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Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

truzzi.me

41–50 of 418 posts

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#41

So Francesco says they refuse to do technical interviews and says their CV and Github are proof enough. The CV shows experience as a freelance engineer at Apple for a bit, then an engineer for Samsung which they were made redundant from. Their GitHub is 3 projects, a python script, a breakout board and then a beta libary. They argue that's fine though because they'd work for £1/hr, but the real cost of an upfront hir…

> They argue that's fine though because they'd work for £1/hr, but the real cost of an upfront hire is my time, not money.

Well if it's freelance work there are situations where the upfront time cost is not massive, especially if it's a task with a limited scope. I know this because I hire freelancers.

But yea, I don't have a bag of small-scope, interesting and meaningful tasks lying around...

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#42
post #13

I have nice boring job. Few years ago I was upset with the boring part. But with kids and mortgage I don’t really care anymore. I am very happy to be paid more than a manager in a small company being only individual contributor in big Corp. I also have approval to sell my hardware from big Corp. So I can explore new things with commercial potential without a fear. Life is good.

After kids and mortage, you will be upset with the boring part again :(

not OP, but at that point I imagine the equation changes: stability becomes less important when you aren't the sole provider for a pile of people, and/or once cost-of-living goes down (e.g., paid off mortgage).

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#44
post #5

rattle your network until you find a tenured professor who has interesting-to-you grants, and talk them into letting you join the lab as a visiting researcher. if you do it right they’ll be overjoyed to have technical staff who aren’t degree candidates and you’ll get something tasty to intellectually munch on.

He did not graduate so he is not eligible for any work as a researcher inside any eu university.

This isn't correct. You can work as a researcher without a degree, certainly in the UK. A general example would be an associate professor at a business school with extensive career experience who might contribute to some papers. An anecdotal example is myself; I don't have a bachelors degree but during my masters degree I had some summer research work. I ended up not finishing the masters degree but did chat about the possibility of going back to do a part-time PhD.

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#46

How about: Hire me, pay me what I'm worth, and give me interesting work. Why should we make any compromises on the activity that we'll spend the majority of our lives doing?

Because no one owes you a job you like? It's great if what you're good at is what others are looking for. But outside of tech and math that's often a rare proposition.

Conversely, we don't owe anyone labor for uninteresting work.

I suppose that's the beauty of having the freedom of choice.

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#47

This is really funny. I spent 20 years in the Marine Corps because they continued to challenge me and test my abilities. Some days the work wasn't interesting other days it was really interesting. But it was always challenging. They always told me what I was going to get paid, but I think they owe a few hours for some overtime I did back in 2005.

Yep. Autonomy, purpose, and challenge are what people want to stay engaged and keep morale up.

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#49

So Francesco says they refuse to do technical interviews and says their CV and Github are proof enough. The CV shows experience as a freelance engineer at Apple for a bit, then an engineer for Samsung which they were made redundant from. Their GitHub is 3 projects, a python script, a breakout board and then a beta libary. They argue that's fine though because they'd work for £1/hr, but the real cost of an upfront hir…

I completely understand your point of view and I would think the same if I were you, but that's probably the kind of work I'm trying to avoid.

I only have one life, and I just don't want to be paid to "stay around and do the boring bits", or at least not full-time and in an office. Just as an example, having to stay in the office if there's nothing else to do for the day was absolutely soul-crushing for me. I might be happy doing that kind of work part-time and remotely (almost nobody offers part time work) or I might want to do that later in life.

I read a post about Gumroad here on HN, and that's how I want to work. The way Gitlab does it is also very interesting.

There must be other people who feel and think the same, and the post is just a way to try to reach them.

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