Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 1001 posts

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

#421

Post by kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj »

natch wrote: post #374

Work at Google. They seem to have many thousands of people who do very little. Just look at their product quality. The atrocious performance of their Gmail spam filtering for example. It catches emails sent by Google itself, from Google, to people who have signed up with Google for the emails, and dumps them in the junk folder as gmail spam. Think about how bad that is. They’ve had 20 years to fix this. That’s just o…

Yep. Google likes to think they hire the best and do a lot yet they can't maintain or launch products beyond gmail, maps, and meet/chat, and that last one sucks big time. Its seriously like no one at google knows what they are doing or actually does any work at all.

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

#422

Post by amarant »

When I was in middle school, I was thought that this kind of behaviour was what brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that the capitalistic system prevented this type of behaviour from occurring, thus spawning rapid progress.

I guess the tendencies are still there, but I don't think a capitalist society will make it easy for you. Try and vote for someone pushing UBI maybe?

Whatever you do, don't become my colleague please, I'd hate working with you (and I'd probably get you fired pretty quickly as well, or at least try)

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

#423

Post by throwaway17392 »

Job at a corporate or a company providing B2B products, a small corporate with 100-500 is most bearable. Of course, you need to proof yourself for the first half year or so. Also there are occasional crunches. Actually it can be a win-win as long as you know what you're doing. (E.g. avoid the busy work.) Corporates have a lot of strange politics going on, nobody will ever know or even care. Good luck, although I can tell you that it can still be soul-draining but I can relate to choosing a job for some time to charge up.

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

#424

Post by veridies »

amarant wrote: post #398

A wise woman once told me to figure out what my passion was, and work with that. While that's not always possible, in sure you can find some kind of job that is at least moderately interesting to you, and that you won't mind actually putting in the work for. I kinda get where you're coming from, but I think you have the wrong solution. You don't care about the product you're working on, so find one that you do care a…

My reaction to this post was similar — is OP sure he actually wants to be a developer? Because honestly, it sounds like a big part of his problem is that he feels like his work lacks meaning. There are many other jobs out there where he might feel more motivated to work.

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

#425

Post by jen20 »

amarant wrote: post #408
jen20 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it doesn't feel good to take money from people for work you haven't done. I can think of entire ranges of organizations I would have no problem in extracting money from. Despite personally regularly working 60+ hour weeks (I actually like my job), your entire post feels like you’re pretty deep into the wage-slave kool-aid. A job is a means to an end, not a reason to exist, and companies do not care for you in the s…

If you feel that way, you should consider starting your own company. Freelance consulting is an easy business to run, if you don't have any more exciting ideas.

Been there, done that. I’m not interested in the paperwork, or the “hustle” of finding projects (though that historically has never been a problem, who is to say it will remain that way when the next dot-com crash equivalent era hits).

Note that “working to live” and not “living to work” is not the same as “not fulfilling your contractual obligation to your employer”, which you absolutely should do.

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

#426

Post by WhompingWindows »

koheripbal wrote: post #316
devtul wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Management doesn't even need forum posts to force everyone, they will do it just for their own job security.

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

#427

Post by mikeytown2 »

lhl wrote: post #104

If you have a good pre-existing network of contacts (or have a modicum of networking skills/are willing to do a bit of legwork) I’ve found there’s a constant demand for “low-end” sysadmin/devops work for small businesses - usually they just need someone to be on call in case their AWS/virtual hosting/or Shopify what have you go down. You could probably gather about a half dozen or so of those contracts, set up some a…

If they're all hosted on aws you'll have a bad day if it ever goes down.

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

#428

Post by kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj »

mywittyname wrote: post #319

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 programma…

"devops" is really hit or miss. I used to do devops consulting and all I saw were people who had no idea what they were doing and so they constantly had fires to put out. There is no time to fix and automate when you are putting out fires all day.

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

#429

Post by johannes1234321 »

Yes, many jobs are working on projects one isn't interested in. It's a job one has to do ...

However to me it seems you're trying to make it worse.

What about trying to find a job in a field you are passionate about? Assuming you are an experienced software developer you should be able to analyse problems and solving problems. These are qualities not only in software.

There's a large field of things one can do outside a job, which can be interesting. Be it with a NGO or some other area. Such jobs won't pay much in money, but they can give you a purpose. Instead of writing code for solving a problem which you don't care about solve problems you find relevant.

Maybe also only for a year a two and then see how things are going.

Post reply on HN