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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?

#821

Post by jgwil2 »

throwaway12504 wrote: post #743
jgwil2 wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 weeks' work in 2 hours seems borderline unbelievable. Do you just radically overestimate the amount of effort every ticket will take? How do your coworkers/manager not push back? I can see accomplishing that much work in 1/2 the time, or maybe even less, but you're talking about spending 1/40 the amount of time as estimated. Many people here debate the existence of the 10x developer, and you're claiming to be a 40x…

To be clear: I'm definitely not claiming to be a 10x, 40x or 100x developer. I'm not claiming I could do the same amount of work as you or anyone else any faster than you or anyone else could. It's more like my managers and product management radically overestimate the amount of time things take. Those are the people choosing how much work they think I should be able to accomplish each sprint and I don't do anything…

Fair enough. I guess in your place I would just be very interested in knowing how I performed compared to other people working in the field, but I can't blame you for not wanting to mess with a good thing either.

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

#822

Post by chad_strategic »

splistud wrote: post #791
chad_strategic wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you're the only person who knows something, you become a liability." So I had that philosophy when I was in the Marine Corps, well because I wanted my Marines and myself to survive and carry out the mission. Sharing knowledge in the business world, never. That's a great way to lose a job.

Chad_strategic, I'll have a much easier time promoting you if we are replacing you from within

LOL.

I have been a Sergeant, I have been an officer. I have worked for Colonels and served in combat. Real leaders are hard to find.

I can happily say, you can take your unsolicited offer and well you know what...

I'm lucky now, I work for myself. The whims of the market are my only customer and what cruel customer it is...

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

#823

Post by carabiner »

Ask Blind, but the common places tend to be Microsoft, big older tech companies (Cisco), and if you're ok with low TC defense/aerospace. I worked at defense and those guys would spend hours surfing the web or talking about politics at their cubes. Other is just tech at non-tech companies like retail, utilities (gas and electricity) that still have a lot of data they are coming to grips with.

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

#825

Post by granshaw »

thelean12 wrote: post #788
granshaw wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I say even better – more responsibility/stress for those pay bumps is often a raw deal

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

#826

Post by 908B64B197 »

xela321 wrote: post #539
tluyben2 wrote: post #384

A start would be to ignore a lot of things said about tech on HN. It is a solid source of pain, suffering and time wasting (I like it, but that's another story). Forget about all this modern tech stuff no-one is asking for. You can work for companies / clients who need stuff automated; they don't care about k8s, jamstack, react, docker, service mesh, etc etc. You can hack shit together with php + mysql, put in on a v…

Medium sized law firms (25+ attorneys) are a good place to look. They have a lot of internal business processes that can be wrangled with some fairly simple apps. Not a single person in the whole firm knows anything about computers. Profit margins are fat. If you automate a couple things the managing partner thinks are a PITA, you'll be treated like a god. Also law firms seems especially fearful of tech talent leavin…

Worst thing is: Nobody likes doing these manual tasks. They get the junior/paralegals/interns to do them but they all could be doing more valuable stuff.

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

#827

Post by 908B64B197 »

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…

Next step is to get some undergrads to do the work for you... [0]

[0] https://cat.pdx.edu/

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

#828

Post by fsloth »

chad_strategic wrote: post #762
fsloth wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sharing knowledge in the business world, never. That's a great way to lose a job." I think that depends on the role and the organization. Generally organizations do not like to loose valued individual contributors unless the organization is somehow pathological (I know those exists). A programmer that delivers value is always worth more than his or her paycheck. If you can dump his load to a more junior dev then tha…

I agreed with some of what your saying. The delta comes from my incredible work experiences / organization management in the Marines and then working for selfish and incompetent bosses in the civilian side. (I have had bad luck on the civilian side in the past.)

I agree if an employee needs to fight for leverage over their manager then hiding your notes is as good way to do that as any. But if you need to use this tactic it's a clear sign the workplace is not healthy.

So, instead of as general advice "never show your notes" - I would rise to a level above - first in good faith, but in a defensive posture observe if your employer rewards co-operation or selfishness - and then choose your tactic accordingly.

Falling under incompetent management is a double injury - the incompetence is both professionally reprehensive and being managed incompetently just hurts.

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

#829

Post by gamechangr »

PopePompus wrote: post #687

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 amen…

What was his job out of curiosity? haha
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