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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?

#561

Post by myth2018 »

SwiftyBug wrote: post #434
myth2018 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally share your values and agree when you say there are folks causing problems during their attempts on dodging their duties. On the other hand, I didn't see this sort of bad attitude on the OP's side. He's looking for a low-demanding job, which I think is a valid choice, and he's OK about earning less as well. What would be bad -- and, as you said, it's unfortunately pretty common -- is if he were looking for w…

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.

Putting it in another way: imagine you are sick and a doctor can recover your health. The value they provide is unmeasurable. However, there are many of them able to help you recover, and they charge differently, based on a number of factors. Despite, they all provide you a unmeasurable value: your health.

Can you see how the money you make can't be determined solely by the value you provide?

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

#562

Post by brtkdotse »

gherkinnn wrote: post #138
killtimeatwork wrote: post #28

I think it's probably fairly random. I.e. you're just as likely to have a "do nothing" job in a FAANG as in some other random corps. But I don't think you can start doing nothing right after being hired - usually people are hired because there's more work in a team that the existing headcount can handle. So, you have to work for some time and then count on "falling into the cracks" - landing in a place where there's…

Anything *agile related bullshit job will do, really. Scrum master, agile coach, what have you. SM certs are easy to get with minimal investment. A meeting here, some buzzwords there and compile the results regularly in lengthy confluence pages nobody will ever read. Automate much of it and maybe generate a graph or two to present during reviews. OP will have to organise retros, groomings, etc. Invent ever changing f…

> A meeting here, some buzzwords there and compile the results regularly in lengthy confluence pages nobody will ever read.

Uhm, no. I've been a scrum master. Your calendar looks like a lost game of Tetris, everybody above you is wondering why everything is late, everyone below you is wondering why they don't get more time. It's the anti-thesis of a cushy job.

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

#563

Post by dontreact »

eloisius wrote: post #447
dontreact wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fine for one person to not uphold these values, but I remember coming to hackernews because I was excited about progress. Now it seems like self interest has taken over as the primary value.

Maybe it’s the aggregate cynicism of seeing all that “progress” amount to little else than hype, shifting market share from older giants in every sector to new exciting new startups that almost immediately become just as bad as the old giants or in many cases worse. Ten years ago I also couldn’t wait for my plot of land on Mars. 2021-Me Cannot imagine being truly inspired by a software company.

I can see how the hype not matching up with reality leads to cynicism. At the same time, I believe cynicism is worth fighting because we have 50 or more years ahead of us while we are alive to make progress, and just because the last 30 years of hypercapitalism has led to a lot of pain doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and despair.

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

#564

Post by hycaria »

giantg2 wrote: post #455
lifeslogit wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many years my partner and I operated in the same way. I paid our rent, utilities and food while she spent on her hobbies and saved. I was not unhappy during this time because I didn't want much. A few years ago though, I became a bit more financially aware after having my first soul crushing job and realizing I couldn't rely on work to produce income in the same "easy" way I had when I was younger. The emotional…

"...having my first soul crushing job and realizing I couldn't rely on work to produce income in the same "easy" way I had when I was younger. The emotional cost had become too high." I feel exactly like this. My wife has basically changed what she wants (or stopped hiding it) now that we are married. She wants a big fancy house and she wants to live in an suburbanized and expensive area. She originally told me she w…

I am also an avid equestrian but support myself and my hobby on my own (which also costs more than my share of the rent). And I have to admit, I feel a bit envious of those who managed to make a fool work and sustain them without caring the smallest amount. But I hope it will bite her back the day you will leave her because you sound too miserable to stay in this relationship.

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

#565

Post by kevinventullo »

sevensor wrote: post #385
mywittyname wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's interesting to look at this in the context of ballooning tuition costs. Could it be that part of the problem is that university staff positions attract a high proportion of unmotivated time-servers? How is this possible at the same time that instructional staff are being squeezed so hard?

How is this possible at the same time that instructional staff are being squeezed so hard?

If I had to guess, supply and demand. There is a massive surplus of PhD’s looking for any job whatsoever in academia. Meanwhile, the demand for university IT jobs is probably low given that many other jobs in tech will pay more.

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

#566

Post by dagw »

foxhop wrote: post #325
elyobo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partner choice and choice whether to have children are other critical considerations in cost control.

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.

Kids are not that expensive

Colleague I knew in London literally spent more on daycare for his two kids than he did on his mortgage.

The other option is that one parent quits their job and stays home, but that is also a massive (opportunity) cost if you're both educated and have a decent career.

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

#567

Post by creamynebula »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #151

You just described my job to a T. I'm a systems analyst at a university. This was a big, demanding job when I first started. But after being here for 2 years, I've automated a lot of the complicated stuff. So now most routine tasks that took the other guy a week takes me about 15 minutes. To be fair though, the other guy was *really bad*. Like, couldn't even open IIS manager and restart a single website, bad. The pay…

How can I find a similar job?

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

#568

Post by taldridge »

ph9SSgMzmX7mbe wrote: post #148
poisonborz wrote: post #15

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to focus on hobbies/life and not caring much about working time job - I would guess most people fall on this side, actually (and they don't even have too much of hobbies either). However, the way you wrote this post, it strucks me that maybe you have burnout, or you're depressed - as if you reach out to your passions not mainly because you like them, but because those ne…

What would you recommend? I identified myself way too much in OP's post. I'm in my mid-20s, have a job as a consultant DevOps engineer in a boring fintech company, in a project that I think will fail. I'm full-remote atm, and I'm already doing the least amount of work that I can do without it being noticed. I'm really good at programming (based on feedback of my co-workers), and I like doing side-projects (usually vi…

Start a software startup in your free time? Pick a passion and run with it, maybe even try to make a business (or non-profit out of it)?

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

#569

Post by exikyut »

mikeytown2 wrote: post #427
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.

Well, if you battle-test the "what happens if unexpected reboot [edit: or network loss, or API failure]" side of things for EC2, and validate simulated resource failure for the other bits... wouldn't it basically amount to figuring out where AWS's *real* status dashboard is this month (eg, specific Twitter or HN thread) and mass-mailing realtime "there, there"s until everything mostly comes back up by itself?

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

#570

Post by rootusrootus »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #266

I had a data science position with a large non-tech company. It did B2B sales, and had a giant office for us, done up in brushed nickel and Edison light bulbs. The rest of the company was designed in standard cheap-cubicle format, but they took visitors (i.e. sales targets) through to see the data science team, so we got the fancy layout. After working there a few months, I realized that I was also there as part of t…

> having to surreptitiously waste 35 hours a week turns out to be quite draining.

I 100% agree with this. I'd much rather have actual work to do. My workaround has been to find 35 hours a week on something meaningful to me that won't upset the company if they find me doing it. So when I need to kill some hours looking productive, I find a way to use that time on a side project or hobby work.

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