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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?

#761

Post by raincom »

mandeepj wrote: post #734
kelp wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If you're the only person who knows something, you become a liability. Sorry, this is just wrong. You are a liability if someone thinks about you that way. Fortunately, not that many people are like that. In Contrary, if you are the only one to know something then you are regarded very highly and almost untouchable.

Exactly, that's the reality at majority of companies.

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

#762

Post by chad_strategic »

fsloth wrote: post #754
chad_strategic wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you're the only person who knows something, you become a liability." So I had that philosophy when I was in the Marine Corps, well because I wanted my Marines and myself to survive and carry out the mission. Sharing knowledge in the business world, never. That's a great way to lose a job.

"Sharing knowledge in the business world, never. That's a great way to lose a job." I think that depends on the role and the organization. Generally organizations do not like to loose valued individual contributors unless the organization is somehow pathological (I know those exists). A programmer that delivers value is always worth more than his or her paycheck. If you can dump his load to a more junior dev then tha…

I agreed with some of what your saying.

The delta comes from my incredible work experiences / organization management in the Marines and then working for selfish and incompetent bosses in the civilian side. (I have had bad luck on the civilian side in the past.)

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

#763

Post by cutler »

xela321 wrote: post #539
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…

Medium sized law firms (25+ attorneys) are a good place to look. They have a lot of internal business processes that can be wrangled with some fairly simple apps. Not a single person in the whole firm knows anything about computers. Profit margins are fat. If you automate a couple things the managing partner thinks are a PITA, you'll be treated like a god. Also law firms seems especially fearful of tech talent leavin…

Which processes? Could you give some examples?

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

#764

Post by imbnwa »

tombert wrote: post #747
an_opabinia wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Process is the toxin low-effort thrives on. I'd argue it's even more sinister than that; too much process can very quickly cause engineers to burn out, and since they aren't reprimanded in any serious way for not doing much work, they can sit and feel depressed without anyone even addressing it.

You've just described my reality

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

#765

Post by jnwatson »

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've never signed an agreement that says I work 40 hours a week. It has never even come up.

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

#766

Post by cutler »

theodric wrote: post #540
cutler wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine if you're single with low rent. If you have a family and a mortgage I can't see how this is an option.

My wife's parents raised 3 kids and paid a mortgage on two part-time salaries. Europe: it's where it's at for work-life balance.

Then I guess the UK never belonged in Europe after all.

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

#768

Post by throw14082020 »

raincom wrote: post #759
kelp wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At one of my old gigs, I asked my then-colleague a bunch of questions about the codebase for a task I was assigned. He was always like "you are a senior resource, you should not ask such questions; if you want to find answers, look into the code itself." This is how he keeps his status and job at that company, and he is still there now. When I enquired around about how he got that tribal knowledge of that codebase, I…

> there are gatekeepers in most of the companies, who don't want to train you at all.

This is fear mongering for the juniors. Most people don't help because they don't get asked. Juniors, reach out and I will help. I'm the kind of person that is sociable and helpful anyway though.

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

#769

Post by rvn1045 »

I've worked at Amazon in the past for almost 3 years. You have to put in some initial time investment of 6 - 12 months to learn everything about your job. After that it's not very hard to coast and fly under the radar. I still have lots of friends working at Amazon who are not working more 10-15 hours a week at the most.

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

#770

Post by prewett »

totalminimalist wrote: post #476
Someone wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM... : “Part-time workers cannot be treated less favourably than comparable full-time workers solely because they work part-time, unless it can be objectively justified.” So, employers can deny requests for shorter working hours, but only if that can be objectively justified. In general, that’s fairly hard to do, given the amount of part-time workers and the…

Have you heard of Texas? Almost the worst state in the union for workers. This is a right-to-work or at-will employment state. This means employers can, and often do, treat workers like slaves with little oversight. Texas law says an employer can fire a worker without "cause or condition". They could fire anyone for almost anything and they do. This state is absolutely hostile to unions, worker rights, and higher pay…

At lot of states are at-will, including Washington and Oregon. So if you think at-will employment produces slavery like working conditions (which seems rather overstated), moving the the Pacific Northwest isn't going to help much.

Also, when I was considering moving to the Seattle area, I got the feeling that non-compete clauses were fairly standard, although, that is entirely subjective and might be incorrect.

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