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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?

#311

Post by Tarsul »

busymom0 wrote: post #145
lmueongoqx wrote: post #29

Earlier 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…

e.g. you like to play a lot of chess. So you COULD theoretically monetize it by making content about chess (youtube, ebooks etc.), maybe even do some events but still.. that's not the same as playing chess which is what is your hobby is about. Thus, making money with your hobby would then indeed not relate (much) to the actually fun part about the hobby. (although you can argue that working as a writer on your hobby is better than being a writer about something you're not that interested about. However, it might sour your hobby.)

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

#312

Post by sjg007 »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #256
bellyfullofbac wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even income. This is the argument for basic income, people would be free to pursue their artistic desires and inventor ideas.

This is an argument against basic income - the world can't function if everyone simply pursued their artistic desires.

Basic income is not enough to cover everything..

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

#314

Post by tim333 »

lmueongoqx wrote: post #11
imagine99 wrote: post #6

I do kinda understand where you're coming from but I want to warn you against this approach. These jobs you mention, they DO exist. But they break people and make them intensely miserable. Look into "boreout" (as opposed to burnout) to learn more about this. You will be very happy for the first few months, being able to browse HN, news sites and Reddit all day while nobody cares about what you do, nobody wants your i…

Thank you for your advice. I do not have it in me anymore to get the high paying job and go all-out, unfortunately. I understand the really boring jobs would probably lead to depression and not much else. I think a good alternative path would be to look for real jobs but as a part-timer. I'm not sure if there are any ~20 hours a week dev jobs, but that would most likely be enough. I'm passionate about playing a compe…

There's always stuff like ecommerce selling gear for said sport. Or similar. Online bookie for said sport etc.

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

#315

Post by zeroxfe »

waqasx wrote: post #251

I cant believe this hasnt been said yet: Every job can be converted into this esp in any sort of managerial role, the strategy to do this has only 3 basic steps: # 1 - Hire a great team under you. If you have one person, two person, or more working under you, make sure they know what to do and make sure they understand your expectations. # 2 - Delegate your work. Try to get rid of as much work as possible. There will…

Hiring and managing a team is extremely hard, and can get very stressful. The care and nurturing of organizations, while keeping them productive and resilient to constantly changing environments, is probably the hardest job.

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

#316

Post by koheripbal »

devtul wrote: post #302
koheripbal wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the take-away here, which I've also experienced, is to get an IT job in an industry that does not appreciate IT - find a position that seems to involve a TON of manual work - automate all of it - and DO NOT TELL anyone that you have automated those activities. If you are working from home, you could conceivably do this for multiple jobs (in theory, ethical considerations aside).

I know a UX/UI guy that worked for two big canadian banks at the same time. He was moving to Bank B, and did it for three months, just enough to lock in his annual bonus on Bank A. Oh, and he was praised in Bank A for his work in this period.

Stories like this is what will get to management and have them force everyone back in to the office.

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

#318

Post by sjg007 »

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #171
zikduruqe wrote: post #100

Just think. If your ability to get good quality health insurance/coverage wasn’t directly tied to having to be employed for those benefits, we all could pursue our passions and desires.

It isn't and hasn't been for a decade (since the ACA) Medicaid is free and of reasonable quality. Or if you can't get access to Medicaid because you live in a non-Medicaid-expanded state then a silver ACA plan with 94% cost sharing will be no more than 8.5% of your income (which means free if you have no income).

You have to make poverty wages to qualify for medicaid or be otherwise blind, disabled or 65. Some states have spend down programs and some states (mostly red states) do as little as legally possible.

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

#319

Post by mywittyname »

DevOps/IT at a small company can be a good one.

While you will be expected to work off-hours. So much of the job is about keeping things humming along nicely, and when that's happening, nobody has much expectation from you.

You can slowly automate the time-consuming segments of your job. And most of the time, the automation isn't necessarily difficult to do, as most platforms have API endpoints designed for programmatic interaction.

On the developer-side, you could find a job maintaining a product for a smaller company. It will mostly be DevOps work, but with some bug fixes or minor enhancements thrown in. This would be a much more visible job than DevOps. And if you don't really care about the product, it might not be a good fit.

I have a former colleague who has been working devops/web site maintenance for a Sewage Pipe Manufacture* for going on 13 years now. Last I talked to him, he loved it. $80k is plenty to live on, he has no commute and got to watch his kids grow up.

* Not really, but it's an equally obscure, but very specific industry.

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

#320

Post by SamWhited »

I should also say that I had an acquaintance that did this. He was working for a small local ISP (I think; might have been hosting, the kind of thing where they give you an FTP server and the ability to shoot everyone else on the shared server in the foot with PHP) and he literally turned his entire job into a couple of scripts and a big spreadsheet. He then just ran them a couple of times a week and called it a day. I don't know exactly what all he did, some sort of server management things and providing stats to management, but nobody else knew how to do it so he provided the non-technical management who didn't understand their own small company with value and the only work he had to do was run some scripts. It can be done.
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