I work for a retail software provider doing a bunch of hacker stuff. It's a mix of support and implementation of systems that retailers use at the corporate offices for managing merchandise, sales, planning, etc. It's very database driven, so the majority of the work involves running SQL against databases to configure things and/or figure out why stuff isn't working.
Our legacy stuff runs on the Informix database (owned by IBM now), running on Red Hat and CentOS servers, so we get lots of Linux exposure too. For better or for worse, the newer products are being developed in a .NET/SQL Server environment, which is also great exposure from a career standpoint. Many of us prefer the old model, though, as Linux is much simpler to manage, but oh well.
All in all, it's a fun gig for computer enthusiasts of any sort and there's a new challenge every day. I've been doing it for five years now, and as long as they treat me right, I'll probably do it for another five.
- Pickins