[HN Gopher] Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interest... ___________________________________________________________________ Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work Author : ftruzzi Score : 415 points Date : 2021-04-19 14:23 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (truzzi.me) (TXT) w3m dump (truzzi.me) | thenoblesunfish wrote: | Question for the author: would you really work for $1/hr? Why? | That's essentially zero, and for zero you could work on whatever | you like all day. Is it being part of a team? Being able to say | you have a job (and put in on your resume)? Is it that you don't | have your own ideas of what to work on? | 0x7374657665 wrote: | Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the intersection of | "interesting" work and "valuable" work is pretty small. | Rochus wrote: | Welcome to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs | csours wrote: | What does 'developer experience' entail to you, and how does your | company express this for prospective and new hires? | mrweasel wrote: | > No PHP, Java or maintenance work. | | I can understand not wanting do maintenance, but I also wonder: | How much is there to be made from dealing with all that legacy | stuff from the last 20 years? I suspect it's a lot. | MrDOS wrote: | Ignoring the money for a second, I think for some people | (author clearly aside), maintenance work _can be_ the | interesting work. As long as there 's buy-in from the business | side of the house - they understand the goal in its full extent | is to reduce technical debt and increase future development | agility, and that there will be no visible changes to end users | - it can be very rewarding to refactor old code. | andrewzah wrote: | Yes! Maintenance and refactoring is a huge creative | opportunity, if management isn't thwarting you. Dismissing | languages and maintenance outright makes think the author is | just difficult to work with. Even in modern places, | maintenance and refactoring simply need to be done every so | often. That's part of the job, we can't only work on things | that we want on someone else's dime. | andrewzah wrote: | Getting paid appropriately to do work that you genuinely enjoy is | a privilege. It certainly is nice if it works out that way, but | most of the time it does not. A lot of the work that needs to be | done in the software world (that pays well) is just not terribly | interesting. | | My work is not always very exciting, and that's okay. I work | normal hours and have purchased my own beautiful home at 24. | After work I have freedom to do whatever, and enough money to | pursue pretty much any hobby that I want. My employer sponsors | books, courses, and conferences, and provides great healthcare. | | I would rather have a stable, but boring, job over being broke | and working on something interesting. | nobodyandproud wrote: | If you're doing what you love, you'll put up with the other | necessary crap. | | Eventually you can share some the unfun crap to other team | members. | | Instead, what you may want to do is get into consulting. | brailsafe wrote: | It's baffling to me why so many in this thread are so cynical, | when burnout and bullshit like being a "passionate" engineer are | so hyped. Of course you need to do some things you might hate | doing in any given job. But, software engineering is a stressful | and often times unforgiving drudgery. The vast majority of | startups and companies serve the most vapid or ethically | questionable markets, or are totally opaque in terms of where | your value goes. Every startup ever asks you to "believe in it's | mission" and that's typically to acquired (but ostensibly to | change the world, through handcrafted advertising). If you do | participate in the drudgery of programming for one of these | hapless corporate entities or pointless startups too long, | especially with no other personal reward than money, the thought | to end your life or switch careers might cross your mind | frequently. Good job OP, I like the idea. | LeicaLatte wrote: | For double the pay, you can document my code. Triple for unit | tests. | tediousdemise wrote: | 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? | ramraj07 wrote: | 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. | tediousdemise wrote: | Conversely, we don't owe anyone labor for uninteresting work. | | I suppose that's the beauty of having the freedom of choice. | hu3 wrote: | I agree but for many the freedom of choice falls short when | facing bills. Then one has to work on whatever pays their | bills and it's exhausting enough to make the dream even | harder. | | I consider myself incredibly fortunate to be able to work | mostly in greenfield projects. I worked really hard to get | here and keep working hard to stay here. | ramraj07 wrote: | You do owe labor in return for money though, unless you're | an entitled tech or crypto bro who has grown up in a bubble | without any understanding of how the other 99% of people | live their lives (by just scraping by). | mlboss wrote: | That's correct. But "freedom of choice" looks like a luxury | if run out of money. | corobo wrote: | It's on you to get the job to be fair. If it's not interesting | work then you goofed by accepting the job | | Interesting is subjective, you can't make every job interesting | to every person. | hprotagonist wrote: | 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. | yulaow wrote: | He did not graduate so he is not eligible for any work as a | researcher inside any eu university. | azhenley wrote: | Couldn't he be hired as an engineer or technical staff? | yulaow wrote: | I don't know for all the eu nations, but for those that I | know staff researcher positions still require degrees (and | there is a lot of competition to get those because they are | even more limited in number than tenure track positions, | just with far less requirements) | | In mine in particular everyone has at least a Master Degree | with some publications. One of two even got a PHD. | exdsq wrote: | 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. | yulaow wrote: | I don't understand. | | In UK you can be associate professor without a degree? | | Then you talk about your time "during a master degree" but | you say you had not a bachelors... How can you do a master | without a bachelors? | | Now I understand why other members of academia, even when | UK was part of EU, treated it as a special case for | research positions. Btw not judging, just saying it is | totally different of what I expected. | exdsq wrote: | > In UK you can be associate professor without a degree? | | Yes, in rare occasions! More frequently without say a | higher degree. One that springs to mind is the current | Professor of Poetry at Oxford University who read | classics for their undergrad but with no further | education. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Oswald | | I know there are other examples but I'd need to google a | bit to find them. Notable people who got a PhD without a | Bachelors or Masters in the US include Wolfram, so it's | not just in the UK where rules get a little bent. | | > How can you do a master without a bachelors? | | Experience in industry counts if its highly related. I | was offered or interviewed for postgraduate courses at | the University of Leeds, Oxford University, University of | Leicester, and a few others. All in Software Engineering | and I eventually accepted a part-time position on an MSc | in Computer Science. A bit of rigmarole but not that much | - I started the course at 25 with 6 years experience in | tech. After some pestering I was able to help with some | lecturers papers which led to the whole PhD discussion | but dropped the MSc because it wasn't as rigorous as I | hoped it'd be (I'm interested in the foundations of | computer science and this was more applied). If it helps | I've been to doctoral summer schools in both the EU and | US without any credentials either! | | Maybe the UK is the only place with such ways, I emailed | Stanford a while back (I'm moving there this Summer, my | partners a postdoc, and wanted to try audit some of their | postgraduate CS courses) and got shot down pretty | quickly! | throwaway3699 wrote: | I understand degrees being a requirement for medicine or hard | engineering, but for research and topics of the mind it's | just an expensive, multi-year hazing ritual into academia. | | Plenty of good people go straight into industry after getting | their BCs. (or avoid degrees entirely) because of this. | alexf95 wrote: | Yea i feel like a job in research would be best fit, but that | probably also requires a certain level of graduation. | Fomite wrote: | It doesn't, necessarily. | | I've hired people to work helping support academic projects | without ever looking at what their degree is in. | tgb wrote: | My lab actually did this for a bit. They hired a programmer who | was retired but bored and just wanted to do something for far | less than market rate. She was great and got a lot done but two | problems: | | 1) It took my boss significant effort keeping her busy with | things to do: explaining the problems we needed solved, etc. is | non-trivial | | 2) Since she was working for so little, she could basically | dictate what she was or wasn't doing. The very fact that she | wasn't on a real salary meant it was actually harder to work | with her in some sense. | Fomite wrote: | A couple notes: | | 1) You needn't necessarily restrict this to tenured professors. | Indeed, plenty of new tenure-track professors have both the | need and startup resources to potentially hire you if you're | likely to boost their group's productivity. | | 2) It's hard to fund people with grant money who weren't | written into the grant in the first place. So while grants | might be interesting as an indicator of interest, they don't | necessarily ensure you'll be hirable. Which means either | patience, or hoping they have a small slush fund somewhere - | which is _more_ likely for a tenured professor, but not | exclusively so. | avipars wrote: | So true, as long as I'm being paid a living wage I'd rather build | skills than wealth | reggieband wrote: | So many responses here are of the type: "My org couldn't hire | someone like that for legitimate reasons". They then list a | series of fears they might have with such an employee. This is | typical engineering thought, a pessimism firmly rooted in | avoidance of problems. Engineers tend to focus on what can go | wrong so that they can avoid negative outcomes. One myopia of our | discipline is we don't often consider "what would the world look | like if this went better than expected?" | | So my advice to the OP is to focus on opportunities and positions | that do not require going through engineering gatekeeping. Other | disciplines tend to have more optimistic viewpoints and tend to | be more willing to accept risk when they feel there is potential | for high returns. I would recommend finding small startups that | are looking for part-time engineering folks. | MarblePillar wrote: | That isn't just "so many responses", that is _every single | response_. Never try to sell an engineer _anything_ , | especially not _" your self"_. | | Fortunately, engineers don't dispense budget. | dj_mc_merlin wrote: | If you learn how to find what's interesting about the dullest of | topics or tasks, you will never be bored a day in your life. I | enjoy taking on tedious tasks that few people want sometimes. | Being able to do something and do it well despite my brain | yelling at me that it doesn't like it brings me satisfaction. | Also, after a while my brain quiets down and starts enjoying | itself. Perhaps the author should try this more often. | paxys wrote: | Wanting to do interesting work and not caring about money is the | perfect environment to start your own project/service/company. If | you want to work for others (especially on a contract basis), | don't expect groundbreaking work to fall in your lap. | decafninja wrote: | This is interesting! | | My own anecdote: when I graduated from college I had zero | experience aside from one internship at a small noname company. | No one would hire me. I started reaching out to local companies | big and small saying I would work for free if they'd use me. Not | just programming jobs, but also general IT or even helpdesk jobs | - anything remotely computer related. None took me up on my | offer. I suppose they saw me as more of a liability than an | asset, or that onboarding costs still wouldn't be worth having | free labor. It was an interesting eyeopener. | | But since you're experienced, your story is different from mine. | clairity wrote: | it's not that free labor isn't worth it, it's that it's a | lemons problem. that is, (the signaling indicates) uncertainty | is high, which is what makes it expensive (or if lucky, a | fantastic deal). most people are rather risk-averse and | therefore prefer safe choices, with the commensurate | relinquishment of potential greater gains (and greater losses). | | the lesson should be to value your labor correctly, as large | deviations in perceptions of value mean that transactions won't | happen. a more astute approach would be to communicate your | (accurate) understanding of your own value and your willingness | to negotiate alternate dimensions of value in exchange, like | getting experience faster or doing more interesting work in | exchange for less money. | | tl;dr: establish a common understanding of value, then | negotiate. | decafninja wrote: | Of course this was communicated clearly - that the reason I | would be willing to work for no pay was because my objective | was to gain experience. I also mentioned that if they | considered me valuable and worthwhile enough, to feel free to | take me on as a "real" employee down the road. | clairity wrote: | that's not clear at all. you essentially keep say you'd | "work for free", rather than "my work is worth x, let's | exchange". the latter puts you on equal footing | psychologically, while the former puts you at a distinct | disadvantage. | decafninja wrote: | No, I mean back when I was actually doing this. The | communications to the companies I would reach out. Not my | posting HN. | pwned1 wrote: | Minimum wage makes it illegal to bring you on for zero pay just | to get experience. | julianlam wrote: | Tell that to the gaming industry. There are enough people | looking to get a foot in the door, and enough companies | looking to turn the other way. | ghaff wrote: | I don't know what the limitations are but unpaid internships | are not uncommon in certain industries. | pwned1 wrote: | There are rules under federal law: | https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/71-flsa- | interns... | | Basically an internship has to benefit the intern and not | the employer. It's akin to taking a class. | | Any HR rep looking at these standards would not permit | someone to come on for free in these circumstances at the | risk of being penalized for violating federal labor law. | corobo wrote: | Honestly if someone wanted to work for me for free I'd think | it's a scam of some sort so wouldn't touch the offer | | Sort of a "hmm.. why is this person unhireable elsewhere.. what | do those companies know that I don't?" combined with a concern | of "this guy's gonna clean out the office when we go home" | mywittyname wrote: | Yeah, "i'll work for free" sounds an awful lot like, "you'll | pay me with a pound of flesh." | | An engineer needs to be capable of earning their keep. Even | if they are a novice. | Mc91 wrote: | I did something like this in the mid-1990s (looking for Unix | sysadmin work - or something similar) and then again about four | years ago (programming work). | | Both times it worked, although I had to cast a wide net and | wait a little bit. Both were very, very small underfunded | companies. I didn't say I'd work for free, but said I was | working for the experience and job recommendation more than the | money. | | Honestly for the second one it was more about the | recommendation, of having something to put on my resume other | than my own S-corp and what have you. I could get most of the | small scale experience myself (although they pushed me into | NoSQL, GCP/EC2 and other things I wouldn't have ventured into - | and turning mockups into code too). I was very up front with | them too - I promised them I would do cheap work for them for a | month and would then be open to offers, and if someone wanted | to hire me for six figures I would probably take it. Oddly | enough at both companies (1996 and the more recent one) I spent | about 18 months working for the company before being hired by a | company actually willing to pay. | | In the recent situation, I also was fixated on a niche which | made things a little more difficult for me initially, although | now I am better off it took a little longer to get going in | terms of getting paid. Small tech companies are generally | looking for people who known HTML, CSS, Javascript and web | frameworks like React. If you look like, without needing that | much help, you can do tickets/stories to implement features on | a web site that uses React, and can pass the standard interview | gauntlet for that type of job, I think you will find a job | fairly quickly. | watwut wrote: | It would not be legal for them to do that. | johannes1234321 wrote: | "I would do anything" moves quickly to the bottom of the stack. | In there I see (maybe wrongly, but when hiring first impression | matters) no motivation. I look for people passionate about the | work, who have skills and interest on using those. But help | desk or programming require very different skills and are quite | broad. | decafninja wrote: | I'm not sure if this is still the case, but at least back | then (10+ years ago), quite a few people working helpdesk and | IT (system admin, network admin, etc.) were CS majors. Or at | least it seemed so from my own network. CS was seen as the | gateway degree to any kind of computer related career, not | just SWE. Are things different now? | | I am actually not a CS major - I'm an information systems | major. Funny enough, another IS major friend and I ended up | as SWEs (him at a FAANG at that), while a whole bunch of CS | major friends are working in IT as system or network admins | or helpdesk managers. | the_only_law wrote: | > Are things different now? | | For me personally, if I were going to go into some other IT | fields tomorrow, I'd skip the expensive ass degree period. | A lot of IT feels closer to a modern trade than anything. | decafninja wrote: | A lot of jobs require a degree just to get past the HR | filter though. In fact, I distinctly remember seeing a | even a lot of helpdesk jobs requiring "degree in computer | science or related technical major". Again, this is 10 | years ago, not sure what the landscape is like today. | johannes1234321 wrote: | Such roles still exist and a bunch of people like it. | Instead of sitting in front of their own computer and | hacking code and a amazing problems there it's finding | problems in an application with communication with a | different person. Depending on organisation and level this | can be quite technical as well. | | But when hiring I look for other skills and other interests | depending on the role and a key qualification is interest | in the kind of role. | ProjectBarks wrote: | This