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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?

#331

Post by mywittyname »

vharuck wrote: post #321
RationPhantoms wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some University positions can be notoriously cushy. I know a few networking folks who have been in their position at the University for a solid 25 years. Kind of unheard of in the enterprise-sector for the same position.

Government positions are even cushier. Things move slowly, they value consistency, and the hiring process is such a pain that you won't be fired for anything short of malicious or criminal behavior. And if you automate a government task, there's a good chance you won't need to update it for at least a decade.

The pay is usually very noncompetitive. But the OP is okay with that.

The local universities around me have some dev/it positions posted on various job sites, and they are all offering bottom 30% or so in pay, like $45-60k/yr

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

#332

Post by rattray »

samzer wrote: post #268

Big company + Obscure stable internal tool + Maintenance of that tool = thumbs up

This general idea makes a lot of sense because the company will actually be _happy_ to have someone sit mostly idle, as long as there's always someone to fix it when it breaks. You won't have to constantly feel like you're hiding your idleness / lying to peers.

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

#333

Post by latexr »

The question reminded me of a workplace.stackexchange question I found years ago: https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/93696/is-it-un...

They arrived at your current goal through automation and were wondering if it was ethical to not reveal that to their employers. It also generated discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14656945

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

#334

Post by zefool »

orthoxerox wrote: post #190
shireboy wrote: post #155

I might suggest a slightly different approach. “Early Retirement Extreme” proposes that if you save 80% of your income in a few broad index funds (search bogglehead), learn to live on the 20%, then you can get to where you are financially independent and retire in 5 years. I can’t say I’m personally there yet, but it sounds like you are more motivated and maybe less obligations. Get cheap ass housing, eat cheap, bike…

This means I will have to live the rest of my life on the 20% budget, doesn't it?

If you want more than the 20, you just need to save a bigger stack.

In general, you just need to plug in your target income from your investment, and your expected long-term return in percent. That gives you the amount of money you need to save.

The more you save per year, and the lower your target income, the faster you get there.

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

#335

Post by halfdan »

aeyes wrote: post #290
apexalpha wrote: post #75

I don't know about putting in the least amount of effort for 5 days a week. But what I do know is that in my country, the Netherlands, part-time work is more and more becoming the standard. Already, 75% of women and 30% of men work 32 hours a week or less. In many sectors the fulltime standard has been lowered to 36 hours, which means every other Friday off. I myself started on 40 and will move to 32 hours somewhere…

NL is a strange place to work in IT, I worked there for a little while doing consulting work. Projects were not meeting deadlines yet everybody dropped the pen at 5pm sharp, I was baffled and amazed at the same time.

I like this. Deadlines are set by humans and inherently flawed. It isn't right to go into crunch mode when a deadline isn't met - instead how the deadline was set and how it can be improved should be revisited.

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

#337

Post by duckfang »

roland35 wrote: post #201
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…

We had to fire someone doing this as well, he was caught because his "subcontractor" was calling into meetings and had a totally different accent! Please don't do this... Not only is it unethical, there are security, intellectual property, and liability concerns as well. A company should be aware of who has access to it's internal resources.

Yep, rules for thee and not for me.

Companies subcontract all day long. And they rely on cheap labor to do this. And the company benefits.

Yet when the person (not a fake person like a company) does this, it's a "firable offense".

I've also seen similar parallels about whom should get the fruits of automation: If I automate a harder process from 10h to 10m...

If the company knows, then I will be expected to keep automating and get 9h 50m more work.

If the company doesn't know, then Im able to retain the 9h50m to myself for my purposes (learning, entertainment).

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

#338

Post by jxidjhdhdhdhfhf »

sjg007 wrote: post #318
jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The parent comment was about being tied to a job by insurance. If you quit that job you won't have any income so you will qualify in Medicaid expanded states, where only income matters. And again, if you can't get Medicaid, you qualify for a very low cost ACA plan with very high levels of coverage. Even if you're high income, a silver ACA plan is limited to 8.5% of your income.

The ACA has been in place for a decade. There's no reason for low income people not to have insurance these days and people haven't been tied to their jobs by insurance for a decade.

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

#339

Post by tylerlarson »

I have no interest in telling you what to do as an individual but this thread and all of the people that seem on board with this is what drives me crazy about most of the places I've worked.

I have the hardest time getting anything done because of the sea of people trying to find ways not to do any work. Is this not abuse of privilege? Do you all not hear the stories of people working multiple jobs and still not being able to pay their bills. Is this entitlement?

There are actual problems in the world, sure most of them you are able to effect might be small but what a complete waist of time to be stuck in a job for 8 hours a day and be actively choosing not to contribute solutions to the problems you are faced with. Sure not everything along the way is going to be interesting but if these problems don't excite you there are other jobs that should and if all of that fails go start a company because you are only on this planet for so long and waisting these hours making it look like you are doing work pails in comparison to actually making any impact on the people and things around you. You will be missing out on shared relationships of successes and failures as you resign yourself to this void.

It doesn't feel good to deceive people, it doesn't feel good to take money from people for work you haven't done.

There are people in this world that would literally give anything to have the jobs you have all listed but they can't even apply because they were not born in the right country or their parents didn't have the money to send them to the right school or their accent or skin color made that same interview that you passed impossible to even get.

This whole thread feels so wrong to me and I'm really amazed this community is okay with propagating it. It goes completely against the idea of progress and works against any form of entrepreneurial spirit. Companies fail because of this mentality and world as a whole is worse off because of it. Sure everyone has moments of these feelings but to encourage this as an ok path through of life, I just don't understand.

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