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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?

#891

Post by sidlls »

dontreact wrote: post #402
protonimitate wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really disagree with this point of view. I don't think anyone should feel indebted to their circumstance/employer just because there are others out there without the same opportunities. Is it entitlement? Maybe. But isn't it also entitlement for companies to try to squeeze the maximum amount of productivity out of employees for the least amount of compensation? Why can't they see that there are less fortunate compa…

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.

It seems to me you mistook one kind of self-interest for a labor toward progress. And you still do, for that matter.

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

#892

Post by glasswater01 »

Finally, a question that I am an expert on. I'm currently working around 1-2 hours a day and getting paid $700/day.

I share the same goals and thoughts of work as you, i'm trying to do as little work as possible so I can spend 80% of my time on my own projects and startup.

As mentioned by others I think the sweet spot is a large company with lots of process that is also dysfunctional and profitable (the unicorn). This seems to breed individuals who get beaten down by the processes and eventually succumb to the realisation that it can't be changed so why bother trying - just enjoy the gravy train.

Ensure you have knowledge about a specific area and that you can be be helpful to others when they ask questions. Try to pick the low hanging fruit when work does come up and over estimate the effort and time involved.

The dysfunction of a place muddies the water for who is responsible for what work so you can easily direct peoples requests to other teams.

Contract or perm? I've personally always been a contractor and it's worked for me, but maybe perm role would make it more difficult to them to fire you. But really, I wouldn't want to be in a job where they wanted me gone.

Which area of tech? I don't think this actually matters too much, it's more about the company and culture.

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

#893

Post by lazyasciiart »

manitowoc wrote: post #833
iso1631 wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major cultural event And as for weddings about a million people lined the streets of London when Kate + William got married. Might not be your cup of tea, but horses for courses.

Ok. Major British cultural event. It would have been helpful to include that since (I assume) most HN readers are American. And I guess Royal weddings are more popular than I thought, at least in the UK.

Most HN readers should have been able to work out it was a non-American comment, based on the "royal wedding" event option even if unfamiliar with Glastonbury and the proms.

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

#894

Post by lucideer »

creamytaco wrote: post #850
lucideer wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An admin role at Google pays more and works much less than an engineering role at a dysfunctional company. There's two issues here: 1) The op asked for a technical role, so comparing an admin role to a technical one isn't helpful. 2) You're presuming Google is not a dysfunctional company. I think point (2) is actually the more important one; reading through your comment, the type of "big, rich, process-driven" comp…

At least as far as Google is concerned, this hasn't been my experience. I spent ~6.5 years there working an hour a day at the most (cue Office Space, meeting with the Bobs) and AFAIK didn't raise any alarms. In fact, when I left, my colleagues complimented me on my "work ethic". It wasn't just me doing that either. Most ppl are too busy focusing on whatever life goals and illusions they've crafted for themselves to r…

Good to know. I haven't worked in Google myself so I can't comment from first-hand experience, but I've heard from other Googlers I know that this is very much not the case for them. Could be office location/team dependent I'm sure.

I guess in any large enough org you're likely to be able to find this in some areas.

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

#895

Post by mitchdoogle »

glitchc wrote: post #483
koheripbal wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, stay away from the tech industry. 1. Look for a smaller antiquated company or department that doesn't understand IT, and has few if any in-house IT professionals. Make sure the role doesn't include user support. Look for "Operations" jobs. 2. Look for positions that have a TON of manual work. Search for "prepare daily/weekly/etc... reports." and similar job functions. 3. Automate as much of it as possib…

Excellent points except (5) Usually immoral and often illegal

I thought the whole point of being paid a salary was to not have to worry about keeping track of hours

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

#896

Post by mitchdoogle »

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…

Meh, if they're happy with your work, it's no big deal. It would be immoral if they saw you were automating the same work and decided to fire you or demand you do more.

Salary workers aren't paid for their time. Their paid for their productivity

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

#897

Post by llausa »

Faelian2 wrote: post #871

Maybe I shouldn't share this, but get some expertise and work as an independent consultant. My salary did a x4, and I generally work half a day. Client can't judge your work and have no idea of what you are doing. But it's quite lonely not having an office with friends.

It sounds like an engineer could do this on the side.

What sort of independent consultant? Software? Architecture?

And where do you find gigs? Cold emailing? Network?

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

#898

Post by judge2020 »

koheripbal wrote: post #473
hnarn wrote: post #415

If you want my advice, it is simply this: look for dysfunctional companies. They're easy to recognize, because they look like pretty much the opposite of those companies everybody really want to work at. Take everything you see from a website like Elastic[1] for example and invert it: - It should NOT be clear what the value proposition is. - The website should NOT adhere to modern design standards, or at least do so…

Specifically, stay away from the tech industry. 1. Look for a smaller antiquated company or department that doesn't understand IT, and has few if any in-house IT professionals. Make sure the role doesn't include user support. Look for "Operations" jobs. 2. Look for positions that have a TON of manual work. Search for "prepare daily/weekly/etc... reports." and similar job functions. 3. Automate as much of it as possib…

5. is like this tweet that suggests there was an engineer that worked at both Google and Facebook simultaneously.

https://twitter.com/arrington/status/1311520168200163328?s=2...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24650817

The issue is that this thread is suspicious, says 'a friend of a friend' so there's literally no way to verify this as being real. It got 20k likes on twitter so it might have just been a made-up tweet to garner a day of fame.

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

#899

Post by colecut »

dsego wrote: post #874
colecut wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is one of the most true things I have ever read based on my own experience.. In 2009 I was hired to do mostly helpdesk / IT support for a printer/copier sales company, making $36k By 2012 I was making over $80k, being taken on the annual company trips with the high sales earners (cabo, hawaii), etc.. All basically because I set up a web based dashboard that aggregated numbers that their Sales CRM stored in a…

>SQL statements placed inside of HTML tables You're good. The principle of proximity applies, or was it locality of behavior?

There was nothing good about my code organization

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

#900

Post by jp_wanderer »

I would suggest you look into smaller companies with support / Managed Services tasks. DevOps might be great idea as you can automate many things and be more idle, focus on things that are more important to you and still generate enough value to keep the job.
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