts we enabled lots of people in lots of small towns to do things they were not able to do before. We also sold at a premium, there was no ambition to put every competitor out of business, however the result was a range of fabrics that small town shops would not be able to stock in such depth.<p>If you look at other aspects such as CO2, the online shopping meant that customers did not have to drive to the big city and back again to get bits and pieces. They could get on with what they were doing and order online without the travel. Being vegetarian I do have opinions on silk, leather, fur and whatever chemicals are used to process cotton, but on the website we were able to help people who had similar concerns with &#x27;you may also like&#x27; suggestions. A great amount of colour theory was needed to auto-populate those things and that was fun to do.<p>I was almost ashamed to admit I was working on some poxy fabric shop at the time but looking back on it now I am quite pleased by what was accomplished. I know real jobs exist thanks to our efforts and the business is definitely viable in these times when the big names on the High Street are having a hard time of it. none of the software engineering was &#x27;SpaceX grade&#x27; but the clients were lovely to work with and what we did for them was &#x27;SpaceX grade&#x27; for their industry.<p>I would be here for quite a while if I was to write up all of the other case studies, but I think you get the idea. Ecommerce might not sound meaningful in the way that working for a save-the-world NGO might be, however, &#x27;trade not aid&#x27; is meaningful. Think of the Neanderthals and what makes us humans special.