Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 1001 posts

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

#161

Post by teachingassist »

iso1631 wrote: post #123
fsloth wrote: post #16

This is an awesome question. I hope someone has good strategies for you. Life should be spent doing the things you find worthwhile, and the fact is, not all of those things are monetizable. Given how esteem- and success driven HN as a platform is... you might not get too many ideas since I suppose people want to maintain their "hireable" status. Success and "loving your job" are more or less empty phrases unless you…

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…

If you have 10m in the bank and want to be involved in events at that level, you can be: we would just instead call you an executive producer.

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

#163

Post by DenisM »

I suggest being the one-man IT department in a non-IT org. E.g. a university department, a smaller school, a small-time manufacturer or retailer, etc. Automating your job on one hand and managing expectations on the other should set you up for a while.

Your tech skills will degrade if you tend to them, but accumulating good will and maintaining occasional contact with people should ensure they help find you new jobs as they move about.

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

#165

Post by nathantotten »

Kneecaps07 wrote: post #146

This is unethical, but outsource yourself. Get contractor jobs and then hire cheap overseas workers to do the work and pocket the difference. If you can get a few of these gigs going and can manage your calendar you can probably cut yourself down to 20 hours a week. Just be better at hiding it than the guy we hired who got busted doing this literally within the first hour of his first day. Don't let your boss take ov…

This isn’t unethical. There are entire companies that do exactly this. If done well, this is actually an extremely valuable service. It would be unethical if you are hired as an employee and outsourced your work, but as a contractor this is fair game.

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

#166

Post by GordonS »

tupac_speedrap wrote: post #49
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…

I agree with the Scrum Master suggestion, my Scrum Master pretty much just creates meeting invites for 40 hours a week. We have a lot of contracts where we have Scrum Masters just because we do Agile, usually the non-technical types do it. The irony is that Scrum Masters are supposed to not make the team reliant on them but by having a dedicated role for it of course the dev team will make the Scrum Master do menial…

Another vote for Scrum Master here. It's only in the past 5 years or so that I've personally seen it as a job in itself - previously, I'd seen Scrum Master as part of the role of one of the developers or similar.

But now in large corps, Scrum Master exists as a distinct job, which appears to require doing very, very little - chairing most of the regular scrum-related meetings (daily standup, planning, demo, and the much loathed retrospective), sending out meeting invites, occasionally futiley butting heads with the Project Manager, and... actually, I think that's it?!

I've worked with some good people in the Scrum Master role, but beyond being good people to work with, they are glorified secretaries, and really don't have anything to do all day.

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

#167

Post by Hypocritelefty »

fsloth wrote: post #16

This is an awesome question. I hope someone has good strategies for you. Life should be spent doing the things you find worthwhile, and the fact is, not all of those things are monetizable. Given how esteem- and success driven HN as a platform is... you might not get too many ideas since I suppose people want to maintain their "hireable" status. Success and "loving your job" are more or less empty phrases unless you…

Hackernews is a meme hive

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

#168

Post by bellyfullofbac »

zikduruqe wrote: post #100

Just think. If your ability to get good quality health insurance/coverage wasn’t directly tied to having to be employed for those benefits, we all could pursue our passions and desires.

And even income. This is the argument for basic income, people would be free to pursue their artistic desires and inventor ideas.

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

#169

Post by jxidjhdhdhdhfhf »

magicroot75 wrote: post #124
zikduruqe wrote: post #100

Just think. If your ability to get good quality health insurance/coverage wasn’t directly tied to having to be employed for those benefits, we all could pursue our passions and desires.

This is a common concern. But public health care really isn't THAT expensive. Something like $300/month.

Medicaid is free if you're income is low (such as by not having a job). Or in non-Medicaid-expanded states, an ACA plan will be very low cost and have very high levels of coverage.

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

#170

Post by adenozine »

This is the best Ask HN I've seen in a while. Fantastic.

As for OP, I recommend you consider data analytics. That may seem counterintuitive, but the analytical work is a great place to escape into, mentally. I really, REALLY enjoy it, and I can generally use whatever tools I want for the hard stuff, and then just spew out some Python/R for a notebook deliverable, or whatever format they want. It's really liberating to have so much control over the workflow, it's entirely unlike any other tech work I've performed.

Downside, there is a little "work" involved, but I think that you might not actually mind it. It seems you are frustrated with some part of your industry.

We can talk further if you'd like, I'd love to hear more about your story, however much of that you'd be willing/comfortable to share.

Post reply on HN