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

> Well, now don't keep us in suspense! What was his job? How did he get it?

Abridged version: ~1970s Germany, vocational training as welder, employed at Hoesch (later ThyssenKrupp), well-paid factory job. He later lost his position due to automation, became depressed and was placed into a "Sozialbetrieb" (this can mean many things. In this case it's a workshop meant for the disabled to ensure means to participate in the workforce. Big firms like ThyssenKrupp have to have such an offering by law).

Well turns out, there wasn't all that much to do there so he could listen to the radio and nap or the like (thanks social democrats). Today he's getting a pretty good pension (unfairly one might say, especially in the face of Germany's pressured pension system).

His situation is definitely an anomaly even in sort-of socio-economically egalitarian Germany, but he's thriving :) Note: He's a very different sort of person than I am or the typical HN user presumably is.

> The next time we (all) might have a chance to get close to ancient levels of "dolce far niente" for a majority of people, is probably in a post-scarcity society with fully autonomous robot assistants

There's plenty of nuance in the space between mass-precarity and mass-decadence. It's a question of societal will and organisation to enable common guaranteed standards of living (I know this is heresy in the US). It's definitely possible already, though it may come with its own set of problems regarding e.g. fair distribution of welfare or disincentivising self-improvement to some degree, that may have to be kept in check via other means.

In modern times essentially all of the important battles that kept humanity in the dirt have been won (think antibiotics, fertilizer, energy, machinery, communication, logistics).

Everything that comes now is restrained not by lack of knowledge or technology but by human psychology, behavior, politics and social dynamics.

It's not necessarily just processes.

There are also more experienced people who are just very good at certain types of tasks with the result that they can bang something out in a half day and everyone else assumes they must have spent a week on it. They're still generally available the rest of the time but they can produce what's considered high quality work in very little time. Of course, one needs to have that skillset and it helps to be mostly autonomous.

Salesforce development. There's a real learning curve, but Salesforce provides really good teaching academies and certification processes.

For an enterprise company, there is no data more important or highly valued than the CRM. Also at a mature company, sale motions are already dialed in, and comp plans typically only change 1-2 times a year (more than one change a year is bad for org morale). Large overhauls can be a pain, but they're extremely infrequent and ideally scheduled well in advance.

Once the system is operating and the daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly cadence reports are dialed in, you just need to make sure the system continues to run, and deal with any special odd projects or reporting requirements from the sales execs you're working with.

Your sale exec partners have every incentive to get their processes right the first time, and rarely change them -- change disrupts any team (not just engineers), only with sales teams, that change results in tightly trackable lost revenue.

Its not "zero work", but it fits the "2 hours of active work, then chill" requirement. You'll have a busier end of quarter, but the first 2-3 weeks of the quarter will either be crickets or greenfield work.

Edit: this role can legitimately be fun too. You're at the nerve center for how the company actually makes money, and you get to have a cross sectional view of all other functions as a result. You'll see "how the sausage is made" but you only have to report on it and build the tracking systems -- you're not on the hook for performance or output. Also, sales people know when they have a good CRM process and are some of the most grateful folks in the world to those who help them. If you do a good job for your users, you'll be getting public shoutouts every day.

The US Federal Government is where you want to be, if goofing off all day is your goal. I know, I worked there. I supervised a guy who explicitly refused to do his job. He said so in emails that he sent to me. I, and my supervisors, started giving him bad annual reviews. He sued, claiming racial discrimination. From that point on, every time he refused to do his job and we tried to pressure him into doing it, he amended his EEO lawsuit to claim that we were retaliating. My supervisor said to me "This guy can spend 100% of his time trying not to get fired. You can spend maybe 2% of your time trying to get rid of him. Who's gonna win?". I was told by our HR department that we could get rid of him, or at least demote him, if he failed two annual reviews in a row. Eventually he did, but we were then told by HR that he had to fail two annual reviews in a row in the same way; if he failed twice, but differently in the second year, that didn't count. At that point I stopped trying to get rid of him, and he's still sitting in his office pulling down 6 figures. Everyone is in a protected class. If you're not a racial minority or a woman, or in a minority religion or older than 50, claim you're depressed - bingo EEO protection!

It’s immoral to not live life to its fullest or do anything that is not your passions. It’s immoral because you are betraying yourself, when literally you owe no one but yourself anything.