Have you asked the reddits for people on social security? There's probably a fair few people in there who know how to answer your question. That's not meant to be derrogatory, just honest. There are people whose entire careers are gaming systems like you're wanting to do.
Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
901–910 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#902Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's fine for one person to not uphold these values, but I remember coming to hackernews because I was excited about progress. Now it seems like self interest has taken over as the primary value.
It seems to me you mistook one kind of self-interest for a labor toward progress. And you still do, for that matter.
You’re gonna have to unpack that quite a bit more for me to understand what you are trying to say
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#903Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My work didn't matter (it took them 4 months to stand up a server for a project I was working on) and my boss didn't understand what I did. Very cush. Could have gotten away with a few hours a week of real work, though I still had to physically be there most of the time. I left for more money, plus ultimately having to surreptitiously waste 35 hours a week turns out to be quite draining. Yup. I've occasionally land…
> But 2008-11 was a formative experience for me, so maybe I'm just bitter. Sounds like an interesting and potentially insightful story...
Perhaps. My email is in my profile - reach out if you want to chat.
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#904Consider: you may become depressed, unfulfilled, and unhappy in this life. I had a position that was around halfway to what you want, government database coding, and I was miserable. I think becoming fully "chilled out" is ideal, because being "half chilled" and half "in-the-hotseat" gave me whiplash a few times. I developed lazy habits over time, my work output suffered, and all that free-time on my hobby wasn't as…
Can attest to this experience as well. When I was in high visibility roles in start-ups, I dreamt of a place where I could fall through the cracks and kind of breathe -- or at least what I thought would be breathing. I found that spot, and after a couple years feel like taking the offer was a monumental mistake in my career. Nothing is a challenge, my output is minimal yet when I actually do produce something, I get…
I think this soul crush only occurs if you take the stance that it's an issue. I.e., if you suddenly want to find fulfillment and meaning in work, sure, you'll feed bad.
I submit that you can counter this by using that free time to do things that interest yourself and help you progress in the areas you want to grow in.
I have a lot of free time as a designer maintaining an enterprise product, so I flex my downtime into acting as my team's de facto product manager. When I step back from this interest of mine, I can otherwise use the time to teach myself VR (not related at all to my company).
My biggest piece of advice to people is to not look for fulfillment in work, but rather to find fulfillment in your interests. The burnout happens when your interests don't align with a highly demanding job. The soul crush happens when you suddenly try to tie all of your interests back to your job. That'll never be feasible 99.99% of the time. There's a reason why "a job is just a job" is an adage.
If you're fortunate and your job doesn't demand a lot, don't look to it to fill the void of free time if it's not interesting. Use that time for yourself to the extent that your company will allow/overlook it (I suspect this is why so many FAANGs are anti-remote work).
As most people can agree, no one will ever be lying on their deathbed thinking "damn, I wish I'd clocked more time filing those TPS reports".
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#905Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#906Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is THIS why Satya Nadella is so keen on getting everyone back in their cubicles. It makes everyone look like they're banging on their keyboards, nevermind that they're sending pictures on .... Teams? Can you do that on Teams? We use Slack. I was curious why he thought, "So much work gets done around the watercooler." I just thought he was a holdover from an earlier time. He's a smart dude, I'm not denying that. And I…
I think what he meant was that by being together and discussing problems we solve them a lot faster. This is absolutely true in my job. If I didn't know my team loved being remote so much, we would have been back in the office as soon as was safe.
pretty sure it's not safe yet. unless you're in israel/new zealand.
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#907Earlier 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." 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.
If you're working at a functional organization that rewards growth, never sharing knowledge will ensure you put quite a low ceiling on your advancement.
I've written countless promotion justifications. Been on countless promotion review boards at several very successful tech companies. Being the best programmer, or what ever, is only going to get you so far. Advancement comes from teaching and leading others. You do that by sharing knowledge.
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#908Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.)
I'm sorry you've had this experience on the corporate side.
I see in one of your other comments that you work for yourself now, so this unsolicited advice probably doesn't apply to you. But I'll leave it here anyway.
I've had plenty of candidates ask me how I or the company help employees grow, and what it takes to advance.
I typically see this as a good sign and I explain the career ladder, explain how promotions work. Explain how I would help in their growth.
If they don't have good answers for this, it's quite a red flag.
You can also ask about collaboration and what kind of work is rewarded.
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#909Earlier 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. If you're working at a functional organization that rewards growth, never sharing knowledge will ensure you put quite a low ceiling on your advancement. I've written countless promotion justifications. Been on countless promotion review boards at several very successful tech companies. Being the best programmer, or what ever, is only…
I can attest to that 100%. I work at a medium-sized startup, but we've got leadership from Youtube, Facebook, Amazon, and MSFT so I think it's pretty universal.
You can progress to a pretty decent level and pay as "the best programmer" up until a high senior role, which most talented folks hit after about 8 yrs of experience. After that, promotions start to depend on the extent to which you influence the direction of your group or even company, which is all about teaching and leading others.
I think of it as three stages:
* Learning: you may be good at completing well-defined work, but you generally need a mentor to guide and help you. in other words, the company at this point is investing in your growth.
* Building: you are now self-directed and able to work independently, capable of being assigned a possibly ambiguous product requirement and being able to solve it yourself.
* Leading: you are now at the point where you can be given a large, complex project with possibly ambiguous requirements and trusted to deliver. you can work with management to form a team, and can design the technical / architectural approach and break it down into smaller pieces which you can delegate to the rest of the team.
And once you hit "leading", it will grow in scope.
Re: Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
#910If 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…
For what it's worth (sample size of 1 - me) - if you are at all competent and bad at setting boundaries, the dysfunction will absolutely frustrate the heck out of you. Seeing what is broken, knowing that it can be fixed, and having even the slightest bit of motivation or knowledge of how to do so, and how it goes on forever and ever and doesn't get fixed becomes incredibly tiring. I suppose, if you go into a dysfunct…
If I were being paid like $250k/yr+, think I could tolerate it for enough years to retire and go do my own things.