might sound crazy but free may be worse than offering to | charge. "Free" is saying my work offers no value and may even | cost more through your time. | mcguire wrote: | One question: | | Who are you and why should we care? | alex_c wrote: | Interesting thought experiment! Let's take it one step further. | Can the "pay what you want" value be negative? | | As a manager I would be responsible for providing you with a | steady stream of interesting or meaningful work. I would have to | structure the work to fit around your flexible schedule, shield | you from doing the parts you don't like, and change it up if you | start getting bored. But I would not be able to rely on your | output for anything mission critical. | | How much would you pay me to provide this service to you? | | (Please take this as tongue-in-cheek not as a snarky comment, it | genuinely is an interesting thought experiment despite the | obvious issues it raises). | ftruzzi wrote: | You raise a very valid point and yes, it could be a net | negative. | | However, what I was trying to do here is to reach organizations | or people that already work the way I'd like, so that work is | already organized in a flexible/async fashion and the | arrangement can be a net positive for them. | | And I think you should apply the same reasoning to the | definition of "interesting work" or "meaningful work". Try to | see the big picture, from a bird's eye view: a piece of work | can be interesting or meaningful even if it has boring parts. | Almost anything has and we probably wouldn't be here as human | beings if we couldn't handle that. Carrying sick people up and | down the stairs is strenuous (and repetitive?) but can still be | a net positive because you feel so good for helping them. Same | goes for writing software or any other kind of work. | | I think that, as a manager, you should not shield me from the | boring parts of any work but you should make sure that my | overall "working experience" is a net positive for | "interesting" and/or "meaningful". | | Thank you! | antipaul wrote: | The world is, I think, big enough for such an experiment to bear | fruit. | | I predict you'll get some decent offers, so cheers mate and have | fun! | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | I wish you the best of luck. I can relate to where you're at. | | One thing that I have been doing, my entire adult life, is | _shipping_ product. A lot of "ship" is not fun. There's all | kinds of boring stuff, like good design (as opposed to "just | enough design to get started"), good coding (as in "code I'll | understand when I come back to refactor in three months"), good | quality (as opposed to "Who cares? I'll be out of here, before | they run out of integer space"), good testing (as opposed to | "I'll write a few unit tests that show it handles low-hanging- | fruit problems"), accessibility, localization, aesthetic design, | supporting documentation for users, administrators and | developers, etc. You get the drift. Lots of "not-fun" stuff, | there. | | For me, I've always enjoyed "finishing" projects, and that means | _shipping_ them, so users get their grubby little paws on my | work, and start abusing it (and, sometimes, me). | | I'm taking on a CTO role (I've actually been doing it for months, | but we're formalizing it). I was asked to write my own job | description. I used words like "Accountable" and "Responsible" a | lot. I got used to that, working for a Japanese corporation for | 27 years. | | Not fun. But I get to run the whole show, and _ship_. That 's my | idea of fun. | | Oh, and I totally relate to the thing about LeetCode interviews | and whatnot. I have tens of thousands of lines of code, ship- | ready projects that people can clone, build, and run, dozens of | articles, etc. It has been my experience that these are totally | ignored; which I consider... _not sane_. | | I have found the greatest pleasure in writing software that helps | people help people. These organizations don't usually get "top- | shelf" talent, so they tend to have a great need. | | Again, good luck. | fasteo wrote: | No offense whatsoever, but after reading this I was expecting to | see a true rockstar CV, but that's no the case. | | You are brave, tough. And I mean if the most positive way. | dnndev wrote: | Be your own boss. Start consulting. It's interesting everyday. | You get to pick the work you accept. | PascLeRasc wrote: | It's so good to hear someone else put into words what I feel. | Having fulfilling work has been absolutely my #1 goal for as long | as I can remember, like since I was 12 or 13 years old, and by | that I mean it's more important than getting married, saving for | retirement, traveling, having fun. It is a constant thought every | waking moment in my life, the same way when you're hungry it's on | the forefront of everything you do. | the_only_law wrote: | I was always deathly afraid of this, in fact I was never really | interested in wage labor period. For some years my ideal was | doing independent consulting where I had control, I could pick | what I worked on and could get a ton of exposure both to | technical issues and wider business experience. | | Well it quickly became apparent that that really wasn't an | option for some dumb kid. I had tried freelancing for a few | years but got sick of the overwhelming amount of people who | just wanted me to update their WP site. After humming around | for a year or so I gave up trying for anything greater and just | accepted a string of low paying, "boring" development jobs. | | > I genuinely believe that for those of us who feel this way, | there is nothing else to do but pursue it. | | Yeah I'm starting to feel this way again, so fuck it, might as | well. I haven't been nearly as productive as I should have been | the past years though. I have a better idea of what I want and | there's really only two choices. One of continuing stagnation | or one of putting in the work and attempting to pursue | something better. We'll see though, I'm not betting on anything | working out. | yosito wrote: | I'm not primarily a financially motivated person. And I would | prefer to spend my time doing something interesting. But in my | experience, taking on some one else's projects that are | interesting but not well paid has always gone badly. | | Positions are usually low paid for one of two reasons: either | there isn't a budget for it, or there is but they're being cheap | and cutting corners. If there isn't a budget, that's a sign of a | failing organization or a bad startup idea, so probably not a job | you should take. If they're being cheap, that's a sign that they | don't respect or value the people doing the work, which is a huge | red flag. | | I've taken jobs that were essentially volunteer work because I | got to work on projects that were interesting to me. I've also | taken jobs that weren't that interesting to me which paid | generously. In the end, much of my volunteer work wasn't valued, | and seen as disposable. The more highly paid work never got | interesting, but having a decent amount of money took off a lot | of the financial stress and ultimately made me happier and | enabled me to spend more of my free time on things that | interested me. | | At this point, no matter how interesting, there are only two | people I would do underpaid work for: myself, and my grandmother. | vehemenz wrote: | What about PHP or Java has anything to do with not "programming | at a more advanced level"? | | These are general-purpose programming languages. Due to their | design, some patterns/paradigms might seem more natural to | implement, but you can build anything you want with them. | | For an experienced programmer eschewing conventions with this | "resume", I am surprised by this comment. | atraac wrote: | It kinda makes him sound like a spoiled junior who only touched | the 'hip' stuff and is disgusted by a sign of stability. I | remember being in that place as well. | MsMowz wrote: | >For an experienced programmer eschewing conventions with this | "resume", I am surprised by this comment. | | They only have about a year of full-time engineering | experience, so they might not recognize this yet. (Not trying | to talk him down; plenty of people without much experience | still do valuable work, but it's only natural to have blind | spots.) | jjk166 wrote: | You're never going to find a job that's constantly interesting | and fun. Even if you love doing something normally, there will be | days when you have to do it, and that will eventually become | unpleasant. | | Don't strive to do what you love, do what you take pride in. When | you are working towards a goal which resonates with you | personally, all the tedious, unpleasant, painful moments and all | the other obstacles in your way just make your eventual triumph | sweeter. | jedberg wrote: | > You pay what you want, per hour | | Just a technicality, but if he sets the number of hours a week, | then he is still somewhat in control of his own paycheck. If I | were the employer, I'd want to set the hourly rate as well as a | fixed number of hours per week, or at least a max. | d0100 wrote: | In a similar venue, I'd really like to get some 4-6h work done | per week as freelance projects, but it is very hard to find the | kind of work that fit short, weekly hours like this | ctvo wrote: | Without a need for money, I need to rely on this person's ability | to be a professional out of the goodness of their heart. Nothing | in that post or their previous work says I can rely on that. | Frankly nothing in the post or their history shows they have the | ability to deliver value that outweights the headache of | planning, managing, and integrating them into an existing team | knowing how fickle the relationship can be. | | It's not similar to a contractor relationship, since there | there's at least contracts and deliverables that give some | clarity to planning. | lstodd wrote: | As if a craving for money somehow makes professional out of .. | whatever. | | You completely misunderstand what "professional" means and what | the "professional pride" is about. | moritonal wrote: | 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 PS1/hr, but the real cost of an upfront | hire is my time, not money. | | The author seems to not understand how key money is for the | relationship between manager and employee. I have plenty of | employee's who'll work on interesting stuff in their own hours, | but I pay them so they stay around and do the boring bits like | docs, DR, testing, support, bus-factoring. | [deleted] | defaultname wrote: | "but the real cost of an upfront hire is my time, not money" | | The most arduous hiring processes are often little more than an | illusion of selection, yielding a process that is more the | rolling of dice. Most hiring processes hire based upon | interview skills that have extraordinarily little correlation | with job performance. | | Google has such a famous interview process that everyone tries | to clone it. For that they get employees with an average tenure | of 3.2 years, made worse that internal project-to-project | migration is endemic. They have a tiny core of institutional | knowledge, and then a passing army of travelers. | | This industry would be far more robust if it hired quickly and | fired fast, because the _only_ way you know how someone will do | in the role /team/org is by actually having them in the | role/team/org. Everything else is just loose proxies that do | little. Iterate through people and just punt out the ones that | don't work. That _shouldn 't_ be a big deal. | TheCoelacanth wrote: | Interviews aren't the only cost of hiring. Onboarding is very | expensive for knowledge workers. | defaultname wrote: | Onboarding is expensive at _dysfunctional_ organizations. | Further, the reality that churn is high among better | employees [1] offsets the concern. | | But regardless, going through an extensive vetting process | is an illusion. It has extraordinarily little correlation | with actual work fit or productivity, but the more | "rigorous" the process, the more likely you are to stick | with a poor fit. | | [1] - low performers will hang around forever. The | fundamental of the hire slow/fire slow reality is that | eventually every organization is 80% dead weight. If you | want to avoid onboarding costs (versus dealing with the | issues that make onboarding expensive, which is almost | always institutional liabilities), hire the worst | candidates and they'll be with you forever. | SilurianWenlock wrote: | perfectly said +1 | johncessna wrote: | > This industry would be far more robust if it hired quickly | and fired fast | | Agreed 100%. Maybe the fail fast movements in the SDLC, | devops, marketing, and product management will start reaching | into HR. | the_only_law wrote: | I didn't even know Apple or any of the other FAANG's hired | freelancers. | bserge wrote: | Quite a few "AI" companies hire their "AI" via intermediaries | like Lionbridge and Appen heh | doggodaddo78 wrote: | All big corporations hire consultants when they can't hire | (freeze or fast enough) but need specialized skills or extra | hands. | hintymad wrote: | I'd also add that interesting or meaningful work itself is a | scarce resource. One has to work on finding such work, instead | of waiting for someone to give that work. One also has to | compete for such work. Salary is a small factor in the | equation. Indeed, salary sometimes is a signal in this case | instead of a barrier. For a meaningful project, free is | probably more expensive than an above-market pay. | salil999 wrote: | Their GitHub profile has more than 3 projects - you might have | only looked at the pinned ones. | | But overall, I somewhat agree with Francesco. I used to work at | a large corporation where majority of the work was minor config | changes and rolling out deployments for handsome pay (somewhat | KTLO work). I left because I wasn't growing my career. As | companies get bigger the money gets bigger as well but the | interesting work gets much smaller. At the end of the day, once | you have a solid product in place you need a lot more people to | just keep it running vs. work on some very interesting | technical work. I think applied research is the best way to go | for very interesting technical work but I think the bar is | pretty high for that. | Pet_Ant wrote: | KTLO = "keep the lights on" | | Basically just barebones maintenance to keep a product | running. | dragosmocrii wrote: | But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't | that mean you now have more time on your hands and more | financial security to do something that piques your interest? | I understand that one would like to switch from a boring but | well paid job, in order to grow their career, but I feel this | is for people who need to be told what to do. If you're not | that type of person, you have so many opportunities for | growth: study a new technology, join an open source project, | identify a way to optimize/improve a process at your current | boring job and convince management to do it... If you have | the initiative, you can create the opportunities that you | seek. But if you truly are bored of your current job, the | people you work with, etc etc then yeah, there's no point | staying even if the pay is great (reminds me of Tony Hsieh's | Vesting in Peace moment he described in his book, or his job | at Oracle) | | [Disclaimer: by using "you" I am not addressing you | personally] | the_only_law wrote: | > But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, | doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and | more financial security to do something that piques your | interest? | | Depends on the environment I suppose. If its a classic but- | in-seat, locked down, corporate environment, you're | probably still constrained for a similar amount of time. | salil999 wrote: | > But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, | doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and | more financial security to do something that piques your | interest? | | I actually used to think similarly. I might have worded it | badly but when I mean the work becomes smaller I am talking | about scope and impact - not necessarily the effort | required. The example I can give is what I described above: | config changes. At a high level it sounds pretty simple but | when you delve deeper into how your company/team works with | such technologies then there are many barriers in place | which hinder you from getting work done efficiently. And | processes are slow. In my old team it used to take ~a month | to deploy our software world-wide. | | You are correct about financial security. At least for me, | I am not comfortable enough taking a risk to start | something on my own or make a big career change. | | I think the overall goal is that you SHOULD be told what to | do - up to a certain extent. I am a software engineer so an | example for me would sound like "design me a system that | does this" or "a customer is asking for this feature | request" and that's it. Everything else can and should be | left upon the engineers to figure out. Good engineers will | design a good system with respect to time for delivery and | feature request compatibility. | arcturus17 wrote: | > They argue that's fine though because they'd work for PS1/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... | dr-detroit wrote: | Everyone I've ever worked with just does the tasks they want | they way they want and if you twist their arm they will do | things that advance the mission and benefit paying customers | grudgingly. | dontchooseanick wrote: | Your comment reminds me of https://dilbert.com/strip/2016-08-07 | | :) | ftruzzi wrote: | 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. | agumonkey wrote: | I think the solution needs to live on both fronts. | | IMO the boring bits are boring because there's no time spent | to make them not boring. | | On all layers of society there are tasks that are under- | tooled and under-organized and if you make them worth doing, | people will enjoy doing them 24/7. | langitbiru wrote: | I created a part-time jobs board, ParttimeCareers | (https://parttime.careers). I collect remote and part-time | jobs (mostly engineering jobs, but sometimes marketing jobs). | | Yeah, I can see where you are coming from. Some people want | to look for part-time jobs because they want to spend more | time with their passions, kids, parents, or friends. | beaconstudios wrote: | if you don't care about pay and you want to work on | interesting projects, why not start your own? | | people typically get jobs because they have bills to pay, not | because it's fun. If you are in a position where you don't | need to pay the bills with work, then you're in a great | position and can have fun all day long - so why not just do | that? | | If you work on something that _also_ turns out to be | marketable then you might even end up with a viable business | that you love working on. | CaptArmchair wrote: | > people typically get jobs because they have bills to pay, | not because it's fun. | | If a position across the street becomes available which | allows you to pursue a personal goal you aspire and afford | your current lifestyle, would you remain at your current | "non-fun" job or give it a shot and apply? | | Many people don't just get job because they have bills to | pay, they