[inetknght]

> it’s such a niche area of expertise.

It is that! As I stated in another comment, this niche ended up saving the company literally millions of dollars in hardware costs. To be fair, it really should only be done in highly performance-critical situations and only after an initial implementation is already written in pure C++ with thorough unit testing for _all_ input/output cases.

[russianGuy83829]

What does the company you work for do?

[inetknght]

The company I wrote the hand-optimized code does DNA analysis. I worked there mostly because I needed a job. DNA analysis certainly isn't within my passion domain.

Now I work for a company to writing software to control drones. It doesn't pay as much as I want, but it's at least fun and there's a ton of unsolved automation problems at the company. And we're hiring like crazy -- from 6 people to 300+ in the past two years, and there's no sign of slowing down. And I'm now a manager too... that's the really scary part lol