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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?

#501

Post by seattle_spring »

fergie wrote: post #128
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…

+1 for scrum master. Their mere existence is a strong signal that you are in an environment with a high tolerance for bureaucracy and low expectations for delivery.

Your cynicism is speaking directly to my soul.

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

#502

Post by gitastrophie »

OP should get a security clearance and a nice government contract. I did this for a while in my 20s and the work was super minimal, but your clearance/"expertise" combination gives you some protection from being ousted.

During this time, I was able to attempt to start my own company on the side, travel, and do things that were really exciting to me and gave my life more balance and meaning.

Since then, I have changed jobs and now work in the private sector. I now devote my soul to the company for some altruistic goal that seems less altruistic by the day. I still find meaning working here, but I still think being able to balance out work with other fulfilling things is important and I definitely have less opportunity to do so. I will say, however, that I could take more initiative to optimize my time and do other fulfilling things in what time is available.

Ultimately I do want to have kids one day and have to think about stacking some cash, which for me means less balance, while trying to not sacrifice meaning. I think the journey is about optimizing for different lifestyles at different points in your life and going really hard to achieve any and all goals you have at the time.

So, OP, go get your government job and start that side gig, but do it at 110%. Not a lazy 50%.

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

#503

Post by nautilus12 »

User23 wrote: post #479
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…

The backhaul VOIP telco space has TONS of companies that meet these criteria.

I'm curious, could you be more specific?

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

#506

Post by ahi »

sevensor wrote: post #385
mywittyname wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The problem is the exact opposite. The unmotivated time servers fill unnecessary positions created by the ambitious climbers. Doing a better job would likely make the problem worse as the bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.

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

#507

Post by cercatrova »

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 never understand this point personally. If you're delivering value to the multiple companies you work for such that they like you, or at least don't fire you, then I don't see anything immoral in that. It's merely corporations who insist on people working for one and only one company at a time when in reality it shouldn't matter.

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

#508

Post by zffr »

A friend basically had exactly this for a while. He was an analyst at a big company who primary needed to run manual analysis on excel spreadsheets.

He learned a bit of programming and found a way to automate it almost it entirely.

He enjoyed the extra free time for a few months before feeling guilty telling management. They ended giving him a small promotion and cutting the team by 1/2.

Maybe you should try to find a non-tech analyst role somewhere. So long as you keep the automation to yourself, maybe it will work out.

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

#509

Post by lhorie »

Surprisingly, the type of job you're looking for does exist - I know someone in a role where they spend very little time actually working - BUT you may not like to hear what I'm about to describe.

The role is at a unionized utilities company. The reason there's little work is that seemingly simple tasks are usually estimated in the order of days (or sometimes weeks). There's little opportunity for career advancement since the unionized nature makes every role stable/comfortable regardless of contribution to bottom line. But through the same token, most work can be considered busy work: tweaking header font sizes to please the whims of some higher up, re-fixing regressions caused by mediocre peers and the like. Decision making is done by higher ups and for the most part you just work on tickets that are triaged for you. The work is on the flagship product, but it's so dysfunctional already that it doesn't really matter if you care about its quality or not.

The upside is the job is fully remote, and the workload is typically in the range of 10-20 hours per week, if that. Pays above national average too.

The downside is, don't expect to come out of this job with up-to-date skills. It's also extremely unfulfilling and meaningless work. It's easy money but it's also easy to get trapped in a rut if later your career goals change (yes, this happens as you get older)

My advice is actually to look for the opposite type of work: challenging impactful work. Happiness is a function of accomplishments. It's alluring to covet for less work, but IMHO that's the "grass is greener on the other side" phenomenon.

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

#510

Post by miklosme »

koheripbal wrote: post #286
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…

I think the take-away here, which I've also experienced, is to get an IT job in an industry that does not appreciate IT - find a position that seems to involve a TON of manual work - automate all of it - and DO NOT TELL anyone that you have automated those activities. If you are working from home, you could conceivably do this for multiple jobs (in theory, ethical considerations aside).

> find a position that seems to involve a TON of manual work - automate all of it - and DO NOT TELL anyone

This reminds me the article "Now That's What I Call a Hacker" [1], where a guy left behind his automation scripts when switched companies, which revealed some extreme scripts, like:

> hangover.sh - another cron-job that is set to specific dates. Sends automated emails like "not feeling well/gonna work from home" etc. Adds a random "reason" from another predefined array of strings. Fires if there are no interactive sessions on the server at 8:45am.

I'm putting this article and what you just said together. Now I think it's reasonable to believe there are a lot of IT professionals doing this, they are just hidden, because there is no reason to share this kind of works experience, as it makes sense in the competitive side of the industry.

[1] https://www.jitbit.com/alexblog/249-now-thats-what-i-call-a-...

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