get jobs that they don't like because there is no | alternative available to them which meshes with their | lives. | | To an extent, you could argue "that's personal | responsibility, everyone makes tough choices". | | Then again, the author tacitly references to the fact they | were still obligated to physically attend an office space, | even though they could their work remotely. Now expand that | to the millions of workers who are forced to make long | commutes. | beaconstudios wrote: | obviously there's such a thing as better or worse jobs, | but OP suggested that they were willing to work on | whatever, as long as it's fun, for any arbitrary amount | of pay. | | So OP is in a position where money is not important to | them. So why have a job at all? Have a fun or meaningful | hobby instead, or start a personal project. | CaptArmchair wrote: | > So why have a job at all? | | The author doesn't ask so much for a job, as reflects | about something more profound: meaningful, purposeful | relationships with others which enables them to manifest | their morals, values, identity,... | | Interesting work isn't interesting for the sake of | spending 8+ hours a day "doing" something. It only | becomes interesting when it has an impact on the world | which one feels is meaningful. | | For sure, a novelist could write books for no other | reason then deriving enjoyment of the sheer act of | committing words to paper or a screen. But the vast | majority of people feel that the things they do in life | truly become meaningful when they are seen, used, | enjoyed,... by others. | | One could argue that one could do so by volunteering, | taking initiative, or starting one's own business. | However, the vast majorities of opportunities to enter | meaningful professional relationships still involve | signing a dotted line and a salary. | ska wrote: | > work on interesting projects, why not start your own? | | For what it's worth, many people who don't need the | paycheck, or don't need a particular paycheck still go to a | "real" job just because the scope of what they can do on | their own doesn't match what they want to achieve. | | People also join projects to learn things that are | harder/less efficient to learn on your own. | | I'm certainly not saying you can't do an interesting | project on your own, just that many people are interested | in projects they can't practically do on their own. Some | might scratch that itch with an open source project or | whatever, but especially if it requires hardware | development, it may not be practical for many individuals. | PH01 wrote: | There are plenty of people who feel and think the same. | | Many people find it very difficult to understand that money | is not always a motivator. This is a particularly difficult | concept for managers to deal with. | | If an employee is not motivated by additional remuneration, | or in the case where they do not require an income, the | relationship between employee and employer is fundamentally | different. | munk-a wrote: | > 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. | | The only times this ever happened to me was while I worked in | the gaming industry and I absolutely still had work available | - but we had some pretty rough overtime expectations that | lead to constant overtime even if a different department was | behind. | | On principle I would just sit there and relax as best as I | could in the office if my team wasn't behind. But, keep in | mind, that this was also all unpaid overtime at the | employee's expense because thank you EA lobbying and a | terrible industry. I occasionally lost money on these | evenings since transit would shut down and I'd need to cab | home. | | Now that I've left the gaming industry I doubt I'll ever be | in that position again and I continue to have oodles of work | in front of me, though, due to ADD and such - I often have | trouble with motivating myself to do the boring bits they are | part of the job and go with the good. | quentin_dck wrote: | The way you talk about the work culture you want to avoid | makes me think you might be interested in "opale" companies | and the way they operate. Check "Reinventing Organisations" | by Frederic Laloux, there are a couple of software and none | software company examples which might be of interest to you. | harikb wrote: | You may want to rephrase your proposal a bit. Include the | part that you are willing to do the boring parts of an | otherwise interesting project. | | The way it is worded, it would sound to me, as a hiring | manager, that you might not finish the work. Because we all | know the prototyping / experimentation part of a project is | the most challenging and rewarding. Taking it live will | involve dealing with the boring parts. | | I am not claiming you _are_ such a person, but you might want | to make it clear. | ggggtez wrote: | > The way it is worded, it would sound to me, as a hiring | manager, that you might not finish the work | | You read that correctly. The OP said clearly he has no | intention to do documentation or testing, meetings, or much | of anything other than just write code for about 40 hours | and then quit. | PascLeRasc wrote: | I think you'd really like Jason Fried's writing. You can find | some short posts | [here](https://m.signalvnoise.com/author/jason-fried/), but | his book _It doesn 't have to be crazy at work_ is really | great too. | humbleMouse wrote: | You'll keep doing the "interesting work" until it all turns | into "Boring work", just a matter of time | onion2k wrote: | _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._ | | That should literally never be the case for a developer | though. | | You can always be improving the documentation, increasing the | test coverage, optimizing for speed/bandwidth/complexity/some | other metric you've measured, working out how to measure | something, learning new tools or tech that could be applied | to a project, working on a spike for some future feature that | needs upfront research. | | If you see those things as "the boring bits" that you don't | want to do then you're not a developer. You're a hacker. You | want to hack what you see as the fun stuff rather than | developing complete, robust applications that can ship. | That's fine, and loads of fun, but no one will pay you to | that. You don't get a role like that unless you're some sort | of programming savant on a par with the likes of John Carmack | or Fabrice Bellard - someone has proven they can invent | amazing things by being left to their own devices. | Unfortunately, you really need to prove yourself first before | you can land a gig like that. If it was easy we'd all have | done it. | asjdflakjsdf wrote: | eh, that's not really the case in a lot of developer jobs | these days. A lot of agile/scrum adoption/bastardization | has meant that all work done has to be decided by the team | and pretty much every piece of work has to be approved by a | product manager. This can often lead to some demoralising | meetings where you can either lie about the | effort/risk/goal or you can give a true value estimate that | gets shot down. If you lie, you can end up spending your | own free time working on that refactor or documentation | etc. For most devs working on a codebase, its not theirs, | and they don't determine what has priority. | | In reality, for a lot of people, if you start refactoring | the codebase while waiting for a new task you are likely to | break something and its just not worth the hassle for the | developer or the company. | | Learning new tools is always great ofc but it can be very | hard to find the motivation in such a role, where unless | you are a senior developer, you probably won't have much | say on adoption, and you will likley just develop a half | baked understanding of a new library that you will never | get to use in production. Its much better to have some real | free time where you can focus on your own projects and | learn that way. | | So in short, maybe it should never be the case that devs | are in that position, but it often is. Especially for devs | with less experience | pmarreck wrote: | > if you start refactoring the codebase while waiting for | a new task you are likely to break something | | The risk of this is in proportion to the lack of test | coverage. If you are afraid to refactor, this should be | an indication that you need to apply more test coverage, | so do that first. | dkasper wrote: | That's pretty sad and disempowering. For what it's worth | at companies like Facebook it's completely the opposite. | If you aren't taking any initiative you will not meet | expectations at performance review. | sidlls wrote: | I just had a good chuckle at this. I'm skeptical, to say | the least. I don't have direct experience. But I do work | at a company that has poached several FAANG employees | this past year and whose thoughts...differ from yours. | gfaure wrote: | I can second dkasper's observations -- the PSC cycle is | engineered to reward initiative. That said, depending on | the team, the practice does not always follow the theory, | so it makes sense that the FB employees your company | could poach may have been the ones unsatisfied with the | way their team rewarded initiative. | tacon wrote: | Kent Beck became a former Facebook employee because he | wasn't in to proving he was moving the needle on | Facebook's key metrics. He was only giving world class | mentoring to young Facebook engineers and improving the | development culture. | username90 wrote: | Likely you were able to poach them since they didn't | thrive in that environment. Or you got them from the more | traditional top-down Microsoft, Apple or Amazon. | ipaddr wrote: | Or he paid more, had more interesting work, clear path | leadership was present, wfh options, family vibe, stock | options, less corporate culture, etc.. | burntoutfire wrote: | That sounds like academia, where people are also expected | to be constantly innovative on demand and, when the | majority just can't pull it off, they invent BS research | and produce worthless papers which clog the system. | ruraljuror wrote: | > If you see those things as "the boring bits" that you | don't want to do then you're not a developer. You're a | hacker. | | This point parallels the distinction made in the Software | Engineering at Google flamingo book between programming and | engineering. Engineering comprises the tools and processes | to maintain software over time (this is a rough | paraphrase), of which docs, for example, is essential. | | So to use their language with your point: this sounds | purely like programming and perhaps not engineering. | ketzo wrote: | I agree with your overall sentiment, but: | | > If you see those things as "the boring bits" that you | don't want to do then you're not a developer. | | Don't we already have enough gatekeeping in software | development? I don't particularly enjoy writing | documentation, despite how important I know it to be. That | doesn't make me "not a developer." If I were lazy and | simply chose not to _do_ the things that bored me (despite | their importance), it might make me a _bad_ developer (or | more accurately a developer of bad software). | | I design and implement software. That makes me a software | developer. The pieces of that process that I find boring or | exciting are tangentially related at best. | gtowey wrote: | > Don't we already have enough gatekeeping in software | development? | | No. In fact I hope anyone who's actually worked in the | software industry would see that we _don 't have nearly | enough!_ | | Look I'll agree with you about the evils of gatekeeping | if we're talking about who gets to call themselves an | artist or a writer. Those kinds of distinctions rarely | create life or death consequences. | | But software can. Not all the time, but certainly in | medical, airplane control, banking and financial, and | many many more areas. | | I wish software would take notes from other engineering | fields like structural or architectural. Can you imagine | an engineer building a bridge who was like "I don't want | to do the boring stuff like stress analysis or geological | surveys, I just want to make cool shapes and build them!" | Can you imagine trusting your life to a bridge built like | that? | | Software increasingly runs our world and real software | engineers who work on things that really actually matter | know they have a responsibility to "do all the boring | things" because those things are _essential_ to doing | their job right. Hearing about major hacks and exploits | every day like SolarWinds, Experian, Facebook that expose | our personal information and put us at risk makes me feel | like we desperately need more gatekeeping in our field to | keep cowboys and hackers from getting the chance to get | anywhere near these systems. | | I've been in this career for 20 years and the thing I | learn more and more is that writing code is perhaps the | most trivial aspect of what we do. It's everything around | it -- the process, the testing, the security, the | collaboration and how teams and organizations operate | that are the real challenges to be solved. Anyone can | hack together some working code. The hard part is the | _systems_ and _organizational structures_ in which it | operates. | | There are plenty of things to work on in software which | are of no real consequence, but as the OP is finding it's | pretty difficult to find someone who wants to pay you to | work on something which has no value. That's called a | hobby not a profession. | ketzo wrote: | Huh. Plus one to you -- you have meaningfully changed my | opinion. | ipaddr wrote: | As important as those things feel after 20 years you must | remember you are hired to write code. As easy as code is | to write without none of the other processes are | required. | | If they wanted someone to just write documentation you | wouldn't be hired. A technical writer would be. | | If they wanted someone to just test you wouldn't be | hired. A QA person would. | | Same for whatever processes you create. They would hire a | process specialist. | | Same for project management. They would hire a pmp | certified person first. | | Same for business analysis and business requirement | gathering. | | As a developer there are better people to do all of those | jobs at better rates. None of them can code. That's why | you are hired. If you couldn't do that than your qa | abilities don't matter. | | Things have changed over 20 years. Not every company has | a qa team or bas or support team. So these tasks end up | being picked up by the developer. Often if this slows | development teams are created of non-developer | specialists. Some developers end up doing very little | coding because your job is to go to meetings about | projects that never start. But you are still hired to | code they just need you on standby. | | Anyone cannot hack together something that works. Only a | developer can. A hacker would find ways to use an | existing system in an unintended ways. | | Gatekeeping over this makes you more management than | developer. | | The tao of programming has a different understanding of | what a developer is and isn't | | https://www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html | galangalalgol wrote: | People are better at what they enjoy, but I know very few | people who enjoy documentation. I have apent most of my | career as what the gp would call a hacker. My redeeming | quality is probably my love of testing. I despise formal | methodologies and processes, and people who fall in love | with tools or languages or language features are hard for | me to work with. | tasogare wrote: | I don't understand that general lack of love for writing | documentation. It's a part I like very much in a project: | explaining how it works, why some things are done a | certain way, the limitations of the software, the | possible configuration options... It's funto write. | munk-a wrote: | I definitely don't begrudge anyone who likes | documentation - but we all have different parts of the | dev cycle that we like - some folks love to architect | solutions and hate implementation because of the fiddly | bits and details - other people dislike the stress of | having to come up with overarching approaches and get | analysis paralysis but when it comes to splatting out the | vision into code it's meditative. Still other folks love | to break things and enjoy needling edge cases in unit | tests (if you find one of these or are one of these - | know their value, they are a hot commodity). Then other | folks love the teaching/explaining part that comes with | documentation. | | I _think_ that there is a way we can improve as an | industry to let more people specialize into their niches | (which would move us closer to a factory /assembly line | sort of setup) but right now most developers are artisans | that receive some vague ticket and produce code and | everything for it as a result. | tarsinge wrote: | > If you see those things as "the boring bits" that you | don't want to do then you're not a developer. You're a | hacker. | | Well put. Professional software is only a mean for business | not an end by itself. I recommend not deriving your | satisfaction from code only if you work for a company | otherwise you risk to both spoil your hobby and always be | unhappy at work. | plutonorm wrote: | So what do you derive satisfaction from if you don't | enjoy coding for its own sake? | aembleton wrote: | Problem solving | Supermancho wrote: | > 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. | | > That should literally never be the case for a developer | though. | | After 20+ years I've both been in such a position FULL | TIME, as have others (eg: Many devs at ServiceNow) - hired | on to work on cool things at an old small company and then | literally sat around every day with no tasks and no | responsibilities while everyone around me either didn't | show up or watched TV on their monitors (open-plan btw). | | I've seen big company devs do the same, making up busy-work | tasks and literally not committing any code for months at a | time playing the priority-game of "wait until something | more important comes up, someone else will make a | workaround" which was surprisingly effective. | | The reality that a developer shows up and have nothing to | do happens OFTEN in all sorts of organizations - eg last | day of sprint, how many times have you pulled in a new | multi-day ticket? Developer accountability is at an all- | time low when software developers (across many sub- | disciplines) can't make accurate estimates, can't meet | anyone's estimates anyway, and are at an all-time-high | demand. Managers are in a different boat, but same result. | Perverse incentives and lack of a consensus (or willpower) | on what constitutes value makes for do-nothing-and-get-paid | while someone else does the work. | onion2k wrote: | There will always be times when you don't have anything | that you've been told to work on. | | That is not the same as having nothing to do. | | At a certain "senior" level (in terms of attitude rather | than job title) you're expected to be a self-starter and | think of things to do for yourself. Once you can do that | you have no excuse for having nothing to do. | watwut wrote: | In my experience, it is not like that at all. The not | having anything to do simply does not happen. What | happens is "not being under pressure". But I was always | able to find useful stuff to do, not including learning. | | I do learning in work time. Learning could be backup for | when there is truly nothing to do, like when git is down | or something. But those chances are so rare, that I have | to learn while there is stuff to do. | | > eg last day of sprint, how many times have you pulled | in a new multi-day ticket? | | I was in exactly one team where you would wait on this | situation. In literally all other teams, it was 100% | normal to work on something multiday for next sprint. And | that one team was dysfunctional in more then one way. | 1123581321 wrote: | If the organization or the product has any amount of | complexity, all of those have communication roadblocks. | While it's technically possible to always be learning or | practicing something, much of the effort will be wasted by | either a focused or a bureaucratic organization. Repeatedly | doing work just to give the company an unlikely option on | it is counter-productive as it leads to burnout. It's | better to stop work when enough is done for the day or week | to stay focused on the efforts that matter. | | Probably the best way to apply the "if you have time to | lean, you have time to clean" mindset, if it must assert | itself, is to actually let developers stuff packages or | weed the grounds or something else that can clear their | minds. :) | the_only_law wrote: | I have no problem whatsoever with staying around and doing | the boring bits. But if those are exclusively the job, that's | when I take issue. | folkrav wrote: | > that's probably the kind of work I'm trying to avoid. | | The boring bits _are_ part of the job. | | > 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. | | The part about "in an office" is a fair goal, but if you want | to avoid docs/tests/support/refactoring work, don't do this | job. Writing code is just one part of it, any way you take | it, and avoiding the rest is cutting corners. Even our | consultants have to write tests and update docs. | pmarreck wrote: | > and I just don't want to be paid to "stay around and do the | boring bits" | | I'm a little ADD, so my most hated work is paperwork and | administrivia. Nevertheless, I recognize that it is sometimes | necessary (documentation, performance evals, collecting | metrics, etc.) and I just get my favorite coffee and suck it | up (the work, but also the coffee). | | Programmers have arguably the least boring jobs in the world | (we can literally automate all the most boring bits except | for certain types of paperwork/administrivia) so to hear a | developer complain about doing a little bit of boring work | smacks of a special brand of entitlement to me. -\\_(tsu)_/- | | > 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. | | This only happens at terrible, un-enlightened companies who | are more willing to waste both of your time and pay you a | little less than they are to either give you meaningful work | or let you go to the beach but stay on-call. Bosses should | not be babysitters. | flatline wrote: | Don't want to stay around to do the boring bits required to | make a working product that serves a real world use case? Go | into academia! Not making a generalization about academics, | it's just that academia is one of the few places you can | carve out a place to just work on interesting things and get | paid for it. | eloff wrote: | Just look for part time positions. You can also try to make | your own by applying for full time jobs and then springing | the part time thing on them at the salary negotiation phase. | Yeah, some will balk, but make a cogent argument about how | working less hours means your performance per hour should be | higher. Which is easily supported by current research. | Provide citations if you want. It's sufficiently hard to find | good developers, that if you're good enough you can get jobs | like this. | | I've been working part time, fully remote last year and it | was wonderful. I don't think I'd go back to full time work. | | After achieving enough trust with the company, I negotiated | working alternating weeks. Having a 9 day weekend every 5 | work days is incredible. Yeah, I didn't make much money, but | I spend that time on my startup, so maybe it will pay off one | day. Either way it is a lot more fun! | arcturus17 wrote: | > 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. | | But surely they do _a lot_ of boring work at those companies | too, as in all tech companies? | ftruzzi wrote: | Of course, but if it's part-time and full remote then it | doesn't take away most of your day/life and I would have no | problem with that. I also do translation work which can be | tedious at times but I really enjoy it because I can do it | from anywhere and just a few hours per week. | | The "needs to be interesting" part is more tied to the "pay | what you want" thing. | FalconSensei wrote: | > having to stay in the office if there's nothing else to do | for the day was absolutely soul-crushing for me | | Maybe nothing you want to do, but I doubt there was nothing | to do. Improving docs, tests, small refactoring to old code | to make it more readable are a few examples. | brundolf wrote: | Have you considered just coming up with your own projects? | Set some arbitrary, useless goal that will be an interesting | engineering challenge, and have at it. Nobody will force you | to write docs or do any other "boring bits". It's a great | outlet in my experience. | mcshicks wrote: | I retired close to 7 years ago, and I have a similar set of | guidelines for doing part time work. However I have another | stipulation which is that if I don't personally know you, I'm | not interested, at least for paid work. I've done some | volunteer work where I've had introductions from someone I | know and that's worked great. And for any given paid job the | max I will work is 20 hours/month. That is I might work more | than that, but I will only bill that. That allows me the | flexibility to put the effort in I think is needed to do what | I think is acceptable quality, without imposing my standards | on someone who just wants something that will solve a problem | immediately in front of them. Good luck! | op03 wrote: | That depends on your job title and where it falls on the | explore-exploit spectrum. | | If your job is to keep the gold mine running all your | underlings are working on the mine. If they go do something | else its a waste of your time and resources. | | If your job is to explore the jungle for new mines, then the | story is very different. Its more about finding as many curious | cheap chimps as you can and sending them out in every | direction. In such cases imaginative managers use all the | chimps they can find. | PascLeRasc wrote: | The ATX breakout board looks great, thanks for pointing it out! | I think that's a good example of an interesting/fulfilling | project, since those generally don't exist and the author talks | about how it was a direct request from regular people, not some | corporate directive. | ipaddr wrote: | Don't hire a developer if you want a tester or a support agent | or a document writer. Developers cost so much more why not | target your task to an expert in that area? | Tade0 wrote: | _The project I was working on was moved from Milan to Poland in | what was most likely an effort to downsize the project and cut | costs._ | | Odd choice of location given that hailing from Poland and having | lived in Italy I had an opportunity to compare costs of | employment and generally they're not that different. | | Perhaps Milan is exceptional - can anyone from that location tell | me whether EUR60k annual costs of employment are considered a lot | for a senior developer? | KptMarchewa wrote: | I was just going to comment on that. | | Not sure how reliable is this info, but Glassdoor suggests that | salary in Milan could be slightly lower than what I would | expect from average software engineer in Poland. | | https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/milan-software-engineer-s... | pzduniak wrote: | I'd imagine that what you get for $25k/yr in Poland is way | better than the ROI on $30k/yr in Italy. Depends on the stack | though. Most corporate Java people earn peanuts here. | | It's also likely that they replaced a well compensated | engineering firm responsible for setting up the project with | a cheap team handling maintenance. | isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: | $25k/yr is a junior level pay in Poland (at least in larger | cities). You can double that with a few years of | experience, and you'll likely top off at triple that unless | you work remotely for a US company. Most of the local work | is the typical satellite office stuff though. | | That being said it puts you in a very comfy financial | position quickly, with very little risk and standard | working hours. | slackfan wrote: | No. | [deleted] | guillem_lefait wrote: | This is an interesting experiment and I suspect this could be a | very nice way to find co-founders or first employees. Good luck | stevebmark wrote: | This is written by a child who won't take responsibility for | helping build and guide the company and do the "boring" work | required by all jobs to keep things running smoothly, and leave | when they get "bored." | dang wrote: | Please make your substantive points without putdowns or swipes. | Those degrade discussion quality and are not what this site is | for. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | Edit: we've had to warn you about this multiple times in the | past. Fortunately it looks like you've mostly fixed this. If | you'd please stay on the desired side of the line, we'd be | grateful. | catonmylap wrote: | Why not just working on some open source projects? If you do some | interesting helpful work, some people might even sponsor you. | alert0 wrote: | Consider academia. I have a very similar opinion to you about | interesting work (less so about meaningful). I was working at | Google doing web development even though I have a security | specialty, everyday was like pulling teeth. It is just not worth | it and I'm not sure it is sustainable for me. Academia has always | been appealing because you dictate research direction. I ended up | going from part time, to 80% time, to full time over a year and a | half for a small company. My work here is mostly interesting and | I'm happier than I've been anywhere else. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | part of my company's long term onboarding of this prospective | employee will include an intensive course in Buddhism, with the | purpose of slowly teaching him to find something interesting in | everything he works on. I believe that within 6 months to a year | we can have the perfect highly competent employee, willing to | work for very little and doing whatever asked of them because | every task, no matter how mundane, is filled with interest. | azhenley wrote: | My advice: pursue a PhD. If you can find the right advisor, then | you will have almost complete creative freedom to pursue | interesting projects while getting paid to do it. | freetime2 wrote: | I have considered retiring from software development and | pursuing a PhD. But I have heard some scary things about the | culture and competitiveness in academia. Are there "laid back" | PhD programs for people for people who don't really have an | interest in tenure track, but just want to learn and apply | themselves to some novel problem? | the_only_law wrote: | How easy is it for someone to go back and just get a PhD. | After recently being rejected from a handful of schools | (albeit undergrad, not graduate) I'm starting to feel like | academia only wants people who played into their game from | the start. | azhenley wrote: | Only a minority of CS PhDs pursue a tenure-track position. I | have found academia to be more laid back than big tech | companies, but you are still expected to produce (e.g., a | paper or two a year). The top programs probably have a more | competitive culture than state schools. If you don't want to | produce research, then I don't see the point in enrolling. | | I [luckily] haven't experienced the scary stuff that people | talk about, but a major barrier for students is that PhDs are | largely unstructured and require you to take the initiative. | Not everyone does well in that environment. | freetime2 wrote: | How about teaching undergraduates? I seem to recall from my | undergrad days that a lot of my TAs were pursuing PhDs. Is | that something that PhD students are expected to do? | azhenley wrote: | Some work as TAs. It is done part-time for funding | (tuition waiver, monthly stipend, and insurance). It is | not usually a requirement in US schools, although I | recommend my students do it for at least a semester to | get the experience. Otherwise they are funded as RAs. | | A PhD is about doing research. | Fomite wrote: | There are plenty of programs that think about things like | quality of life, etc. Culture and competitiveness is a | function of the school itself and the PI specifically. | dfraser992 wrote: | I have pretty much retired (i.e. suck at interviews and can't | deal with the nonsense in industry anymore and am not one for | management) and am thinking of going to get a PhD just | because these days, I like doing research for the hell of it. | Someday I will finish writing my first paper.... If I ever | get a full time job again, it will have to be some sort of | researchy sort of thing, so a PhD will be useful to get past | HR etc. | | Your PhD program is what you make of it. If you are not | interested in going into full time academia, the uni will | still take your money if you look like a good candidate and | can get through the program. I suppose you have to worry | about competing with other students if you both are trying to | get the one open position with a professor... So make sure | you can pay your own way and then you won't be dependent on | being a wage slave for the university and all that industry- | lite crap. | | But really, ask yourself over and over "why do I want a PhD?" | until you're sure of the answer - it is 3+ years of your life | doing only that and it could be brutal due to the workload | etc. | | Engineering/CS programs are probably more laid back or less | 'political' (i.e. those scary stories) than humanities or | other STEM degrees. I have noticed some interpersonal drama | in some sense just hanging around the uni these last few | years, e.g. students and dealing with them, a general sense | of the academic environment. But I make sure to stay out of | it. | ramraj07 wrote: | IF you find the right advisor, which is a big if. The odds of | finding an employer that might put up with this person is | higher. | kenoph wrote: | I see that kind of advice thrown around a lot, but that's just | the sales pitch of PhDs, not the reality. | azhenley wrote: | It was my reality and my current grad students seem to agree. | Do you have evidence or are you just "throwing advice | around"? | doggodaddo78 wrote: | Be careful. I got brain picked after a via HN startup interview | and job offer that turned out to be fake. | Ecstatify wrote: | What happened? Sounds interesting. | doggodaddo78 wrote: | Great interview w a 3-person (didn't meet other 2) startup. | On-the-spot offer.#? No paperwork yet, handshake/verbal | offer.# Met in-person the same-day. Didn't want to grab lunch | or do anything celebratory.# Acted very impersonal and | rushed.# He was overly focused on raising money.# He just | wanted to know a bunch of immediate solutions without looking | at any systems or code.# Never heard from the other people, | which may not even exist.# Cap table was 70% him and everyone | else was an employee with a pittance.# After that meeting, | the dude makes a snide remark by text and ghosts me.#### | | Someone official at YC told me such a story was | intellectually-uninteresting, it sucks/too bad, and HN/YC has | zero responsibility. | | # Red flag | notjustanymike wrote: | > No PHP, Java or maintenance work. | | Sooner or later, everyone does maintenance work or fixes bugs. It | comes with the job. | daemonk wrote: | Hiring is a lot of the times more about finding someone that'll | fit in your current team than about an individual with a lot of | skill/enthusiasm. You don't sound very reliable and that would be | my main concern. Even if you were working for nothing, it would | still be a waste of the time invested if you are just going to | leave in a month or two. | | You should go into academia. I think that model is more what you | are looking for. | lthornberry wrote: | I'm an academic, and I do not think it's what he's looking for. | Most Ph.D. and postdoc-level research involves much less | flexibility and much more tedium than it sounds like he's | looking for. The overall project should be very interesting, | yes, but the day-to-day work usually still requires plenty of | boring bits. And while I'm sure there are some labs that would | allow remote work on a flexible schedule, it's not the general | culture in the places I have experience. CS might be different | --it's not my field. But I'm skeptical. | daemonk wrote: | I have a phd and have postdoc'ed at a couple of places also. | I am now in industry. | | Sure, there are boring bits. But I think what he is more | looking for is being able to explore the space and more open- | endedness to projects, which I do think academia affords. It | might also mean he'll never really produce anything and keep | going down rabbit-holes. But that can be enjoyable. | andrewfromx wrote: | now here we go, I had this exact same feeling after doing a | contract job recently. I'm going to place this url | (https://truzzi.me/hire-me-pay-what-you-want-interesting-work...) | into a db and start a site and also add my own profile and... | wait, how will this different from linkedin? its like at some | point, I need a MOTIVATED programmer that will give me that 24/7 | move mountains full effort. Like there is famous James Cameron | quote while he was filming 1997 Titanic movie, something about | his top professionals needed to play like it was the superbowl. | So like how does a company hire that vs. its all on them to make | US interested in the project? I'm just playing devils advocate. I | think there is a happy medium somewhere. | steindavidb wrote: | tl:dr; "I want to be a postdoc" | Rochus wrote: | Rarely met a postdoc doing interesting work; it's more about | "earning your way" (i.e. to be abused for all kinds of tasks) | with various professors in hopes of having your own academic | career. | ada1981 wrote: | I like your attitude on this. I'd have a convo with you and we | can see about something to work on. | johndoe42377 wrote: | Doesn't work that way. | | They want legal control over you. | amne wrote: | This guy built bixby. I think that says everything. | jokethrowaway wrote: | Caro Francesco, | | What you propose sounds great but I think your article works | better to find like minded people who share your thoughts | (definitely count me in on that) than to find some work offers. | | Maybe with HN's reach you would find something, but I think a | normal contractor's pitch + vetting for interesting jobs would | work best. | | I would also recommend looking into building your own project | | My way of dealing with this problem has been: - Do