I think many of us have noticed the trend that modern tech just… Doesn’t make things better. There’s little to be excited about, because anything even remotely innovative is going to be filled with tracking, ads, etc.

Let’s say you had a bored software engineer or 2 at your disposal and the goal was to improve something you do often, by creating an application or website that isn’t owned and enshittified by a megacorp looking to extract maximum short term value - what would your project be? Is it something you’d be willing to pay for, maybe with a free tier available?

The reason I’m asking is that I’m a software engineer and in the current hard-ass market, while I’m lucky enough to have a stable job, I know that experience alone isn’t cutting it anymore in the recruitment process. You need to be able to show side projects too. Plus I have an unemployed software engineer friend who also has no interesting projects to show. So if we make any money out of it, that’s awesome. If we don’t, it’s just something for our github accounts. Probably the latter.

PS: Yes, I know this is not a tech community - I want ideas from regular, non-techy people too.

PPS: This doesn’t have to be something in your personal life, it could also be something that would help you at work if you had it.

  • @mlc894@lemm.eeEnglish
    11•3 months ago

    My brother is an audiologist and hates doing a certain hearing test, because it’s boring. The way he describes it, he hands the patient a button and a pair of headphones, then goes into the next room.

    He has a row of dials. He turns the first one until the patient pushes the button. He writes down how high the dial got, then turns it off and moves on to the next dial. Repeat for like 20 dials.

    Then at the end, he has to draw a graph BY HAND, highlighting certain features.

    There is precisely 0% chance that this requires a trained audiologist to do. Maybe to interpret, but not to collect data.