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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?

#251

Post by waqasx »

I cant believe this hasnt been said yet:

Every job can be converted into this esp in any sort of managerial role, the strategy to do this has only 3 basic steps:

# 1 - Hire a great team under you.

If you have one person, two person, or more working under you, make sure they know what to do and make sure they understand your expectations.

# 2 - Delegate your work.

Try to get rid of as much work as possible. There will be surprisingly little you have to do personally if you have done step 1 right. People who work under you wont even mind delegation+trust if you dont get in their way and micromanage. Just give them work and forget about it.

# 3 - Relax

Now you can chill while other people do your work for you. Keep tuning this system until you have created a well oiled machine under you that runs with minimal manual supervision. You now have time to focus on more important things.

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

#252

Post by mrsuprawsm »

busymom0 wrote: post #149
apexalpha wrote: post #75

I don't know about putting in the least amount of effort for 5 days a week. But what I do know is that in my country, the Netherlands, part-time work is more and more becoming the standard. Already, 75% of women and 30% of men work 32 hours a week or less. In many sectors the fulltime standard has been lowered to 36 hours, which means every other Friday off. I myself started on 40 and will move to 32 hours somewhere…

> It's your right by law to reduce your hours for the same pay/hour. Is this actually a thing? There are laws regarding this? How do these laws work if there's a job requirement itself which needs certain number of hours?

Yes.

This is a page from the government describing your rights: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/arbeidsovereenkomst... (you can translate it)

I understand that it is fairly strictly enforced, so an employer saying "no sorry, that would be annoying" won't fly - they would need a concrete justification.

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

#254

Post by dorkwood »

I find myself in the same boat as the OP. I want a job where I spend the least amount of hours per week and earn $30k per year to survive. Right now I earn closer to $150k but I routinely work 60 hours a week, and I don't get to spend any time or energy on my hobbies.

People recommend freelance but I'm honestly not good enough to work solo. People also recommend teaching, but it's the same problem again. It's like I need to spend all the scraps of my spare time learning how to be a solo dev on the side so I can leave and get a much easier job.

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

#255

Post by autarch »

ph9SSgMzmX7mbe wrote: post #148
poisonborz wrote: post #15

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to focus on hobbies/life and not caring much about working time job - I would guess most people fall on this side, actually (and they don't even have too much of hobbies either). However, the way you wrote this post, it strucks me that maybe you have burnout, or you're depressed - as if you reach out to your passions not mainly because you like them, but because those ne…

What would you recommend? I identified myself way too much in OP's post. I'm in my mid-20s, have a job as a consultant DevOps engineer in a boring fintech company, in a project that I think will fail. I'm full-remote atm, and I'm already doing the least amount of work that I can do without it being noticed. I'm really good at programming (based on feedback of my co-workers), and I like doing side-projects (usually vi…

I think you're feeling some depression/ennui because you don't care for this particular job. I had similar issues years ago which went away almost immediately after switching jobs. I'd suggest just trying to find a devops job elsewhere at a company you think isn't making something totally pointless.

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

#256

Post by bluedevil2k »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #168
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.

This is an argument against basic income - the world can't function if everyone simply pursued their artistic desires.

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

#257

Post by roland35 »

elliekelly wrote: post #241
roland35 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had to fire someone doing this as well, he was caught because his "subcontractor" was calling into meetings and had a totally different accent! Please don't do this... Not only is it unethical, there are security, intellectual property, and liability concerns as well. A company should be aware of who has access to it's internal resources.

> We had to fire someone doing this as well, he was caught because his "subcontractor" was calling into meetings and had a totally different accent! This is hysterical. Can you say more about how it happened and the aftermath? How long did it take for suspicions to arise? Did the company confirm the suspicions with data (access logs or anything) or did they just ask him? Did the company treat it as a data breach or j…

The contractor who we were paying was known by other employees, so when someone else called into a status report sounding different they contacted my group (IT/Security). He was a devops engineer so we had to comb through all the access logs to ensure he (or his subcontractor with his credentials) did not access patient data (of course this was a medical project with HIPAA). Luckily he was just working on our QA environment so there was no risk of data exposure, but it could have been worse.

We were all shocked at how bold that move was!

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

#258

Post by napolux »

coglionirotti wrote: post #243

Go work as Developer on some consulting company that literally do Body Rental inside banks or insurance companies. IT departments in those fields suck a lot. Often, you have to wait months for new tasks, and the salary is often above 2k € thanks to "reimbursement". Here in Italy I've worked for BancoBPM and Allianz as "Consultant". The effort was 3 months of "work" and years of free time.

LOL per il tuo nick :)

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

#259

Post by tartoran »

irjustin wrote: post #209
fsloth wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Family as the main instrument of cost control" - now that is bleak :D

You know what, if you don't want to have kids because they're too expensive - do not have kids! Too many parents don't want to be in the position they're in for whatever reason and didn't take the time to figure out whether they really want to have kids.

Yeah, if one thinks that kids are expensive they're probably making the right decision of not having any. It is true having that children require changes in the parents lives, which are not only financial, a lot of time gets sunk into family and children. One must enjoy it. I personally do though I can't say I would've said the same thing before having my family, I did not know what it would be like. There is a great positive side and that is the great reward this brings. My life took a different turn for sure and it is for the better.

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

#260

Post by junkrat002 »

giantg2 wrote: post #228
elyobo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partner choice and choice whether to have children are other critical considerations in cost control.

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.

Stand up for yourself!
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