contract work | and vet the work; worst case scenario, you can drop off with some | notice and not much will change. I did some employee time but | that was mainly to get benefits (eg. paternity leave) and some | fixed money for a period of my life I knew I wouldn't be very | productive in - Raise the price of my services; this tends to | filter out the worst jobs, albeit VC funded startup and rich tech | companies have plenty of money to waste on chair warmers. | Established mid companies without funding doing something you | care about and with a remote first culture (pre-COVID and post- | COVID) work best. - Build your own project, add almost-passive | revenue streams; outsource the boring bits you don't want to do - | Save money and try to reduce your expenses so that your passive | revenue streams need to cover less money (making it easier to | survive on passive revenue) | | Not a recipe for optimising for wealth, but for freedom. | xwdv wrote: | A lot of people are saying "I would never hire this man". | | You're looking at it wrong. The idea is to find interesting | problems that have unknown amounts of ROI but should still be | tackled by someone. Give him some cash and something interesting | to chew and see what he comes up with. It's kind of like tending | to a houesplant. | | If he produces nothing of value, then fine you know the idea was | probably a dud anyway, but you didn't have to spend any time on | it. And if he does spawn something of value, you can take the | work and have more qualified engineers work on it full time. | | Personally, I find the best use case for people like this is to | throw ethically questionable tasks at them. Stuff you shouldn't | really have a full time employee doing, but would be perfectly | fine outsourcing to a contractor who works off the books. | erdo wrote: | Given he seems to have a pretty low tolerance for boredom, I'd | expect any potential employer to worry about this: What if he | starts working for me, and a few months later (after having | started some big refactor job for example) he decides it's no | longer interesting, and leaves for someone else paying 1$ an hour | cletus wrote: | So there are two issues with this: | | 1. If I were looking to hire someone and read this, I would | immediately be turned off. Why? Because part of being an engineer | (or any employee really) is doing a bunch of stuff people don't | enjoy doing. This includes: | | - Writing documentation | | - Writing tests | | - Fixing bugs | | - Talking to partners about a change/launch | | - Talking to lawyers | | - etc | | So I would be wondering: if you're signaling you don't want to do | those things, that means someone else will need to do all that | for your code, which is not great for them and tends to be much | worse. | | Like you're basically saying you want to cherrypick the parts you | enjoy and not give a damn about anything else. You might say | you're only costing $1/hour but the risk of a bad engineer can | mean you're still expensive or a loss. | | 2. You don't factor in the time cost of me or my team in | onboarding you, dealing with you, dealing with your code and so | on. That's a big part of the filtering in hiring. People are | deciding if they can justify that time investment and the | opportunity cost involved. | emrah wrote: | Writing just tests is not ideal, but writing tests in general | can be very challenging and interesting given that you need to | understand what the code under test does _and_ figure out | (edge)cases to exercise /break it. | teachingassist wrote: | 1. | | I agree the author hasn't emphasised those things. If I was in | need of those things, I might not automatically engage with the | author. | | But, you've given a list of what _you_ don 't like doing - that | isn't a universal list. | | Given that the author asks to be deeply involved in a human- | centred project, it is not obvious to me that they don't like | or are not prepared to do these things. | cletus wrote: | The specific list of things doesn't matter. It'll vary from | person to person and project to project. The point is, | there'll always be something. | | My point is that if you're signaling from the outset that you | want to cherrypick those things then I, as your employer, | don't actually know what you will or won't do. I don't know | if you'll follow up on tricky-to-reproduce bugs (as an | example) because that's "boring". | | That's just creating work and uncertainty in dealing with | those issues. | groby_b wrote: | If you as an employer are not able to deal with the fact | that different people have different preferences, you | either are running a _very_ small shop (2-4 people) which | just makes that impossible, or you 're probably not an | employer that will attract people who aren't deliberately | choosing a "cog in the machine" path. | | I want to be very clear: There's nothing wrong with that | path. There's nothing wrong with wanting to employ people | who follow that path. But making it clear from the outset | that he's not going to be a match for you specifically is | likely a feature, not a bug. | thebean11 wrote: | This only makes sense if in aggregate preferences are | proportional the amount of work in each area, which is | not the case (documentation is the obvious | counterexample) | slingnow wrote: | I think you're taking a very black and white view of | this. | | For example, ANY shop, of ANY size, is going to have | issues with tricky-but-hard-to-reproduce bugs. The parent | comment is highlighting the fact that they can't be sure | if this sort of prima donna is going to be willing to run | that issue to ground, or if they'll put up a stink about | it being "boring". | | Additionally, even if this person were working for free, | there's a definite cost to foisting difficult bugs on | your teammates. | | Do you honestly believe only "cogs in a machine" should | be / would be interested in fixing that sort of issue? | plutonorm wrote: | "Do you honestly believe only "cogs in a machine" should | be / would be interested in fixing that sort of issue?" | | No but there are many types of people for whom it has no | motivational value. Like they'd rather watch paint dry. | | And that's their personality not something that can just | be worked around. | bumby wrote: | I didn't downvote but what I suspect the OP is saying is | "I want to hire someone who will get done what needs to | get done whenever it needs to be done, not just when it | aligns with what they _want_ to do." | | Having just re-read Daniel Goleman's book on emotional | intelligence recently, one important aspect to high EQ | individuals is having the ability to motivate themselves | to do work that may be necessary, but not necessarily | glamorous or fun. | DiggyJohnson wrote: | I genuinely think that you are missing the author's point, | and thus precisely not the target of this article. | | In my reading of the article, I did not get the impression | that the author is opposed to the specific, discrete | components of the job that he found "lame". | | If the demands of the article are truly impossible | (socially and/or economically), then I believe that is the | *point*, not a criticism of this post. | throwawayboise wrote: | Exactly. I hire you (and pay you) to do what I need to be done, | not what you want to do. Of course we both look for a situation | where there is a lot of overlap in these things, because that | means you are a good match for the job I am offering. But it | will never be 100%. | DiggyJohnson wrote: | How does the experience of a consultant fit into this | evaluation? | cranium wrote: | I don't disagree with your first point but I think much depends | on a person work ethic and what it means to them to do a good | job. An engineer worth their salt would understand that success | is not only writing the fun bits but also: the tests to make | sure everything works as intended, documentation for their | failing memory and having other contribute, bug fixes because | we can't have those laying around, ... | | As is, the signal is too weak to know if the person just wants | a toy to play with (I doubt) or if they are ready for the full | package because they understand it's how it should be done. | Definitively a point to check thoroughly before hiring - but it | would be the same for other candidates, right ? | spartanliving4u wrote: | Exactly. Most developers do not seem to understand the cost of | onboarding, dealing with them, dealing with their code and so | on | travisjungroth wrote: | Those aren't "issues" with his post. They're just reasons that | you would hypothetically (you're not even hiring someone) be a | bad match. That's it. Doesn't mean you're bad, doesn't mean | he's bad, doesn't mean his post needs changing, doesn't mean | your company needs changing. None of that. He advertised | himself honestly and it's clear it would be a bad fit. | | If your concerns are onboarding process and talking to lawyers, | you would be absolutely out of your mind to hire someone who | says "I'll work on stuff that pleases me when I feel like it | for little money. And no tech screens, please!". | | A better match is an owner-run tiny software company. "We have | an open source Python client library. It needs type hints. | Sound interesting? Here's a link to the repo and some docs. | I'll give you $5/hr in ETH up to $100 for whatever you do by | the end of Friday." Then on Friday afternoon you maybe have | some type hints and pay out up to $100. | | I'm picking on your comment in particular, but it's crazy to me | how much criticism this guy is getting. He wants to try | something new, and so many people are telling him what he | _should_ be doing, or why being on the other side of this trade | is so terrible. Let 's just let them make up their own minds. | Let's stop trying to cram each other into little boxes. | wpietri wrote: | I don't read this as a signal he won't do the work. From his | talk about the stuff he enjoys doing, I don't doubt it includes | things that feel work-like. He just wants the work to be | meaningful. That seems reasonable to me, and that's how I am. | As long as there's some point to the work, I'm happy to do the | tedious stuff all day long. | | I recently user-tested a job posting for a high-meaning job. | [1] Some people were very excited by the meaning, and were | strongly motivated to apply. Others cared very little or not at | all about the purpose; they worked because they wanted money | for other things. Both are perfectly valid ways to approach | work, I think, but I would handle each kind of employee | differently. | | [1] | https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yNITCTtVh5qHPof12cSf5PWh... | ftruzzi wrote: | Thank you. | | Writing tests and documentation or diving deep into debugging | hard issues is what I consider part of "good work" (and that | I have also enjoyed doing), and I can't wait to do good work. | It just has to be compatible with the rest of life. It's | mostly the way we work that has to change rather than the | content of the work. | monoideism wrote: | It may be wise to explicitly describe in your post what you | consider "good work", including tests, clean code, etc. | jka wrote: | Thank you for the thought provoking article and discussion. | | I like to imagine that there is a virtual priority queue of | software tasks out there, waiting to be done. | | Some of it is feature development, some of it is detailed | bug investigation, some of it is documentation, and some of | it is user interface work. | | What might be incredible would be to declare your interests | and skills and start picking from the priority queue, with | appropriate rewards as you progress, and at your own pace, | knowing that you're contributing back to important tasks of | the day. Ideally with a social safety net to allow people | to enjoy life and adapt to changing circumstances. | pinky1417 wrote: | Right. The key passage is under rule 1 from the article: "You | will give me interesting or meaningful work." | | First, the author says interesting OR meaningful work. So | even if it's true that the developer won't be interested in, | say, writing documentation for a legacy steel manufacturer, | this developer might be happy to do so for a good non-profit. | | Second, the author never said documentation and the like | weren't interesting. Perhaps that's true, but Francesco | merely wrote that he prefers Python over PHP and had a few | industries he thought were interesting. | | We all have skills and industries were interested/not | interested in. And I think we and Francesco generally | recognize some unpleasant work must be done in any field. | regularemployee wrote: | > is doing a bunch of stuff people don't enjoy | | I enjoy writing documentation and writing tests. To me, writing | documentation is like teaching others about the awesome product | / features we have built, and also the different technical | tradeoff decisions we had to make. | | I can't grasp the mindset where an engineer builds something | really cool that they are proud of, but don't enjoy talking | about it / teaching people how to use it. | jrockway wrote: | Explaining how you did the thing that you already did cuts | into the time for building the next thing. The difficulty | that people wrestle with isn't whether or not documenting | something is valuable, but rather whether documenting that | thing should cut into their sleep, recreational activity, or | The Next Thing. | bitboop wrote: | Personally, I'd rather not immediately jump into building | the next thing. After having worked on any significant | project, I find writing documentation helpful on a selfish | level: I use it to wind down and let my brain idle for a | while. I don't think it's a good thing to go full tilt from | building one thing to the next. It's good to pause in | between, appreciate what's been accomplished, reflect on | lessons learned, and take a well deserved break. I find | writing documentation an excellent vehicle for that. | Kinrany wrote: | This had nothing to do with the topic: some people don't | _want_ to write documentation. | ipaddr wrote: | Most because translating code to english requires | changing mindset. | fnord77 wrote: | it's almost like a form of solipsistic narcissism (the way | The Last Psychiatrist describes it). Nobody else exists | except as a supporting role. Why should they have to explain | their genius work to anyone... | plutonorm wrote: | Or they are stimulated by new ideas and and general | patterns? To those kinds of people writing how something | that already exists works is supremely boring. It doesn't | require narcissism | watwut wrote: | The difference is in whether you are willing to do the | part that is not the most simulating but useful or | whether you expect others to put up and do it instead of | you. | | And generally z others are as bored by that work as you, | as simulated by new thing. Pretty often, the difference | is not in how much you like boring parts, but in whether | you are willing to do it anyway. | tolbish wrote: | Or they just don't like writing? That's quite the leap. | fnord77 wrote: | I suspect dealing with this type of person would become a huge | issue. This work request hints at overblown entitlement. I've | seen these types in action, the relationship between this | worker and the manager/other teammates can turn abusive. | | Also imagine the impact on morale of the other teammates when | some primadonna gets the cherry picked work and everyone else | gets the drudgery. Pay or not. | | Run. | brightball wrote: | I had a developer on my team at my last company who was like | this. Avoid at all cost. | jascii wrote: | What do you mean by "like this" and why in particular should | that be avoided at all cost? | brightball wrote: | I can't talk about it in detail yet. | | Short version, the rest of the team had to pick up all of | the things that he wasn't willing to do. It shifted more | burden to everyone else for his benefit and created a | terrible team environment. | tasuki wrote: | > I can't talk about it in detail yet. | | So... don't? | | Are you saying ftruzzi is like a person on your team in | your last company and should be avoided? I don't see why | you think he'd be "like that", what that'd mean, or | really what value your comment is providing. I personally | would love to work with ftruzzi! | MichaelGlass wrote: | Regarding your first point: I want to do those things if I'm | convinced they help the "good work". I might not want to clean | the dishes but I'll do it until I can delegate it. | steelframe wrote: | When I found myself with a mandate and a budget in a previous | company, I set out to hire a team. The health, happiness, and | productivity of the team overall was my top priority. In terms of | budget I didn't think in terms of what I got from any one | individual contributor vs. what I paid. Rather, I assessed the | cost of the total team vs. what the business was getting from | that team. | | Francesco's experiment seems to rely on an assumption that he can | bow out of things that teams typically need their members to do | (such as daily standups) if he accepts less pay, as if the team- | level work could somehow be parceled out and evaluated in a | piecemeal basis in terms of budget. The issue with that is that | there is a level of engagement that is non-negotiable in a team. | If I thought Francesco would act as a force function for the team | and help them be more cohesive, faster-moving, and results- | driven, then I would bring him on-board and pay him comparably to | what I paid the other members of the team who were producing | equivalent results. If Francesco decided that he didn't want to | do the sorts of things that the team required of him to be an | active and productive participant in the team effort, then to me | Fencesco's value could very well be negative. | aynyc wrote: | His requirement is basically volunteer style job? For example: | run an app that track or take in abandon pets for an animal | rescue/shelter. | | 1. interesting work, checked. 2. part time, remote and probably | asynchronous, checked. 3. no interviews, just build the web app | or iOS app, checked. 