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Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?

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Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?

#221

Post by mtberatwork »

DenisM wrote: post #163

I suggest being the one-man IT department in a non-IT org. E.g. a university department, a smaller school, a small-time manufacturer or retailer, etc. Automating your job on one hand and managing expectations on the other should set you up for a while. Your tech skills will degrade if you tend to them, but accumulating good will and maintaining occasional contact with people should ensure they help find you new jobs…

> one-man IT department

This means you will be on call 24/7/365 though.

Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?

#223

Post by lccarrasco »

nathantotten wrote: post #165
Kneecaps07 wrote: post #146

This is unethical, but outsource yourself. Get contractor jobs and then hire cheap overseas workers to do the work and pocket the difference. If you can get a few of these gigs going and can manage your calendar you can probably cut yourself down to 20 hours a week. Just be better at hiding it than the guy we hired who got busted doing this literally within the first hour of his first day. Don't let your boss take ov…

This isn’t unethical. There are entire companies that do exactly this. If done well, this is actually an extremely valuable service. It would be unethical if you are hired as an employee and outsourced your work, but as a contractor this is fair game.

What? A contractor usually will sign a contract and intellectual property agreements to their name, it's obviously not their right to share company information with a third party.

Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?

#224

Post by bluedevil2k »

ph9SSgMzmX7mbe wrote: post #148
poisonborz wrote: post #15

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to focus on hobbies/life and not caring much about working time job - I would guess most people fall on this side, actually (and they don't even have too much of hobbies either). However, the way you wrote this post, it strucks me that maybe you have burnout, or you're depressed - as if you reach out to your passions not mainly because you like them, but because those ne…

What would you recommend? I identified myself way too much in OP's post. I'm in my mid-20s, have a job as a consultant DevOps engineer in a boring fintech company, in a project that I think will fail. I'm full-remote atm, and I'm already doing the least amount of work that I can do without it being noticed. I'm really good at programming (based on feedback of my co-workers), and I like doing side-projects (usually vi…

In my experience shifting to a 4/5 schedule won't cure your burn-out. You need to take a vacation, 1-2 week vacation, to really get rid of that burn-out feeling and "recharge" yourself. And if you come back and within a week or 2 feel that dread feeling again, then it's time to move on and find something else. As everyone else has said, being unhappy ever day is no way to live life.

Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?

#225

Post by lbrindze »

When I first started working on software I was fortunate enough to get exposed to working municipal contracts. One example was building out a payment gateway and website for the LA county coroner and medical examiner. This included making a small e-commerce site for their gift shop (I don’t know why they had a gift shop).

A friends father, who was very involved in local government, told me with regards to government work, “failure is unacceptable but indefinite delay is ideal.”

As long as you are in no immediate hurry to get paid, these sorts of local/state gov projects can be quite lucrative and require very little day to day effort to get them done. The hardest part is learning how to navigate the RFP process but it’s really just about reading the rules and proposals posted. The reason government is often overcharged for mediocre software comes down to this deeply flawed procurement process.

Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?

#227

Post by mattparcens »

As someone who has had their past > 1/2 decade of work thrown out, (across multiple companies and projects!), due to low cost sensitivity on the company's part, or just poor planning, I at least halfway admire your question, if not totally admire it.

One recommendation, based on an exceedingly small sample size, would be to search for a non-profit with an outdated tech stack. Seek as many indicators as possible to suggest "lack of push."

Also, I noticed while contemplating this response, that indeed.com appeared to auto-complete "laid back" for me as I was typing it. :-)

Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?

#228

Post by giantg2 »

elyobo wrote: post #95
ethbr0 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who sympathizes with your comment ("tech stack complex and fugly") and has made moves both ways in terms of salary (high to low for QoL -25%, then low to high again +50%), start with your requirements . OP did a great job of saying "Here's what I need ." Until that's staked out, you don't know what's too little, enough, and too much. But generally, minimizing and controlling costs (critically, through city…

Partner choice and choice whether to have children are other critical considerations in cost control.

This can be the biggest factor. It can't be understated.

For example, my wife won't let me consider relocating and spends basically all her money on hobbies. This limits my job options to locally available ones (not a great area) and that I can't get a less stressful job because it pays less and I need my current salary to pay all the bills.

Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?

#229

Post by jcims »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #151

You just described my job to a T. I'm a systems analyst at a university. This was a big, demanding job when I first started. But after being here for 2 years, I've automated a lot of the complicated stuff. So now most routine tasks that took the other guy a week takes me about 15 minutes. To be fair though, the other guy was *really bad*. Like, couldn't even open IIS manager and restart a single website, bad. The pay…

I ran a small infosec shop for ~15 years and worked in many industries along the way. An IT job at a university was the first thing that came to mind. Not necessarily because the job is easy, because that's not always the case, but because the environments that I've been involved with at least are really chill and you stay in touch with young folks.

Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?

#230

Post by mxuribe »

mysterydip wrote: post #46

Hey, at least you're honest. Is the problem that your work has no meaning? There are plenty of nonprofits that are slugging away using inefficient processes that could benefit from a developer that makes them custom software. Maybe there's one out there that aligns with your hobbies?

I'd caution against the non-profit direction! Some nonprofits that are inefficient aren't because they haven't discovered means to optimize processes or systems, but rather because of cultural issues...In addition to this add the low pay, plus lots of constant, hot air talk about whatever space the nonprofit operates in. I'm sure there are nonprofits out there that are ideal, and still have a need for expertise that you might bring them...but much like all other types of businesses, there are also many crappy nonprofit orgs out there. (I'm not referring to nefarious ones, merely ones that are run poorly and would not be great places to work at per your description above.)
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