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

381–390 of 1001 posts

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

#381

Post by DubiousPusher »

foxhop wrote: post #325
elyobo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Kids are not that expensive. You do not have to send them to college, you just have to love them, teach them, care for them. Sure you will have to buy more food, and you might need a bigger house/apartment.

More food+bigger house probably adds $400-$1000/month to your budget.

Also, kids need doctors, interests (books or toys), durable goods (clothes and furniture) and more to thrive.

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

#382

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

dontreact wrote: post #347
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of folks on here think the most sought after companies for SW engineers are FAANG. Base for major profits at these companies: FB - advertising Apple - hardware company with software/services Amazon - ecommerce Netflix - entertainment content streaming Google - advertising Ranking those as far as companies to make the world better, I would rank Apple at the top since they actually produce something of value to a…

I agree with you that technology can be used for good, neutral, or evil purposes. I also agree with you that the largest tech companies are not all good. They are desirable because they pay well, but not to everyone. I left a job at Google, for example. (Ironically... you mentioned health, and I was lucky enough to work on health while I was there). The weird thing is that we are the tech industry. Almost everyone I…

Tesla is a car manufacturer. They operate in the luxury segment which is ~5% of all cars and they only have a slice of that. Nothing they have done, yet, has made a change in the climate that can be measured. You can believe in their mission statement about changing the world but what I've stated are facts based on data. The classification on the stock market has them in the "Consumer Cyclical - Auto Manufacturers" industry segment. If Tesla helps push major manufacturers further into EV then that is good.

The mismatch on salary has always been there. For instance, teachers and emergency responders get paid very little compared to a lot of other professions. Even accountants make substantially more, probably double.

Rewind history to when automobiles were coming out. People thought horses were going to be the mode of transport forever. Is the world better because of automobiles alone? Everything seems interconnected so that is where I was going with not a single industry is going to change the world. Take medical devices and Tech together and you will see more change than Tech alone.

Tech can amplify other industries but alone is mostly just automation of existing things.

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

#383

Post by whateveracct »

remote job at a BigCo

get hired with years of experience to anchor your starting level nicely high

rake in salary, bonus, stock, benefits

once you get the tribal knowledge you're pretty much tenured so long as you seem busy and available

might be a little low on the tech side..but that just means more time and energy to use your tech skills for your own purposes

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

#384

Post by tluyben2 »

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 vps and you'll be treated like a sorcerer.

Find small companies (I know a bunch in the EU, which is a good region anyway as you have a safety net if you lose your job and many places have 36 hour or less weeks) that are not IT companies but factories or something non-software with a small team that are working on internal software for the last 10 years. You will get tasks to fix/add on stuff, no-one will be in a hurry (factory runs fine without it, it just makes things better or gears up for a tax rule change or whatever).

I would be careful to not get depressed by this kind of work (I nearly did), but it's not hard to find (not here anyway) if you are at least a bit social and can write code so you can get through the interview. These companies don't give you whiteboard interviews or actually any more than just a friendly chat.

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

#385

Post by sevensor »

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

It's interesting to look at this in the context of ballooning tuition costs. Could it be that part of the problem is that university staff positions attract a high proportion of unmotivated time-servers? How is this possible at the same time that instructional staff are being squeezed so hard?

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

#386

Post by cashsterling »

cocire wrote: post #345
koheripbal wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stories like this is what will get to management and have them force everyone back in to the office.

I don't get this reaction by management- if the work is getting done, who cares?!

They are going to force everyone back into the office anyhow... upper management tends to place high on the narcissism spectrum... they need to see, feel, and experience their kingdom in person for maximum narcissistic supply.

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

#387

Post by MattGaiser »

dontreact wrote: post #377
MattGaiser wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you all not hear the stories of people working multiple jobs and still not being able to pay their bills. Is this entitlement? Except paying the bills and achieving something are only weakly correlated concepts in many cases, especially when salaried. If you don't care about the particular ethics/concerns for humanity, what OP wants is definitely possible. A lot of it also comes down to incentives. What percenta…

>Except paying the bills and achieving something are only weakly correlated concepts in many cases, especially when salaried. This seems like an extremely short-sighted view. If you have a string of successful projects, your salary will go up over time (you may have to switch jobs a few times though). >If you don't care about the particular ethics/concerns for humanity, what OP wants is definitely possible. If someon…

> This seems like an extremely short-sighted view. If you have a string of successful projects, your salary will go up over time (you may have to switch jobs a few times though).

People like OP are happy on level though. They do not want a big raise and probably would prefer to not switch companies.

> If someone has no concern for ethics or humanity, I want to avoid working with that person. I also want to make sure that they do not get into a position of power.

I completely understand not hiring people like them.

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

#388

Post by yellowstuff »

foxhop wrote: post #325
elyobo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Kids are not that expensive. You do not have to send them to college, you just have to love them, teach them, care for them. Sure you will have to buy more food, and you might need a bigger house/apartment.

My opinion only- For the middle class going to college is not seen as optional. Doing the same expensive activities as the other middle class kids is not seen as optional. There are millions of working class people in the US with good lives, but most middle class people would never seriously consider not following middle class norms.

So raising a kid who's middle or upper class is actually quite expensive, and that's part of why low income and high income families have more kids than middle income families. https://qz.com/1125805/the-reason-the-richest-women-in-the-u...

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

#389

Post by xakpc »

Maintain and support existing successful products is the laziest job ever.

I know a developer who single-handedly supporting a product - like a couple of days in a month for a full-time salary. He is paid because he is available, not because he works. He led a team that built this product, then dismissed it and supporting the product from then.

Usually, it is possible in non-tech companies, where you don't really care about the domain, just ensure that everything works fine.

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

#390

Post by PragmaticPulp »

zeroxfe wrote: post #315
waqasx wrote: post #251

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…

Hiring and managing a team is extremely hard, and can get very stressful. The care and nurturing of organizations, while keeping them productive and resilient to constantly changing environments, is probably the hardest job.

Agreed. This comment sounds like it came from either someone who has never been in a management role before or someone who is on track to be the boss everyone hates because they do none of the work but take all of the prestige.

Anyone who thinks hiring, managing, and retaining good talent is easy has never done it before. Either that, or they somehow have high enough budgets to hire people at $500K/yr and pay them to ignore the bad boss in exchange for fat paychecks.

Post reply on HN