I work at Google. Most people here do a lot of work. But maybe 5% do next to nothing, or nothing you couldn't do in 2 hours a day. I imagine this is the case at any sufficiently large corporation. So if you can find a remote job at a BigCo, it might be worth a try! Note that you can't do nothing from Day 1, you have to try for maybe a year and then you can do nothing (based on my observations)
Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
291–300 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#292This is the best Ask HN I've seen in a while. Fantastic. As for OP, I recommend you consider data analytics. That may seem counterintuitive, but the analytical work is a great place to escape into, mentally. I really, REALLY enjoy it, and I can generally use whatever tools I want for the hard stuff, and then just spew out some Python/R for a notebook deliverable, or whatever format they want. It's really liberating t…
If it's report generation, I 100% agree. ...and you can maybe have more than one of these jobs if they are fully remote.
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the Scrum Master suggestion, my Scrum Master pretty much just creates meeting invites for 40 hours a week. We have a lot of contracts where we have Scrum Masters just because we do Agile, usually the non-technical types do it. The irony is that Scrum Masters are supposed to not make the team reliant on them but by having a dedicated role for it of course the dev team will make the Scrum Master do menial…
Another vote for Scrum Master here. It's only in the past 5 years or so that I've personally seen it as a job in itself - previously, I'd seen Scrum Master as part of the role of one of the developers or similar. But now in large corps, Scrum Master exists as a distinct job, which appears to require doing very, very little - chairing most of the regular scrum-related meetings (daily standup, planning, demo, and the m…
Why on earth would you have a Scrum Master AND a Project Manager? Makes sense to have a dedicated less-technical person to manage schedules, coordinate with clients and keep people honest on commitments... but dear god why would you ever start splitting that role up into multiple people
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm extremely curious about this from a practical perspective. (Disclaimer: American, so probably not the best work-life perspective) As far as company / coworker expectations, how does this work? Are responsibilities / work adjusted to fit the hours provided? What about being on-call? It seems like something a lot of companies should be taking advantage of, but the desire to own souls fights against it.
Majority of my team works 4 days/week, but do so by working 4x9 hours (36 total) instead of 5x8 hours (40 total). We don't really do less work (or take longer for projects). Some observations: * The folks working 4 days are a bit less likely to pick-up 'side activities' (e.g. help organise an external event, lead some of the recruiting efforts, etc.), because a day away takes out 25% of active time in one go. * Ratio…
Nice to see a reply from a managers perspective. That being said, 4x9 is not considered part-time in NL.
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#295You can do all of this and earn a high salary if you become an... ...agile coach Read a few books, recycle stuff you find online, do a presentation on neurodiversity. It really is money for old rope. I knew of one who worked in a UK gov department who got £1250 a day, charged for 5 days, and only turned up for 4.5. Did it for years.
Agile coaching is it. It's literally money for nothing. I'm not an Agile coach, but have seen enough to know that it really is nonsense snake oil that large organisations will pay incredible sums of money for. I sort of wonder if the negative real value of the Agile industry means the price is effectively limitless, given that the whole thing is a Fugazi so the bill is whatever the buyer is foolish enough to pay.
Well, it's a transformative process that not many orgs can implement.. that's basically it.
Another is a JIRA consultant. You basically setup JIRA and teach an org how to use it.
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm surprised once again by the nice and helpful community on HN. I anticipated most comments would be people telling me to get my head out of my ass and get to work. I hope you find a way to chill through life.
I think you question is very sincere and VERY UNIQUE for this community because every other question is asking for the exact opposite. That's why there are a lot of interesting replies as well as a lot of interest in the question itself. Is your hobby/"passions (which are not monetizable)" expensive? And are you 100% certain they are not monetizable? In today's world, I have yet to see something which is not monetiza…
> In today's world, I have yet to see something which is not monetizable.
What about working on free software without compromises like ads or dual licensing (which does not usually help anyway)?
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#297Consider also taking a data entry job. These can be automated a huge chunk of the time. Depending on the gig these can feel like free money. Doing a tricky bit of automation can be fun too.
Could you elaborate what details one should look for?
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I agree with the Scrum Master suggestion, my Scrum Master pretty much just creates meeting invites for 40 hours a week. Same here! Scrum masters are secretaries on managers' salaries. They're the true winners of the corporate game.
I think they get a bad rap. Good scrum masters are worth their weight in gold at scale. The solve all inter-team comms, the bat away distractions, and they generally find the answers, or the people with the answers and get them solved and batted out. Bad scrum masters take up space with reporting meetings that aren't reporting - but who are we kidding. I've been privileged to work with both.
If the scrum master has enough rank or credibility + technical experience, they can get tickets routed and convince team leads that "yes this ticket is your problem until you prove otherwise".
This probably falls under your "solves all inter-team communication problems" catch-all.
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Subcontracting is not against the rules unless the contract specifically says so. Your job as the prime contractor is to manage the subcontractors so that means IP and privacy concerns etc... Houses are built by subs for example. Defense software is built by subs.
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#300Almost any salaried position in a big enterprise involves very little real work. It's mostly email, meetings and power point.