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

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

#781

Post by iso1631 » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

gaws wrote: post #359

iso1631 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My job allows me to go back stage at Glastonbury and track-side visits at the Olympics, front seat views of royal weddings, orchestral pit on last night of the proms, and I have a fairly sedantry job of mostly pushing buttons. Colleagues have spent days in jungles building bridges to drive cars over them, have got to know people living in random villages from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and share in their culture, have m…

> My job allows me to go back stage at Glastonbury and track-side visits at the Olympics, front seat views of royal weddings, orchestral pit on last night of the proms, and I have a fairly sedantry job of mostly pushing buttons. Cool.... so what do you do?

Mostly broadcast contribution and networking. Take the London Marathon in October, nice simple job given it's covid with 6 outgoing video circuits to national and international - some via satellite, some via dual-fibre - 4 incoming circuits, about 16 bidirectional audio channels, wifi across the compound.

Most of it is sitting at home making sure everything runs fine -- today I was looking into a supposedly resilient SRT connection that's dropping every few days - incoming packets from two different suppliers stop at the same millisecond, but the far end (not mine) insist they are coming from two different devices (which I can't believe)

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

#782

Post by harel » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 7:14 PM UTC

JamesAdir wrote: post #131

iso1631 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My job allows me to go back stage at Glastonbury and track-side visits at the Olympics, front seat views of royal weddings, orchestral pit on last night of the proms, and I have a fairly sedantry job of mostly pushing buttons. Colleagues have spent days in jungles building bridges to drive cars over them, have got to know people living in random villages from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and share in their culture, have m…

What's your job?

Works at the BBC if I had to guess...

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

#783

Post by throw14082020 » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 7:15 PM UTC

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #482

giantg2 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be the biggest factor. It can't be understated. For example, my wife won't let me consider relocating and spends basically all her money on hobbies. This limits my job options to locally available ones (not a great area) and that I can't get a less stressful job because it pays less and I need my current salary to pay all the bills.

From reading your other replies, if you're staying in it for the kids; don't. If my parents were deeply unhappy with each other I'd much prefer they went their separate ways than to suffer through the marriage just for me.

Agreed. Also, you're actually hiding the kid from the support they need by staying married. They're not considered a child of divorced parents, yet they might live the worst lives of all. People who live together but don't like each other aren't exactly good parental role models, and they also hog the opportunity for others (go dating!). Staying together means children don't get the support, and parents don't get the support/ suffocate. If this is happening, do you really think your child is currently getting a fair childhood?

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

#784

Post by nonbirithm » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

busymom0 wrote: post #145

lmueongoqx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised once again by the nice and helpful community on HN. I anticipated most comments would be people telling me to get my head out of my ass and get to work. I hope you find a way to chill through life.

I think you question is very sincere and VERY UNIQUE for this community because every other question is asking for the exact opposite. That's why there are a lot of interesting replies as well as a lot of interest in the question itself. Is your hobby/"passions (which are not monetizable)" expensive? And are you 100% certain they are not monetizable? In today's world, I have yet to see something which is not monetiza…

> In today's world, I have yet to see something which is not monetizable.

This is the attitude that causes people like the author of The Great Suspender to sell out and betray the trust of everyone.

https://github.com/greatsuspender/thegreatsuspender/issues/1...

I believe that uBlock Origin fundamentally cannot be monetized without violating the spirit of the extension itself. It's meant to fight back against predatory monetization practices. We can only hope that gorhill will never believe the mantra that anything can provide a source of revenue if you just put your mind to it.

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

#785

Post by ex_Medallia » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 7:19 PM UTC

My company was acquired by Medallia (they’re a survey company) who want to be seen as woke and hip but actually are just a massive corporation with all of the things that come with that - dead eyed middle management, no planning, reactionary software development. I’ve seen people get away with 2-3 hours a day as a software developer without recriminations because they’re terrified of losing developers because they can’t hire enough.

I still care about what I do and I couldn’t carry on working in such a depressing environment with others putting in about 25% of my effort daily so I left. I’ve no idea how anyone can work in an environment in which no one gives a shit about what they do...

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

#786

Post by archenemy » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 7:19 PM UTC

raspasov wrote: post #77

I am interested in your thought process. What led you to those conclusions? PS I can dispense a lot of psychological advice and personal experience here but will only do if the OP asks.

I am not OP but have found myself in his post.

I was laid off at the tail end of 2019, a mere week after I returned from my honeymoon. No explanations: money was tight, the higher ups wanted someone out, and I was the only remote worker. At that point I had been there longer than anyone else but the bosses. I was flabbergasted.

Then the pandemic hit. With everything going on, I was unable to get interested in any kind of IT position. I've always felt the need to work on interesting projects where I could make a change, somewhere, for someone. Just not this time.

I just can't. I know I can do great work, I just don't want to deal with everything else: most of the people, the stupid and arbitrary deadlines, the fabricated emergencies, the shifting priorities. I just want a task queue, a reasonable paycheck and being left alone.

So... idk man, you can spill the beans and let anyone who could find it useful get some of that advice.

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

#787

Post by dogman144 » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

As far towards this endpoint as you can tolerate, target being the only tech hire in a certain tech discipline, ideally not working on the main point of the tech there, w/ low outsourcing abilities (i.e. a MSP won't take your job),

- do it at a smaller, non-tech company, where tech is important enough to be a part of it but not the prime time.

- do it on a engineering team for agtech or one of these smaller tech cos with niche purposes out west/midwest.

- do it in QA, IT, cybersec, all can be single hires. Ability to find yourself in a disastrous situation where you are on point to fix it are higher, but you're also playing the odds that likely can work for you mid term at least.

- do it at certain Fortune 500s, which often doesn't really know what they wants from engineers and will often use their engs as people who plaster code over whitelabel apps from vendors, and blame the vendor for all issues.

- consider your use of custom infrastructure/hacks, such that you're hard to replace

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

#788

Post by thelean12 » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

granshaw wrote: post #728

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…

Some related advice: some management actually LIKEs folks that are primarily money motivated. It makes the picture much simpler for them compared to others who are motivated by vaguer things like “interesting problems”, “career progression” etc At one job during goal setting with my manager I put it like “I wanna be making $x by next year. Let me know what I need to do to get there, and if that’s too much, how close…

I'm one who mostly cares about money. It's funny that you say "career progression" as something separate from being motivated by money. I care a lot about career progression because it means more money.

If I could continue getting a 10-15% raise every year, I wouldn't care if I never got promoted. Call me "Junior Engineer" for my entire career idc.

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

#789

Post by gyc » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 7:28 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #331

vharuck wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>The pay is usually very noncompetitive.

But the benefits are usually top notch (e.g. healthcare). If the position comes with a generous defined-benefits government pension, it can actually end up being more lucrative than working in the private sector.

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

#790

Post by dogman144 » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 7:28 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #286

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…

I think the take-away here, which I've also experienced, is to get an IT job in an industry that does not appreciate IT - find a position that seems to involve a TON of manual work - automate all of it - and DO NOT TELL anyone that you have automated those activities. If you are working from home, you could conceivably do this for multiple jobs (in theory, ethical considerations aside).

> is to get an IT job in an industry that does not appreciate IT

Yeah that's basically the gist. Needs enough IT for someone to steer it, doesn't need enough such that a complex env that requires an MSP to run things in that direction.