4. probably minimum wage, checked. | lnsru wrote: | 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. | AshamedCaptain wrote: | After kids and mortage, you will be upset with the boring part | again :( | tenacious_tuna wrote: | 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). | bikingbismuth wrote: | I was able to pay off my mortgage about a year ago (I am in | my late 30s), and work has taken on a new aspect for me. I | feel a bit more comfortable challenging the status quo and | trying to take on more "interesting work". With that in | mind, I am still attentive to the fact I need to maintain a | sustainable career for another 25/30 years. | foobarian wrote: | Many people in my circle are proud of paying off | mortgages, so I kind of assumed by default that it is a | worthwhile thing. But looking at the numbers I'm not so | sure: it seems much better in current market to cash out | as much as possible and let that money sit in an index | fund. I guess the main issues are some risks with | downturns and/or liquidity. | ryandrake wrote: | One thing to keep in mind is that mortgage is the | cheapest money you'll ever borrow. Low rates vs. other | kinds of loans, and the interest is often the biggest tax | deduction most middle class people have access to. | bikingbismuth wrote: | I completely agree that it wasn't the right financial | decision, but I don't regret it at all. I grew up working | poor and watched multiple people lose their houses (some | crash related, others not). This gave me a fairly | conservative risk tolerance regarding debt. I feel | "lighter" without debt hanging over me. | | The question that ultimately convinced me to just pay off | my mortgage was "If someone gave you a house, free and | clear, would you mortgage it to buy investments?". My gut | reaction was "no, I would really like to have a free and | clear house." | | I have considered buying a second home to rent, but I | have some moral qualms about exacerbating the housing | crisis where I live. Furthermore, the stress of tenants | isn't something I really want to deal with. | | Everyone here has great points about maximizing returns, | and I know I will have less money in the long run because | of my decision. With that in mind, I am investing about | half of my old mortgage payment, and the rest goes to the | family vacation fund. | foobarian wrote: | Just wanted to thank you for the comment and clarify I | didn't mean to criticize your choices - my background is | very similar and it's just a realization I've had after | stepping back and trying to think without those | constraints/influences. I also know many people who lost | houses or struggled, some which actually did cash-out | refinances but then unwisely spent the money on | unnecessary luxuries. Those seem easy to avoid. Some may | be harder to avoid, like when someone has unforeseen | costs such as medical related bills. But in cases such as | ours, it seems we are well enough off to have cash on | hand to eliminate the mortgage; the question just becomes | whether that is the best use for the money. It certainly | seems a bad idea to just keep the cash on hand. The index | fund returns have been very good for long periods of time | now, so seem like a good low-risk option, given that they | are liquid and can be redirected to a mortgage payoff at | any time. | | Edit: having said that the difference is not that large | (3-4% for the 30 year note, vs. 5-10% for the market | return). Also, while I didn't pay off my mortgage, I | probably won't put even more money where my mouth is and | refinance in order to invest the cash-out into a fund. | bikingbismuth wrote: | No criticism or offense taken at all! I think these | discussions are incredibly valuable for the participants | and observers to help them decide what they want to do | if/when they have a pile of money in front of them. | staticautomatic wrote: | A place to live which cannot readily be taken away from | you carries tremendous practical value and existential | comfort. | kelnos wrote: | Right, the best financial decision is usually to take | advantage of low interest rates, carry the debt, and keep | the money in diversified investments. | | Yes, there's always the risk of a downturn or | recession/depression that ruins that plan. And beyond | that, there is often a great psychological benefit to | being debt-free, even if that's not the best financial | decision. | ISL wrote: | That reality is a property primarily of the present- | moment. | | Index funds don't always rise and property values | sometimes fall. Interest rates are rarely this low. | Leverage multiplies both the upside and the downside. | jedberg wrote: | > and property values sometimes fall | | While this is true in the short term, except for very | rare exceptions, you'd be hard pressed to find a property | in the United States that is worth less now than 30 years | ago (which is the standard length of a mortgage). I don't | know about other countries, but I suspect it's the same | in any modern economy. Land is scarce, and no one is | making more of it. | jedberg wrote: | You're right. None of those people account for the time | value of money. If I could get an interest only mortgage | I would (where I literally pay to rent the money). There | are so many better things I can do with a few hundred | thousand dollars now. | | If you have the money to pay off your mortgage, why not | buy a second house with it and rent that out? Let someone | pay your mortgage while you get the appreciation? Or | invest it in something else? | | If you do the math, renting almost always comes out ahead | of owning, as long as you invest the difference in | something that gains in value. | | The main reason to own is for psychological reasons. It's | great if you have kids and want a place for them, or | yourself, to call home. | bumby wrote: | I think the part that needs to be factored into your | analysis is the volatility/risk aspect. A mortgage may be | relatively low ROI but it's also relatively low risk | compared to the market. E.g., maybe somebody has a | certain percentage invested into low risk bonds. Maybe it | makes sense to pare back some of that and put it towards | their mortgage during a period when bonds are being | crushed. Neither bonds or the mortgage return will | compete with a general index fund in terms of return over | a long period of time, but the index fund is in a | different (higher) risk category | splistud wrote: | The 'mortgage return' will compete very well over a long | period of time, especially if you ensure the comparison | is fair. For instance, 15 years in, when your mortgage | note is 60 to 70% of prevailing rent or lease, consider | the return on that savings as part of the 'mortgage | return' - because this is part of the return in the form | of inflation hedge. | Y_Y wrote: | I think this statement is a bit strong. The price/rent | ratio varies greatly between places and times. Around | here it's between 30 and 40 years, that makes it very | difficult to make money by borrowing to buy a place to | rent out. | mywittyname wrote: | In such markets, the bulk of the ROI is not the rent | checks, but tax savings and appreciation of the | underlying asset. | | Real estate looks a lot like the stock market anymore. | People value companies on metrics beyond simple revenue, | profits, and dividends. With RE, investors understand | that wage growth in a region flows into housing at a | compounding rate due to leverage and are capitalizing on | it. | | So long as Seattle or LA have companies that pay above | average wages to enough employees, housing prices in | those regions should continue to grow at a a rate | somewhat relative to differences in wages. What | constitutes "enough employees" seems to be relative to | how constrained housing growth is. In LA, housing prices | are driven by probably the top 20-30% of earners. | FalconSensei wrote: | I think at that moment, what could work is contract work. A | 6month~1 year contract. Finish the project, then take a | vacation to travel | dv_dt wrote: | Work balance, and some reasonable freedom to self determine is | pretty nice and likely more important for the stability in a | long term working engagement than being "interesting" work. | sturgeongeneral wrote: | I may be conflating 'boring' with 'rote', but how do you think | the nature of your work may affect your job security? This is | something I worry about sometimes, because I find that the work | I'm doing could eventually be de-valued or automated. Still, I | very much appreciate your position as I'm in a similar boat. | lnsru wrote: | Big Corp lost a big project few months ago. Big Corp will | loose another one soon. I hope, I can get senior title before | shit hits the fan. Contribution does not matter for the | title, only employment duration is important. | | However I am consulting a cool startup for free, do code | reviews for them for free and could start immediately there | with ~8% lower salary but 100% home office. That's my plan C. | Plan B is my own small hardware business selling Raspberry Pi | based lidar and radar. I am not far away from the first | product. I love these topics and compensate boredom at day | job this way. As I mentioned, big Corp does not see interest | conflict and I may sell these cool gadgets for wide Raspberry | Pi community. | toomuchtodo wrote: | Stability and work life balance are terribly underrated. | plutonorm wrote: | Depends on personality. For some its poison and burnout and | depression are not far behind. | username90 wrote: | Yeah, personally having a large chunk of the day be simple | tedious tasks I don't have any control over makes me | depressed and every day becomes a fight to keep the mental | breakdown just out of reach. I envy people who can stay | sane in such environments, makes life a lot easier. | ipaddr wrote: | I feel that way about meetings. Boring tasks can be | automated away if they have a pattern. | Taylor_OD wrote: | I'll take a boring stable 40 hour a week job over a fun job | that somewhat frequently requires 50+ hours. Time is the only | thing I cant get back. Money really is just a number after a | certain point. | username90 wrote: | Why do you still work for others if money is just a number | at this point? I worked for Google for a while and quit to | do my own projects once I had enough money that I felt it | didn't matter any more. | Taylor_OD wrote: | I'm not exactly at that level yet. I couldnt stop working | forever. But I realized that making money isnt all that | difficult and its really a make believe number after a | certain point. | rad_gruchalski wrote: | There is something in the second paragraph that made me read it | four times, I think, until I was able to read the rest of the | post. The author somehow manages to turn around the fact of being | laid off into freeing themselves from the "golden handcuffs | finally". No matter how I read that paragraph, I can't help the | feeling that the author misses the point: | | the author did not make that decision, the author had no choice | | But what's not landing with me: when the author had the choice, | because let's face it, nobody cuffed the author to the desk, | nobody forced anybody to do the boring tedious work - the author | did not make the decision but rather was prolonging in that, what | is portrayed, uncomfortable situation. | | The rest of the post paints a portrait of a person who doesn't | know what they want. No commitments, no responsibilities, one | side wants without being explicit what they can give back. | | I think that the key to this post is the paragraph starting with | "Accepting a job offer is a bit like getting engaged or | married:". But it should be rewritten like this: | | > I know (I) will have to make compromises to make it work, but I | should not go for it unless I am 100% sure and obviously I should | not marry someone I don't know. If I do, chances are I will end | up being unhappy for a long time or staying with them for longer | than I want, because I will get used to the day-to-day and the | "rewards" while still getting to know them. When I begin to have | an understanding of who this person really is, I will already be | invested and leaving will be hard. Many never leave(, I never | left and I was hurt because I was laid off while unprepared). For | a company however, it is much easier to stay with someone who is | unhappy in their relationship [with the company itself], because | it's a one-to-many relationship. They have many other employees | they can rely on, and an underperforming or unhappy employee can | be easily shadowed by better or happier ones without the company | suffering. Is it starting to feel dysfunctional? | | In that context, the last question could be the writing on the | wall. I'm sorry if I come across as condescending, this is my | interpretation: this portrays a person who openly admits is not | able to make a commitment and is uncertain of their qualities. | | The rest of the post suggests the person is looking for a quick | fix instead of long term solution. Today they may like this, | tomorrow that, today they do something for someone who pays $1/h, | tomorrow maybe something better comes through so screw that $1/h. | "Didn't like it anyway and you knew the rules so it's your | fault". | | I like author's rules. Assuming they stick to them. It might work | for some companies so good luck. | | As a side note: I was hoping to find the info if the person can | raise invoices. Obviously, paying invoices in cryptocurrency | might not land well with local tax authorities. | Tycho wrote: | Golden handcuffs means to leave would mean giving up too much | money. I think it's understandable behaviour. It would be | financially irresponsible to quit a job that pays very well, | especially if you're not sure of landing another one. Being | laid off, however, takes you out of the dilemma, so feels like | a relief. | rad_gruchalski wrote: | That's right. Thank you, I know what the phrase means. Don't | get attached to me simply using their words to make my point. | | The point is: instead of making a change, they waited until | laid off. So in the end, it's somebody else's fault, like | this: "I don't want to talk too much about it, but let's say | my boss didn't care about doing good work and didn't know | what good work looked like." | | Maybe the post leaves too much in the unclear. It's not | obvious if this is the author reflecting on the past and | making up with their inner self or if it is simply taking out | on the world. The post doesn't answer any of that. | mekal wrote: | "But what's not landing with me: when the author had the | choice....nobody cuffed the author to the desk". | | Golden handcuffs: a phrase first recorded in 1976, refers to | financial allurements and benefits that have the objective to | encourage highly compensated employees to remain within a | company or organization instead of moving from company to | company (or organization to organization) (opposite of a golden | parachute). | | Surely you can relate to someone taking a job they might not | love because it pays more right? I think the main point he's | trying to make is think twice before doing a job you hate, just | because it pays more. Life is short, your job takes up a lot of | your time, so consider doing something you enjoy...even if it | pays less. That part at least is good advice I think. | rad_gruchalski wrote: | > Surely you can relate to someone taking a job they might | not love because it pays more right? I think the main point | he's trying to make is think twice before doing a job you | hate, just because it pays more. Life is short, your job | takes up a lot of your time, so consider doing something you | enjoy...even if it pays less. That part at least is good | advice I think. | | That's correct. I can relate to someone. I repeat from the | sibling comment: Maybe the post leaves too much in the | unclear. It's not obvious if this is the author reflecting on | the past and making up with their inner self or if it is | simply taking out on the world. The post doesn't answer any | of that. | | Because of that, it's not possible to make a judgement why | the author did not consider their own advice while at that | previous job. If life's too short, why sticking up for until | being laid off? | lordnacho wrote: | Looks like you're a decent enough coder, you're still young, and | you want something interesting to do. Why not start one of the | many startups that people here on this site tend to start? | codingdave wrote: | I completely understand wanting a gig like this if you are a dev. | But it seems to be missing a key truth of hiring - I already know | a dozen brilliant engineers who would jump at such a gig. If my | company supported setting this up, I would go with someone I | already know and love, not risk it with a stranger. | marcodiego wrote: | In a post-scarcity world that is how work should be. People | should for pleasure, comfort or luxury, not for survival or | dignity. | wreath wrote: | That's certainly not a world I want to be part of. Seeking | pleasure 100% of the time is quite depressing the same way | trying to survive 100% of the time is. | bena wrote: | I want enough money to have shelter, transportation, food, and | fun without having to sacrifice one for the other. | | As for the job itself, let me concern myself with the how and let | me have enough leeway to do some wool-gathering. | chad_strategic wrote: | 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. | doggodaddo78 wrote: | Yep. Autonomy, purpose, and challenge are what people want to | stay engaged and keep morale up. | public_void wrote: | > You will give me interesting or meaningful work | | Have you ever worked on something interesting or meaningful at a | job? You list a bunch of random topics, none of which are | inherently interesting or meaningful. I've worked on flashy | projects - most recently self driving at one of the bigger | companies doing it. Guess what? In an eng org of hundreds, at | least half the people were still doing shit work that had nothing | to do with self driving. | | Beyond that, if I want to hire you for interesting work, it falls | into two buckets: mission critical, or irrelevant. I can't hire | you for mission critical work because I have no confidence you | can do the job, so I can only hire you for irrelevant work. If I | hire you for irrelevant work, it makes me no money, so I pay you | no money. Why even have this arrangement? Just go start your own | side project - at least then you own it. | | Consider this: join a company doing something you don't like | (making an absurd amount of money because of the industry), | demonstrate/develop your expertise, identify the parts of the | company that are interesting to you, then go work on those. | People doing interesting satisfying work didn't just get there | accidentally. | tyrex2017 wrote: | I dont understand the OP and others who feel it is soul crushing | to do stupid tasks. | | For one, whats the big deal? I can put in the difficult hours and | continue. Secondly, often, what is considered inefficient and | stupid is not, or just cant be done better because organizations | are not perfect. | | Having said that, OP, I have lots of respect for your strength to | go for what you want. | pascalxus wrote: | the point of work is to provide value to someone, in exchange | they give you cash. That someone, can be anyone in the world or | any people except for one person, and that's you (the worker). | the point of work is providing value to someone else, not | entertainment to yourself: that's called play. | | I think it's great that we have a balance between work and play | or maybe even have a life of just play and work on whatever fun | stuff you want. You don't need an employer for that. Just know | the difference. If you're going to have fun programming and | entertain yourself, just do it on your own. | | Employers need people to do boring work: maintaining existing | legacy systems, fixing bugs, doing the last 20% (which takes 80% | of the effort), to get things working perfectly for as many | customers as possible. | vesche wrote: | Pie in the sky. Any realistic employer reading this plea should | be turned off fairly quickly. Typically, it's a red flag when an | _employee_ gives an _employer_ ultimatums while already in their | employ (e.g., give me a raise of x amount or I will quit). This | post is an example of a potential employee giving ultimatums to a | future employer before they have even been given a job. | distributedsean wrote: | Thats a strange way