Ask HN: How to meet and work with likeminded people on the Internet?
A Pakistani backend engineer with an electrical engineering background, working on embedded Rust and robotics, struggles to find local peers in deep-tech fields and faces travel restrictions due to a low-ranking passport. They seek advice on where to connect with like-minded people online for collaboration and learning in electronics, embedded systems, and robotics.
Background
- The original poster lives in Pakistan and works remotely as a backend engineer, but their passion is electronics/robotics/embedded systems — an area with very few local peers. They also mention Embedded Rust (programming microcontrollers in the Rust language using the Embassy framework, a modern async runtime for embedded devices).<br>- They cite two barriers: Pakistan's passport ranks near the bottom for visa-free travel (Henley Passport Index), making relocation or in-person conferences abroad difficult; and a lack of local "deep-tech" communities.<br>- The broader context is a trend seen across developing countries where talented engineers in hardware-level work are isolated from global networks. The question — "where to meet likeminded people online for collaboration" — touches on open-source projects, Discord/slack communities, and remote hackathons as alternatives to geographic mobility.