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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?

#551

Post by sidlls »

cj wrote: post #523
bazooka_penguin wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it immoral? As long as the asked work gets done there's nothing wrong with splitting your time. How it any different from spending that time slacking off and working on hobbies, which could be monetized (ie art)

It's immoral because to be hired for a 40/hr full time job by 2 companies at the same time, you'll need to lie to both companies, representing to both that you're working full time, while in fact you aren't. And presumably the lies aren't limited to the interview process. You'll probably have to lie on a daily/weekly basis to keep up the ruse (for example, what will you say when both companies want you in a meeting a…

A different take: in this line of work especially the “40 hour” requirement is an unethical backdoor way to impose a non-compete condition. It’s not entirely an arbitrary number since the 40-hour week has been customary for decades. But in practice there’s no good reason to demand that allocation of time for an exempt, salaried employee.

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

#552

Post by rootusrootus »

pdimitar wrote: post #118
cik wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For 19 years of career I've never met this unicorn scrum master you are describing. Not a counter-argument, just sharing an anecdote.

Anecdote -- in the last 15 years I've had exactly one unicorn. They do exist, but they are very rare. And worth their weight in gold, I was really sad to lose ours in a layoff. Scrum masters, project managers, and marketing folks all seemed to be first out the door when money got tight

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

#553

Post by lotsofpulp »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #381
foxhop wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids are not that expensive. You do not have to send them to college, you just have to love them, teach them, care for them. Sure you will have to buy more food, and you might need a bigger house/apartment.

More food+bigger house probably adds $400-$1000/month to your budget. Also, kids need doctors, interests (books or toys), durable goods (clothes and furniture) and more to thrive.

An acceptable daycare for the "professional, white collar" class is minimum $1,500 per child per month and doctor visits are at least $200 or $250 out of pocket each time for regular viral/bacterial infections.

Kids aren't cheap if you want to keep up with your socioeconomic class. And by far the biggest cost is the extra you pay for a house to be located near other high earners so that the schools your kids go to is filled with kids of other high earners.

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

#554

Post by LazyDev199 »

I used to be a founder and got burned out when building my last company.

I'm now working at a dysfunctionnal 300+ppl company as a freelance developer. I've been in full remote since before the pandemic, I'm charging 900€ a day, 22 days a month in a country where the median salary is 3k€. I pay around half in taxes and keep half for myself.

The company is disorganized, talents flee to other companies in a pretty competitive market so I'm not too worried about my job. I'm well spoken and I can explain my job to my managers.

Projects get spin up and shut down for legal reasons (ie: a deal is made with a retailer in Asia, then the deal is shut down because the retailer merges with a competitor), I just get reassigned, work a few months and then move on.

The company I work for is attached to a huge european retail company. The retail company pumps cash into the company I work for every year to keep it alive.

I log my daily activities as part of a personal project, I usually spend 2/3 hours doing deep work, in the morning, after our daily stand up meeting. In the afternoon I take walks with my wife, read, work on personal stuff, but stay available on Slack just in case someone pings me.

I havent worked more than 16 hours a week for the past 4 months according to my daily logs. I only had to work really hard for a couple of months about a year ago when a project had to be shipped and the senior dev in charge of it left without warning

It's a very unusual situation to be in with such a high salary but it's fairly easy to find a gig like this as a freelancer in a large group / a bank while raking in 620€ a day before taxes.

I wish you all the best, I probably won't do this all my life but I'm enjoying it while it lasts after spending the last 3 years working 11 hours a day on average, week-end included.

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

#555

Post by louwrentius »

robertakarobin wrote: post #519

Try being a product manager of a web service at a big corporation. I stopped and went back to programming because of how little there was to do. You said you don't want to manage people, but in my experience all I had to do was: - E-mail calendar invites for a meeting - Show up to said meeting - State the topic, point to an engineer at random and say, "What do you think?" - Zone out for the rest of the meeting, zonin…

Thanks for sharing this. I had a good laugh. I both agree your role is necessary but also makes it feel like it’s a bit dysfunctional, that people can’t have effective meetings on their own.

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

#556

Post by kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj »

wayoutthere wrote: post #490
kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: post #397

I can respect this opinion and as I get older I realize how little I actually care about work. I am not really passionate about tech, security, etc, I just know a lot about it. I basically never talk about it with anyone, I have absolutely no interest in meetups, and I don't care about the news (past the minimum needed to keep up to date for my job) The only thing I care about is money, and making more money. I don't…

> IME the more they talk about D&I, the more annoying the company will be about brainwashing everyone to drink the corporate koolaid. Expect this to only ramp up given how diverse and queer Gen Z is. What passes for diversity among the Gen X / Boomer bosses isn’t good enough, and they have enough options that D&I has quickly become a competitive advantage. Every client I have is going in hard on DEI (diversity, equit…

This is a real shame. I wish we could do something to stop this insanity. Their dogmatic approach to D&I is really scary honestly.

On top of that, you are marked if you are a "cis white male". It doesn't matter if you are an immigrant. It doesn't matter if you are jewish (less than 0.003% of the global population, so one of most minority minorities), doesn't matter if you have a rich ethnic background with white skin. Why can't people just get rid of the racists and sexists without going crazy?

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

#557

Post by lazydud »

throwawayxjc wrote: post #379

As someone that spent years working 2 - 8 hours a week on their real job while getting top performance reviews, here's my slightly unethical tips. - Choose a megacorp where you're far away from the value being created. Analytics at a e-commerce site? No. IT at an oil giant? Yes. - Cherry pick what you work on, image is everything. Focus only on project that make you look good and (ideally) others don't understand. Wo…

It's so interesting reading these replies because I identified a lot of different sings that I thought would be good, but then reading yours, I see that every single one is in play for my dud job. I do think having a non technical boss is important though, so you can hand wave that you are doing some tech wizardry while really doing nothing

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

#558

Post by [deleted] »

myth2018 wrote: post #528
SwiftyBug wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that be bad? I couldn't care less about the actual value I'm generating to a company. As long as I can maintain a balance of working the least and earning the most and my employer think I'm being overpaid, I'm fine. The reality is that even when I strive to work the least I can, I still am being underpaid. That's how companies work. The value I generate is much greater than what I'm paid.

> The reality is that even when I strive to work the least I can, I still am being underpaid I use a simple "heuristic" to determine whether I'm actually being underpaid or I'm just unhappy with my earnings. - are there companies out there paying more for my abilities? - do I want to do that job, in case it exists? - do I manage to get that job, in case it exists? In case ALL those questions have an answer 'Yes', THE…

[deleted]

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

#560

Post by julianna01k »

Personally I’m really so far from development... but I find myself in SEO. Now there are a lot of useful and interesting courses. And you can get on a cool project. This is a great practice. + You can start self-studying, listening to lectures and can transcribe them from audio to text with the help of https://audext.com/ for your convenience:)
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