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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?

#611

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

kelp wrote: post #538
gopalv wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm basically in a job that is quite important for my org, I get compliments for good job, but I hate most aspects of my daily work There's a class of "crystallized intelligence" jobs which are about what happened before rather than what you do today. There's an intersection between that sort of knowledge and a certain fluid intelligence to slot it in where things fit. I'm in one of those jobs right now, where the…

This reminds me of advice I got from the VP of Eng at my first real full time tech job. This was back around late 1999 / early 2000. Peak of the dot com era. He told me what most people think of as job security is totally wrong. If you're the only person who knows something, you become a liability. But if you're constantly teaching and sharing that knowledge you become incredibly valuable to the organization. That's…

I'm in this boat right now-ish. I don't want to be the person who only knows somemthing. I'd rather delegate it and then if I get sick I know someone else can cover the work needed to get the job done.

I just recently had my first junior developer assigned to me. Learning how to mentor, teach, as opposed to just getting a task done is harder than I imagined

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

#612

Post by jypepin »

I haven't seen anyone mention freelancing, but sounds like a good solution for you.

From my experience there are 2 approaches to freelancing. 1. work hard and hustle, get larger and larger contracts and eventually make a lot of money (>faang level).

2. work little, use freelancing websites, make a little money paid hourly but with low stress, work when you want, stop when you want etc.

This might work for you if you don't care much about money and care more about your time. Also flexible enough to decide to work a bit more during specific period (say winter) and then take a few weeks/months break when you care to (summer).

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

#613

Post by devilduck »

tootie wrote: post #465
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…

After 20 years of working and a sense of genuine burnout, I landed a "Dream Job" a few months ago where I'm doing tech leadership at a mid-size non-profit. We have a small familial team, a set of worthwhile and genuinely beloved public services and mission of doing good. There's still politics and revenue issues and all the sorts of stuff that a go along with any company, but it's a lot less aggressive. Work-life bal…

That's great for you but what does it have to do with the OP?

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

#614

Post by redisman »

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…

Dysfunctional companies in my experience have been horrible places to work where they work the devs to death and make them do all kinds of unrelated tasks.

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

#615

Post by warlog »

wubbalub wrote: post #71
lmueongoqx wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>pick a role where you're constantly blocked by other people Excellent advice. I love how HN still ends up thriving for perfection. If I compile all the comments in this thread I'll have the best optimized way to become the ultimate do-nothing slacker piece of crap.

Always strive to be the best at what you do.

The reward for hard work is more hard work. ~Tom Sachs.

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

#616

Post by kelp »

an_opabinia wrote: post #595
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…

> look for dysfunctional companies This theme is common in the thread and is wildly wrong. First I recommend reading Bullshit Jobs to get some perspective on how others have fulfilled your goals. Big, rich, process-driven companies and institutions are the easiest to do the least work in for the longest time . Process is the toxin low-effort thrives on. An admin role at Google pays more and works much less than an en…

I think this is the better advice here, and fits with some comments I left elsewhere in this thread about people I know working at MSFT and putting in only a handful of hours a week and still getting raises and promotions.

It's easy to do little when everyone expects everything to take forever because of how heavy the processes are in the organization.

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

#617

Post by colecut »

paul_f wrote: post #514
tluyben2 wrote: post #384

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 v…

>You can hack shit together with php + mysql, put in on a vps and you'll be treated like a sorcerer. This times 1,000,000

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 database, which saved the Sales Managers tons of time every week..

I continued building this out / milking it for a few years, adding new reports and features.

It was the worst spaghetti code you have ever seen, SQL statements placed inside of HTML tables, wow it makes me kind of sick thinking about it now, I did not know what I was doing.

None of that mattered though.

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

#619

Post by gryn »

robertakarobin wrote: post #547
dboreham wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be automated. My new startup will provide "self-driving management", or MaaS, and will be called pointy.com.

Put OP out of a job, why don't you!

he didn't event take it yet !

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

#620

Post by ihojman »

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…

I don't think it's immoral if you get to accomplish all of your tasks in both companies. For what I understand, companies want you to do the work they hired you for; they make money out of you, otherwise they wouldn't need you.

Maybe a better way to be at 2 companies at the same time is by being completely transparent about working on both places with one of the companies. You automate all your full-time boring work in the first one, and in the second maybe you do part-time, or some kind of work that can align with your own interests.

maybe an etrepeneurial partnership or a flexible deal to get a new product that really interests you without having to commit all of your life.

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