of thinking about things. Why shouldn't the | employee have power in the relationship. Employers are always | giving ultimatums, no-remote, remote-only, 40 hours a week, | $X/hr. But the employee/employer relationship is really only an | agreement to do X much work for Y money. Everything else is | secondary. Why shouldn't an employee's secondary concerns be | just as important as the employer's secondary concerns ? | Kreotiko wrote: | Pay me what you want but possibly in cryptocurrency so I can | commit tax evasion should be the title | ronyfadel wrote: | Haha, I thought of the same thing. Otherwise OP could get paid | in fiat and exchange for cryptocurrencies himself. | Kreotiko wrote: | Exactly and it would be much easier than finding a company | willing to pay you that way. Also considering that currency | exchange rates are pretty low these days too. | jrockway wrote: | You can pay people in cryptocurrency and still report their | income to the IRS. I certainly would. | pketh wrote: | Having been consistently unemployed in the past, some experience | and advice: | | How people value you - and treat you - is directly reflected in | how they pay you. Working free or cheap actually encourages | employers to micromanage and committee review things because | inexpensive things/people are seen as less reliable or | professional. | | If you want interesting work, my advice is to make it yourself. | Find a problem you're passionate about and make something | beautiful of it. | | You'll improve your own skills, have more fun, and eventually | employers will be coming to you. | raspasov wrote: | If the work is truly meaningful, it is not boring. Even if it's | doing docs, or support, or refactoring, or responding to emails. | | If a member of a team says that what they do is boring that's | often a sign of poor leadership. | danans wrote: | The most interesting thing about this is that the writer is in a | position to be able to work part-time for only 10 to 20 hours a | week at a very low rate. | | I imagine they are not supporting a family or a mortgage, or if | they are they must have a significant alternate source of | financial or housing security, and that's not a bad thing. | | I wish more people had the ability to put out such terms for | their employment without worrying about keeping the roof over | their head. | | They would likely have to drop some of their more naive | requirements though (i.e. no Java or PHP, only "interesting" | work). The road to interesting work is paved with the mundane, no | matter how cool the job or technology is. | xyst wrote: | "Pay what you want" sounds like it's ripe for abuse. | freetime2 wrote: | I feel like you would be better off finding companies that | interest you, and inquiring if they would be willing to hire you | as a part time contractor. | | What you're proposing here feels like such a deviation from the | typical hiring process that I just can't imagine many companies | going to the effort of making you a personalized proposal just | for you to turn it down as not interesting. | | Being unable to find anything that interests you also comes | across as a bit of a motivational problem that could scare | companies off from investing in you (if not with money than with | time). | | Just my two cents. I don't consider myself an expert on | interviewing or hiring, so I could be wrong! | 11235813213455 wrote: | I think there's no really "boring" developer jobs. There are | strict jobs (where you have very little freedom), and they can be | more boring, but if you get more freedom, even a repetitive job | can become interesting, by finding and making the right tools to | automate more, etc.. | lpapez wrote: | The author of the blog graduated high school in 2014. I would | really like to see his blog again in a few years to see if he | still feels the same way about work. :) | fundamental wrote: | Nice visually appealing CV. Is that using a public template as | the base? I'm currently using the deedy XeLaTeX one as a base, | but it doesn't seem to scale out to multiple pages well. | | Best of luck with your goals by the way. Avoiding the full time | grind in favor of lower time commitments with interesting | projects is a great objective. | slingnow wrote: | Could you imagine a hiring a general contractor for your home | renovation business with this sort of attitude? This person would | be an instant liability. I can't imagine any instance where I | would want them doing free work for me, bouncing from one half | finished task to the next when it became boring for them. | | Hell, I wouldn't even let them wander around my jobsite for free. | | The entitlement in this profession is sometimes truly astounding. | brunojppb wrote: | Sounds like Gumroad would be a good match for what you are | looking for. | Scene_Cast2 wrote: | Open Source volunteer contributions are like this taken to the | extreme - where the two main motivations are interesting work, | and making a change in something you (want to) use. | | I'm curious if the lessons learned from OSS projects would apply | to work output from this person. | agentultra wrote: | If you expect the interesting work to land in your lap you are | either one of those people that redefine (maybe invent) entire | fields of research or you're incredibly lucky. In other words, | your work speaks for itself and people want to give you more of | it. For most people we need a job in order to keep up with the | rising costs of living. | | If, however, you're like 99.99% of people and are good at what | you do then you'll have to _find_ what is interesting about the | job. I 've worked at a company that replaced clipboards with | iPads in a factory. If all it was to me was a form-builder | application and the technology under it I would have been turned | off ages ago. But I was incredibly curious as to why the product | as successful and growing, what our customers liked about it, and | I pushed for developers to visit the factories and see how people | used the app. The results were quite surprising and it fed out | team with dozens of ideas. | | Technology for technology's sake is fun for a while but will | eventually bore you. It helps to have a _reason_ to work on what | you do. Which I think is part of what OP is saying but I think | you can find the reason in a "boring" job as well. You just have | to be curious and look for it. | | Although avoiding working at feature factories where the | developers are just cogs in a Kafka-esque Agile Machine is a | whole other can of worms. The OP's strategy seems like an | interesting way to avoid it. Best of luck! | bumby wrote: | > _you 'll have to find what is interesting about the job._ | | This reminds me of the advice that one needs to cultivate their | passion rather than expect to stumble upon it. | z3ncyberpunk wrote: | So you were able to find something interesting in (somewhat | meaningful but still) boring work. that speaks to you in a | positive light but it doesn't change the overall point that the | OP was trying to make | exikyut wrote: | Random idle/curious question: "a factory" doesn't describe the | roughness of the working conditions, but assuming a baseline of | a mildly industrial context, how did you mitigate the risk of | dropped or damaged iPads? | | (As an aside, it's kind of a pity that there isn't a standard | drop-proof tablet out there that can be deployed without | thought in these kinds of situations.) | falcor84 wrote: | I'll just put this here: https://www.techradar.com/news/the- | best-rugged-tablets | jorvi wrote: | Probably iPads encased in rugged cases / mounts. | agentultra wrote: | That was what most of our customers did for on-the floor | tablets. | | They would also use mounted TVs and have their scrum around | our app's dashboard page which was something none of the | developers had thought of. | minblaster wrote: | I think the author is getting stuck in tactics, not strategy. | | Problem: OP does not have the freedom to pursue what he finds | interesting. | | Tactic: Given existing work arrangements, attempt to negotiate a | setup where he can just work on what he wants. If the employer | changes its mind, OP gets to restart the cycle. | | Strategy: Avoid having this problem in the first place. | | Pursuing the strategy means taking a high-paying job, saving a | large fraction (https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the- | shockingly-si...) and having the financial freedom to never worry | about this problem again. | Tade0 wrote: | A sound tactic but there's one issue: high-paying jobs, in | time, often turn into a sort of "golden cage", which makes you | unemployable and vulnerable to lay-offs. | | Anecdata: | | A friend of mine worked in banking where the pay was amazing, | but the tech used mostly outdated(think Java 6 in 2018). At | some point he got fed up with all that and tried to switch | roles, but to no avail, because no one would hire him. | | He's still there but should a recession come he'll be in a very | tough situation. | Popegaf wrote: | As others have suggested, have you considered joining an | opensource project? | | - https://github-help-wanted.com/ | | - https://up-for-grabs.net/ | | - https://www.codetriage.com/ | | - https://opencollective.com/discover | | I'm sure there are organisations that would love to have some | technical volunteers. Maybe try and find NGOs you believe in and | send them a private or public message? | | Or, if you want to get politically involved in your country, you | could try and find yourself a political party you believe in, ask | them if they have any technical tasks, and see from there. | tayo42 wrote: | Yeah I don't know why someone would essentially give away their | talent and time to a for profit corporation. There are so many | better alternatives | isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: | Well, money. | UncleOxidant wrote: | I'm in the same situation Francesco is in. Other than a short gig | in the Fall (for some people who knew my capabilities, hence no | interview required) I haven't worked for pay in over a year. | Fortunately I'm in a position to be able to not work as my spouse | has a job with health insurance and we've got a decent amount of | retirement savings. | | > Work takes up such a big part of your life that what you do is | terribly important. I've been contacted by many companies and | recruiters during this time, but the idea of going back to full- | time work doing something I don't care about or is not | technically interesting just scares me. | | Yeah, scares is a good word here - I feel the same. I get | contacted by recruiters and they describe the job and I get that | dread in the pit of my stomach. I've been in tech for 30+ years, | I've seen all kinds of companies, situations, bosses, coworkers. | It's all a roll of the dice and from my experience the odds | aren't on your side. | | > 1. You will give me interesting or meaningful work | | I tend to think that there's just not a lot of funding out there | for the most interesting and meaningful. I had a job doing | software development for an alternative energy company. They | never got to stable funding and folded. That was interesting, | meaningful work, but they couldn't get money to keep it going. | | > 3. No technical interviews or coding challenges | | I have reached this point as well. I'm tired of the interview | game. Just done. Can't do it anymore. The thought of interviewing | makes me physically ill. I like to say that I'm retired form | interviewing not software development. | | > 4. You pay what you want, per hour | | I'd work for $50K/year if the work was interesting and the people | were nice. Heck, maybe even less than that in the right | situation. | | In the meantime I'll be over here working on stuff that I find | interesting in languages that I like (and aren't necessarily in | demand). And gardening. And baking bread. | corpMaverick wrote: | I understand. | | I want to be able to have more autonomy on how to do my work. | Take a piece of code (large or small) and relentlessness make it | better. I don't want to have to explain my self for every little | change. I want to be able to deploy my changes every day. I have | a grand vision on my head and I want to make it happen. Second | guessing my self of what others think, drains my energy. | martin_a wrote: | Good luck finding a company which will pay you in some obscure | cryptocurrency. | shubik22 wrote: | I definitely sympathize with the author's dissatisfactions. It's | difficult to find meaningful, interesting work that pays well, | and when you find yourself sacrificing one part of that equation, | it can be very disheartening. | | However, the answer to this is not to just cut out the "pays | well" part of the equation and assume that the rest will follow | as a result. As others in the comments here have pointed out, | interesting work is hard to find, full stop. | | I would actually think that the non-conventional nature of the | author's offer would actually decrease the quality of the work. | In my experience, work can be enjoyable based on two dimensions: | the technical aspect of the work (am I learning? is this | engaging?) and the "organizational" nature of the work (is the | company well organized and run? are there clear expectations? or | is there just chaos everywhere?). Even if work you can find from | this kind of offer is better on the first dimension, I imagine | it'll be far worse on the second dimension. | | That being said, I hope the author proves me wrong and finds a | work situation which makes them happy. Good luck! | yongjik wrote: | A generic advice: 15 years ago I might have felt similarly, but | now I think it's the other way. If you want interesting work, | demand higher pays and try to get into such positions. | | When you're highly paid you will get more interesting work, | because the company will see you as a valuable asset that should | be working on "hard" things. When you're being paid a penny, the | company will think you're worth a penny and will assign you | menial tasks. | | BTW I didn't really live up to my own advice, either. | -\\_(tsu)_/- | varispeed wrote: | This is what I found as well. At high pay, you may be getting | into building MVPs and prototypes - these don't require | "boring" things like extensive testing or documentation. The | board will see that their idea works and then only "boring" | part is hand over to dev teams to "productionise" it. | therealdrag0 wrote: | It's not just about pay it's also about earning respect (by | delivering good and making valuable contributions to the team) | and your relationship with your manager. My manager literally | asks me, "What do you want to work on?" | slt2021 wrote: | if you do interesting, fascinating, groundbreakng stuff, then | presumably this is something of great value and you should own | equity. | | thats why I think a lot of people become founders. | | so if you work for a startup you will literally get paid whatecer | and work on cool stuff, haha | amelius wrote: | If more people do this, then this will put a negative pressure on | my salary. | axguscbklp wrote: | It is interesting how many of the responses to this here say some | version of "our industry is mostly boring". That has been my | experience of the industry as well, unfortunately. | mettamage wrote: | Request sent, I hope you find it fair since I don't have money to | spare. | wdb wrote: | I wouldn't know how I can pay someone in cryptocurrency. | blentz wrote: | I've been on the receiving end of similar requests before. | | "I'll work for free or nothing if you let me do what I love under | the umbrella of your organization because I love it so much." | | I did one or two agreements like this and then stopped | altogether. The individual would start their work, others would | start to depend on its existence and the individual would leave | in a matter or weeks or months because something else better came | along for them. There was no incentive to keep the relationship | going over a longer term. My organization just wasn't setup to | see any upside to short lived but high quality team members. | | Is there anyone out there who does work agreements like this | currently and benefits from them? Would love to hear more | details. Perhaps that feedback could help Franceso with his | pitch. | | Franceso please come back in a week and let us know what kinds of | offers you received. Will be very interested to see where this | goes. | christophergs wrote: | Same, sometimes people volunteer to help me code | https://coursemaker.org for free because they like the idea. In | one case this has worked out well. But in a couple of others | the engineers have vanished quite fast. Sometimes I wonder if I | made a much more serious effort to onboard/document/give | ownership then would they stick with it. What do you reckon - | how was the onboarding in your case? | frontiersummit wrote: | The obvious elephant in the room is how can someone afford food | and rent while working on $1 or whatever. If I was a hiring | manager I would assume one of 3 things: 1) He is independently | wealthy, 2) He lives in a van, or 3) he really expects $50/hour | and this is some sort of bait-and-switch strategy. | farhadhf wrote: | I have some similar experiences. Especially with people saying | "let me do what I love" or "give me a position where I can | learn new things". | | People like variety - the initial love doesn't last long. After | a few weeks/months it gets boring and repetitive. Learning the | shiny new tech is only fun until you you've figured out how it | works, but the project doesn't end there and you have to | deliver a product in the end. But for most people who | exclusively want the "position where they can learn new things" | fixing the bugs and doing the finishing touches is no longer | fun once they've figured out how the underlying tech works - | they leave for the next position where they can learn another | shiny new tech and you're left with a half-finished project | (usually with subpar code quality because this was the first | project they did using the new tech). | plutonorm wrote: | But this is my personality. Given repetitive work I become | depressed quite quickly. I say this as a 40 yo who | understands themselves well. Yes I can struggle through, but | this career has brought me to the brink of suicide on two | occasions. Working to the grind of an agile development cycle | is poison to me, it drains all color from the world. I'd | rather break my bones. Where is the space for people of my | color? Who dry up and die if asked to write boiler plate crud | code and unit tests for fizz buzz UI elements. | | Unless I'm solving a problem that's genuinely intellectualy | stimulating then I have 0 interest in coding. | | Most of us hide the misery because we know that the only | outcome of airing it is dismissal either in the short or the | long term. | | There is no role for us in this career but having sunk so | much time into it we have no other option but to keep on | going. | caffeine wrote: | You have to do your own thing ... usually that's bad advice | but for people with the temperament you describe I think | it's reasonable. | | Also a lot depends on expectations and finding good | partners. In a previous job I worked with another guy as a | team. I would start projects and get an MVP out and | delivering value - then move on to the next