What's the easiest way to make a living? • Hacker News Board

Re: What's the easiest way to make a living?

#11

Post by froo » Tue, Mar 23, 2010, 7:59 AM UTC

bkovitz wrote: post #9

Unarmed security guard. Some friends of mine long ago have done this. I don't know what the money is like these days (does anyone here know?), but I expect it's bad. The advantage is: you actually get to work on your laptop or notebook or whatever you like most of the time. Mostly what a security guard does is let truckers sign in when they make deliveries. Between deliveries, all you need to do is be there. Has anyo…

Has anyone here tried this?

Not first hand, but I have a friend who codes while working as a building attendant.

Money isn't great, you have to work odd hours - but he says the best shifts are the late night ones because nobody bothers you and its quiet.

Re: What's the easiest way to make a living?

#12

Post by waterlesscloud » Tue, Mar 23, 2010, 8:04 AM UTC

bkovitz wrote: post #9

Unarmed security guard. Some friends of mine long ago have done this. I don't know what the money is like these days (does anyone here know?), but I expect it's bad. The advantage is: you actually get to work on your laptop or notebook or whatever you like most of the time. Mostly what a security guard does is let truckers sign in when they make deliveries. Between deliveries, all you need to do is be there. Has anyo…

I did it for a bit in college. Graveyard shift, lone person in an office building. Basically my job was to lower the fire insurance premium by having someone in the building all night. 2-3 times a night I'd walk through the building and make sure it was all still there, the rest of the time I read, did homework, etc.

Re: What's the easiest way to make a living?

#13

Post by fezzl » Tue, Mar 23, 2010, 9:46 AM UTC

Teach, if you like it.

Re: What's the easiest way to make a living?

#14

Post by secret » Tue, Mar 23, 2010, 1:53 PM UTC

mikeegg wrote: post #2

Seems like playing the stock market is the easist way I've found so far. If you bet on a stock by buying 500 shares, the stock goes up ten cents (USD, $0.10), you've made $50 (I'm not counting transaction fees, just the base numbers). If you buy 5000 shares you've made $500. Make $500 three times a month and you're at $18,000 a year. Each $500 gamble may take one or two hours depending on how quickly the NASDAQ is mo…

I would just want to warn everyone (if it wasn't obvious enough already), that this is a pretty crazy way to attempt to make a living. While investing is not zero-sum and therefore different than gambling, the strategy described is fairly close to it. For starters, for most individual investors it would be a fairly safe assumption that intraday price fluctuations are random. I could write more, but I just couldn't leave that comment alone.

Re: What's the easiest way to make a living?

#15

Post by bkovitz » Tue, Mar 23, 2010, 8:15 PM UTC

It seems strange that there have (so far) been so few ideas that leverage the high productivity that ought to be possible with technology and the highly interconnected economy. (So far, day-trading is the only one like that.)

How could one be very productive for only a few hours a week--enough to genuinely earn US$24,000 a year?

Is it Timothy Ferris or nothing? Has anyone gotten his "Four-Hour Work Week" to work?

Re: What's the easiest way to make a living?

#16

Post by dnsworks » Tue, Mar 23, 2010, 10:43 PM UTC

Figure out what state has the best unemployment rates. Get a fluffy programming job at a large company in that state for about 6 months so that you can max out your benefits. Then get laid off and start collecting. Rhode Island looks like it's the best option with a maximum payout of $641/week, or $33k per year.

Re: What's the easiest way to make a living?

#17

Post by bkovitz » Sun, Mar 28, 2010, 7:42 AM UTC

fezzl wrote: post #13

Teach, if you like it.

Funny that you mention this. The inspiration for submitting this question was my frustration with teaching while in grad school. Each of my four semesters so far, I've taught or assistant-taught a class. Each time, it consumed my mind, to the point where I found it difficult to think about anything else. My subconscious creativity was all spent on things like: how do I get the students to see X, how do I convince the prof not to obscure X, what would be a good homework assignment, how can I set up the homework so I can grade it super-efficiently.

I thought I'd get a lot more out of grad school if I financed it by working at a job that requires no thought or creativity. Ideally, my subconscious creative churning could continue while working at the job, and stay focused on my research. (Doing good teaching in grad school goes completely unrewarded.)

And then I thought, well, why bother with grad school at all, if what I want to do is learn interesting stuff and do research? If I had a subsistence-level job that didn't suck out my brains, I could pretty much spend every waking moment either letting the subconscious creative process run, or actually building stuff, researching stuff, and writing papers.