Small-scale manufacturing is another good spot. I spent some years doing consulting work with a steel processing company. "Boring" tech, but interesting problems to be solved.
This is it. Currently at a local manufacturing company, and their in-house software runs mostly open-source stuff. No major proprietary headache to deal with, it's not a tech company so I'm not dealing with the obnoxious meetings and calls; and since the software I maintain is internal, I don't have to deal with angry customers. Coworkers let me know if something needs to be better, and I make it so. Simple.
For that you need a small/medium business where the owners realize that IT is fundamental to their business even if it does not appear to be so... and the amount of people open-minded enough to admit that is not exactly large.
Rule of thumb for Germans, if they write a fax phone number on the imprint or the website looks 90s style... don't waste your time, skip them.
Thanks for the advice. I had an internship at medium-sized manufacturer in California, above SF a bit. Was really cool to be next to a bunch of CNC machines while writing some code. I think I’ll try to find that vibe again sometime.