thing. He would | go through and essentially rewrite them to be high quality, | solidly engineered products, well integrated with the rest | of the stack. | | We both got to do what we enjoyed and were good at: I am | very fast at breaking new ground and delivering new value, | and find engineering a bit boring. He was very good at | improving existing systems, but too slow and plodding to | try out new ideas effectively. | Bukhmanizer wrote: | I feel like this is me with side projects sometimes. Do you | have any tips for staying on target? | | I generally don't have this issue in my actual job. | wvenable wrote: | For side projects, I think there is some value in not being | concerned about finishing them. If you're doing them for | enjoyment then they shouldn't feel like a job. | | But I find defining exactly what _done_ will be on a | personal project helps a lot to get completed. I define | features are the minimum necessary and once I reach those | features I immediately switch to trying to release it. | Releasing is always a lot of work so it 's easy to put it | off forever while constantly iterating on a product. But | actually releasing gives a good feeling of accomplishment. | vajrabum wrote: | Here's a couple of thoughts. Sometimes not following | through might not be about feelings or at least not | directly. If you do a project to learn some new tech then | the project is not about what it does but about how to do | it. So make sure you pick side projects that you think need | doing. Find a partner or a group to do the project with or | create some way that you make yourself accountable for it's | completion. Who are your projects for? If it's for | yourself, then is it something you really want or maybe | just an idea? If it's for somebody else or some group then | create a connection to that group or some people so that | you know who you're making it for and include them in the | project. That way you have someone to deliver it to and to | continue to support. Lastly, maybe it's a decision issue. | Maybe you just never really completely decided to do it. | How do you know when you've decided to do something? | jpe90 wrote: | When I get stuck on projects that are very meaningful to | me, I chip away at the pieces I don't want to do and allow | myself to take as long as I need to complete them. | | When I get stuck on projects that are not so meaningful to | me, I reduce scope. | augustk wrote: | Personally I love doing the finishing touches but I'm usually | not allowed to because the feature or product is considered | good enough. It's hard to find a job where everyone really | care about quality. | christophergs wrote: | Well said. This is why engineers who know how to finish the | last 10% are truly valued by good colleagues and managers. | username90 wrote: | I don't think so, most teams never do the last 10% on any | project ever. They pick the low hanging fruit with the | first 80% and if they are thorough they might bring it up | to 90%, but 100%? I've never seen such a software project. | ivanche wrote: | I'd say that Total Commander is very close to 100%. | plutonorm wrote: | And those who aren't like that by nature are much less | useful I suppose? | gbear0 wrote: | I'd also suggest people making these requests to try and expand | their interests to make themselves more rounded and valuable. | For example I'm totally the kind of person that likes to jump | from one thing to another cause I like the challenge and I get | bored quick otherwise. But instead of jumping ship cause the | challenge is gone I try to find a different closely related | challenge. | | Here's a couple of techniques for anyone looking to do the | same: | | 1. Look at the 'supply chain' of inputs and outputs from your | problem area. Are there new inefficiencies somewhere in the | stack that you can dig into and solve, and leverage your new | knowledge. This could mean a whole new area of things to learn | in order to investigate or solve those problems. | | 2. Never accept the status quo. Every time you're asked to do | something else, treat that as an opportunity to find one thing | that you can improve in the related systems. Here you'll learn | the new system, but you'll also learn how to pick worthwhile | areas for improvement. | | 3. Be reflective and review what you found interesting and what | you didn't and dig into the ones you didn't find interesting. | Ask yourself why you didn't like things; was it cause it was | too difficult to pick up? was it cause you don't like people | problems? was it just too big a problem to tackle? Dig in more | and ask why again (like the Toyota 5 Whys). Eventually you | should be able to find a problem area that you can clearly | define and potentially work on to improve. | | I realize these 3 techniques won't necessarily lead to 'cool | tech problems', but that's kinda the point! If you can get | yourself interested in solving related problem areas, you'll | find you pick up a lot of useful knowledge and value that you | can apply in many other areas you wouldn't have first thought | of, all while always jumping between things and not getting | bored! | | (edit: formatting) | madog wrote: | I don't have anything to add to this, only to say thanks - | that's decent advice. If you do X, you can learn about Y, and | apply it to Z. | | If you have a broad interest there's like a million different | ways to pivot and branch off to learn different things. | wsc981 wrote: | Seems like a weird idea to me anyways, to offer to work for | very little money or even nothing, as long as the work is | interesting. | | To me it seems that time is much better spent on a fun personal | (side) project. And who knows ... maybe the side project will | earn some income in time. | splistud wrote: | But that's not the idea is it? The idea is to define the | terms, and see what the bids are. Perhaps, if the bids are | too low, the decision would be to 'pay oneself' (spend from | savings) while working on said side project. But the point is | simple - an attempt to find a union of two interests at a | price that makes sense. | splonk wrote: | I did something sort of similar. There are limits to what you | can do with a side project, and joining a company gets you | access to other people with different skill sets from yours. | | In my particular case after finding a good fit with a small | startup I told the CEO to just pay me as little as he could | reasonably justify and make up the rest in equity (which I | was fully aware would likely be worthless). In a different | framing, I was "spending" my missing salary by "hiring" some | people to do the work I wouldn't want to do - pitching deals, | forming business relationships, and negotiating contracts to | get me the data that I actually wanted to work on. | SkipperCat wrote: | You'll never find a job that meets these requirements, but you | may find a job with good co-workers, a boss who is decent and a | healthy work environment. To me, that is nirvana. Just like in a | marriage, there's going to be good and bad times. It's the people | that make those rough patches bearable. | | Sounds to me like you just want flexibility and the opportunity | to work on things you find engaging. Don't expect 100% of that | all the time but I do think if you look hard enough, you'll find | what you seek. | erdos4d wrote: | I've asked dev shops to feed me work with no standup or meetings, | just send the spec and answer my questions. Nobody will take the | offer, even if I am willing to do 2 guys work for half a guy's | pay. I have no way to explain this, but it seems like standup | meetings are more important than anything to most employers. Best | of luck, please post your results if you actually get work that | wants output and not hangout time. | rafael_benatti wrote: | I don't have any work for you but congratulations for your cv, is | very good :) | mrfusion wrote: | Anyone here want to make a job board for "interesting" work? | There are lots of retired software engineers (and managers who | miss coding) who would love to work a few hours a week. | Rochus wrote: | If such a well-qualified person wants to work for any wage, it | will distort the market in the first place (i.e. clients will be | even less willing to pay decent rates if people with his | qualifications work for any amount). Why doesn't he work for open | source projects on his own initiative and at his own discretion | and try to finance himself via Patreon or similar? Or he could | solve interesting problems for companies at his own risk, let the | company check the suitability of the solution (initially as | closed source), and then sell it for a fixed price "as is" | (including source code). This way the company can save the | specification effort, is more willing to outsource the project | and the consultant can demonstrate its qualification directly | with the solution and the speed with which it develops it. This | has worked for me for many years, and I don't have to convince my | customers with cheap rates. | citizenpaul wrote: | Cool! 1$ per year and I want you to solve generalized AI voice | recognition customer service and all the IP will belong to me. | lhovon wrote: | You might find some of these to your liking | https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/opportunities | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Anything is interesting if you engage with it. And being bored is | a state of mind. It's a fallacy to say "that's boring". The | bored-ness is in your head, not in the task. | mlboss wrote: | Not sure why you were downvoted. I totally agree with you. | | One of my past manager told me that the trick of making a | boring job interesting is to introduce a layer of abstraction | to the task. | | For example, if you have to right a lot of boiler plate code | then write a code generator. | pschuegr wrote: | "The trick to making a boring job interesting is to make it | more complicated". This is IMO terrible advice for building | software. | | Edit: your example seems like a good instance of applying | this _well_, but I would not tell anybody this as general | advice. | Taylor_OD wrote: | I don't know... Have you ever done manual QA as a full time | job? | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Some mechanical menial jobs can be satisfying. At least when | you can get in the zone, and see what you've accomplished at | the end of the day. | | I grew up on a farm. There was a lot of that. It took mental | discipline, which most folks may not have an opportunity to | develop in this hypercharged media world. | Taylor_OD wrote: | I didnt grow up on a farm but grew up on a good bit of land | with a lot of yard work that needed to be done. I agree | that some jobs like that can be satisfying but its very | different from a computer based role. | | At the end of the day when you have taken a large tree | branch and turned it into a stacked pile of chopped wood | you feel a sense of accomplishment. It doesnt feel quite | the same when you've cleared 4 QA UI tickets. | andrewzah wrote: | This is certainly true. Being bored to a large extent is a | personal choice. Things can be as interesting as you make them, | but it requires looking at things from different perspectives | sometimes. | Ecstatify wrote: | I'm guessing you're a manager. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Developer all my life. | echelon wrote: | I was just replying to a flagged comment [1] and it became | impossible to respond to, | | > Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the intersection of | "interesting" work and "valuable" work is pretty small. | | Your comment was flagged/dead, but I absolutely think you are | right. | | Look at most of the jobs today. Laborer, factory worker, package | sorter, delivery driver, fast food worker, government process | worker, ... These aren't particularly interesting or fulfilling. | | Apply that lens to our industry, and what do you see? Plumbing | grunt work, glue code maintainer, migration work, form collection | CRUD. There are so many jobs that don't do anything particularly | novel or exciting. You might even be building something you hate, | like ad tech. | | I don't think the comment is too off base. Maybe the scale and | tone is wrong, but there's certainly plenty of boring work. | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26863367 | BrianOnHN wrote: | Work for yourself, first on finding why it is you want to work. | | If the motivation is there, and you're cause is meaningful, then | all of the problems will become interesting. | dkyc wrote: | It's almost funny how this is the polar opposite of what you | often want when hiring. You're hiring to add manpower to tackle | the kind of unexciting tasks that you don't naturally find people | drawn towards from your existing team (and then, people's | responsibilities expand, or they turn 'boring' work into | interesting work by redefining the problem or attacking it on a | deeper level). | | When you have a growing business, money is probably not not the | _primary_ concern, but the last thing you can afford is someone | on the team being picky about which tasks are beneath them. | | No judgment here, I understand OP's sentiment, but I cannot | remember any situation in my career where 'hire me, I only work | on what I find interesting but it'll cost you comparatively | little' would have been an exciting proposition (on the hiring | side). | UncleOxidant wrote: | I'd put it a bit differently than the OP - for me interesting | and meaningful work means that it's actually benefiting society | in some way. That would mean that even the 'boring' aspects | would have some kind of meaning ("we're trying to cure X" or | "We're working to help solve global warming"). Too much work | now is just trying to sell stuff to other people, get people to | click links, get people riled up so that they're engaged with | some social media platform - it's not helping us as a species. | quijoteuniv wrote: | Definetely. Making a rich guy get richer is boring. Helping | the planet be a better place sounds interesting. | itronitron wrote: | If a company is trying to hire people to do the work that | current employees don't want to do then it sounds like they | have already hired the wrong people. | freetime2 wrote: | As a company grows, all sorts of new problems open up that | your current employees might not be a great fit for. For | example, you might not need a DBA when just starting out, but | when your database reaches a certain size it might make sense | to hire one. Or you might need to hire a middle manager once | you reach a certain size - but all of your initial hires | prefer individual contributor roles. Or maybe you need | someone with a strong background in security to be able to | pass an audit. | | It doesn't mean that you hired the wrong people. Just that | your needs are changing. | ggggtez wrote: | Others have said it but it bears repeating: Entitled | | No interviews? No fixed hours? Maximum 10 hours per week? He'll | refuse to do anything he doesn't think is interesting? | | Who would even want to hire someone like this. | orliesaurus wrote: | At this point why not do some research across HN, for example do | lookup Show HN or on indiehackers and team up with other solo- | devs on project they started for a minimum hourly rate and then | just grow with them and eventually make higher returns | skeeter2020 wrote: | >> No fixed hours, I will work when I want. | | >> no daily stand-ups | | >> Meaningful work means work that I care about | | >> This whole thing is not about money, so what the work is about | comes first | | There is a profound mismatch between what this person is | offerring and what anyone would want from a developer, or even | the core requirements for effective software development. I'll | pass. | CleanCoder wrote: | I am most curious about the "no technical interview" part and | "my work speaks for my skills" while OP's GitHub is just forks. | | This all really reads in an uncomfortable way and I would never | risk investing into somebody by guessing if whatever I need | done, as a business, will be interesting enough for this person | to put genuine effort into. | | I feel like OP needs hobbies to get the fun/interesting itch | scratched and then go back to being a "code monkey" like the | rest of us, doing "boring" stuff to pay the bills. | | I've been there myself before and the most valuable lesson I've | learned is that motivation != discipline. Motivation comes and | goes and if you base your productivity solely on that you will | burn out. Being disciplined though allows to get the "boring" | out of the way first, leaving lots of time to explore other | interests. | qiqitori wrote: | > I am most curious about the "no technical interview" part | and "my work speaks for my skills" while OP's GitHub is just | forks. | | On Github you have to fork a project first if you want to | create a pull request. I randomly opened three of the forks | and saw that he'd made pull requests for two of them. | CleanCoder wrote: | I fully understand the way forks work - what I found | troubling is that for somebody who is dying to do something | interesting, for close to no pay, there seems to be little | indication of them doing things out of pure | passion/interest as is. For somebody expecting me to hand | pick things that are super fun to work on there is not | enough incentive/conviction for me to trust this person | and/or invest any time into onboarding/managing them. | That's literally why you get paid "the big bucks" - the | employer can demand specific things without having to | depend on your mood and attitude towards task A. | | The only thing I can suggest to the author is what others | have already said - go in to academia/research and | volunteer your time to selected interests. | | One scenario in which the author's attitude and desires | could work is if he starts his own business and focuses on | the fun things while paying others to do the boring stuff. | But then again - building a successful business to achieve | the luxury of total choice takes a lot of "boring" work | beforehand. | ghaff wrote: | I confess that I have trouble seeing the logic in wanting | to work for someone for free. _Maybe_ as a short-term | learning thing if a temporary position can be structured | that way legally. | | But, by and large, if you don't care about being paid, | why not just work on your own project. Because there's | pretty much no such thing as a 100% no-BS position | anywhere. | wjdp wrote: | There is a UI problem on GH with forks. (From my limited | experience) most profiles that are full of forks the person | just uses forks like they would stars. No branches or PRs | made. I'd guess, cynically, this is to fill out their | profile. | | On the other hand a profile of meaningful contributions | looks the same on the surface. | jrh206 wrote: | This attitude comes across as a little arrogant, and I'm not sure | whether it's warranted without a host of achievements to back it | up. Nevertheless, I hope the best for the author, who seems to | know what they want. | | I think they would have better success by actively seeking what | they want, though, rather than expecting it to turn up at their | doorstep. | tyrex2017 wrote: | imho this post is pretty much going for what you want! :) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-19 23:01 UTC)