I don't want to work very hard • Hacker News Board

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#21

Post by taw » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 8:45 PM UTC

A combination of not spending too much, consulting, and taking loads of holidays is your best bet. It doesn't take that many consulting hours to have decent living when you compare that with time wasted on activities like shopping, preparing food, transportation and other pure waste.

Businesses have ~20% success rate even for very weak definition of "success", your chances of epic success and early retirement are negligible, you'll just work your ass off for years and fail.

PG-style startups sound like a lot more work, a lot more risk, a lot less money, and a lot more boring and painful non-coding work than either consulting or a regular job.

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#22

Post by transburgh » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 8:46 PM UTC

more work for me ;)

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#23

Post by flaneur » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 8:46 PM UTC

krschultz wrote: post #13

What are your hobbies?

Walking (hence the username), reading, languages (human or code), hacking roguelikes and muds, knitting. Doesn't sound like much when I just list them, but I can happily spend a roughly infinite amount of time on them.

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#24

Post by flaneur » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 8:48 PM UTC

utnick wrote: post #11

Curious what you mean by shady deals on the digital point forums. What kind of deals are these?

Just surf around... stuff like scraping and reposting blogs, domain parking, spam, affiliate marketing. Not always outright evil, but they do make the world a slightly worse place.

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#25

Post by sdfx » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 8:50 PM UTC

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #7

nora wrote: post #6

Marry a doctor or lawyer.

And take care of the kids.

and pay someone to take care of the kids

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#26

Post by ahoyhere » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 8:51 PM UTC

Have you considered that you might enjoy your own business more, thus making the "hate working" part no longer so true?

I'm on a shorter time scale than you. I consulted from 14 to 20, when I had a bit of a trainwreck of bad luck and choices all at once, then I held 3 jobs: one for 3 mos, one for a year, and one for 15 mos. I quit each when I got to the point you're describing. I've been consulting again since Sept 07, thinking that charging the premium rates would help limit my exposure to bad customers and boring work. It hasn't, really (I'm charging "hundreds" per hour as you say).

But it has given me the flexibility to ship my first real product. And I'm actually having a blast. And I'm not working balls-to-the-wall like the expected YC work ethic. We built v1 in 3 mos, a couple days a week, and we've already got a small stable of happy paying customers... with almost zero promotion.

Even the boring and unsavory stuff (bug fixes, answering tickets!) is more fun when it's something you're passionate about.

Maybe you're not anti-WORK, but anti-job?

That said, if you've learned a bunch doing what you were doing, why not try to sell software or do low-commitment micro-consulting or write about it for a subscription site?

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#27

Post by zupatol » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 8:52 PM UTC

Have you tried working part-time?

I'm not sure this would help, because I don't really understand how you can love coding and hate working at the same time. Here is what I do:

I have an arrangement with my employer that I will not work full-time for more than 9 months straight. After 9 months I have a 6 months break. The arrangement is tacit, it's not in a contract, but it has been working for the last 3 years. It took me one year to find such a job. I turned down another job where I could have worked 3 days a week, because they wanted me to first work full-time for 1 year.

Work doesn't seem to turn me off as much as you, but then I only worked full-time for one year, the year my first IT employer trained me as a developer. I then worked 4 days a week and eventually quit because they wouldn't let me work 3 days.

It's not that I don't like work, it's just that my extremely time-consuming hobby is more important to me. One obvious downside is that I have less professional opportunities, so if I worked more, my job might be more interesting.

I am not sure I could afford this, or even have the courage to try it, if I hadn't also inherited some money. On the other hand I haven't tried the lifehack stuff.

I am in Switzerland, a country where unemployment tends to be low, but where working part-time as a developer is uncommon enough for lots of people to think it can't be done.

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#28

Post by flaneur » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 8:53 PM UTC

transburgh wrote: post #22

more work for me ;)

Why would you want it? Can't you be happy without it?

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#29

Post by bprater » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 8:54 PM UTC

BigCanOfTuna wrote: post #14

"The thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make practical everyday life more refined, with a bleak capital gain as the goal, was unbearable to me. - Einstein I think most people on HN could relate to this quote. Like it or not, as professional developers, we rarely create, but simply refine. It was fun at the start of my career, but now my professional life seems rather unimaginative.

Wow, I've never heard that quote! I love it!

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#30

Post by taw » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 8:54 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #16

flaneur wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my current expenses are a little under 20k/y. It's how I affored the idleness between jobs, and I've stretched it as long as I can.

To make 20k/year safely for the next 60 years you need around 1/2 a million invested well which you skim off 4% and use the rest to keep up with inflation. (70% stocks 25% bonds, 5% cash or cash equivalents.) Saving 1/2 a million is hard but if your willing to live off of 20k/year then ~7+ years at 120k and you can reach that (tax is your major problem). Max out your 401k etc and dump the rest directly into savings.…

Most countries have progressive annually measured income tax for high wages (and not for high capital gains), so working your ass off for 5 years and idling another 5 will cost you a lot more than kinda working for 10.

To limit taxes you need to either earn and keep you money in a company, and take just enough dividend you need, or mix working and long holidays every year.