Ask HN: Do you have a do-nothing job?
If you have a do-nothing job, what are the positives and negatives of it? Any advice on getting a do-nothing job like yours?
Update Jira every day. Be in all the meetings. Know what everyone else is doing. Know the status of what you're responsible over.
At higher ranks, you manage managers. Your whole job is automated, you just have to sign approvals.
When there are enough managers, your job is just to stay up-to-date and to keep the other managers up to date. You argue for weeks on how to shorten the deadline by a week.
In rare cases, you will be asked to do a job - increase resources for your team or extend a deadline. The hard way would be to communicate well. Explain why you need extra resources, back it up with evidence that your team is working hard.
The easy way would be to blame it on another team. The front end team is slow because the API team has bugs. The back end team can't start without approval from the UI director, who is on maternity leave. The UI team just got a change request from the CEO, causing a chain reaction of delays. Sales team is slowed down because the product isn't ready. HR can't get visas to bring in this consultant, because we were all running on agile and didn't realize we needed him next week, not next month.
An advanced trick would be to tag team the blame. You blame this manager, that manager blames you. Some roles fit into this naturally - hardware/software, dev/QA, front end/back end. You can extend a deadline unnecessarily long.
You'll have some weird effects going on, like 2 weeks dev time and 4 months pre-development preparation. But everyone above you is management and understands how difficult the job is.
I used to write the best code :). Now it's meetings, checkin, answer questions, talk to QA and directors, maybe a PR if someone else didn't get it.
It sucks but I guess my job is to do all that dumb stuff so that my team can be 100% productive. They're awesome and don't deserve to have to go to meetings.
It seems to be working though, the team fucking cranks like never before. I do wish I could grab more than like one bug a week.
I hate it. Best way out? Maybe I just need to apply to a new job and take a jump. I hate the banking domain, everything seems pointless to me and adds zero value to society. Feel stuck.
The good thing is I work 9-5 (if that) and can spend my time doing other things. But of course it is difficult to pull yourself up and make something of that free time. I mostly just work out, study human languages, go to concerts.
That said, it sounds like you have a pretty good gig. Might want to start shopping around.
I don't know if I have the skills to freelance/consult at this point, but I'd love to do that while traveling (not hedonistic, but stay in a place for a few months and learn the language, build groups of friends, etc).
I think I'd like to either stay in NYC and work on something meaningful or just make a lot of money, or just go off and do the freelance/consult/build a standard niche marketing product type of online business. At least I'd get the travel/language bug out of my system and have a good story to tell.
I don't want to be a developer even 5 years down the line. For me it is simply to develop this toolset, so that I can better understand how to build solutions for REAL problems (banking doesn't seem real enough to me). Something in the environmental or healthcare field seems interesting to me.
Maintaining outdated, undocumented applications on obsolete and unsupported hardware and software platforms. Everyone here knows how to do a good enough patch job to keep things moving smoothly.
I openly complain a lot about the lack of any dev process - literally people do whatever they want, including copying the entire source tree to make changes - and absence of any tools. The usual response to change is "go for it and show us it will work", but I'm not familiar enough with the software to go off on a rewrite on my own. And honestly if I had that level of skill I'd be a consultant charge 3x what I get paid.
I have sought a different job in the past and ended up here. Part of me feels like I wouldn't cut it at a "real" dev job and I'm not secure enough to risk a cushy job for the adventure. But it does drive me crazy.
p.s. the guy next to me is sleeping in his chair - this is not unusual.
I think the problem lies more in that people are set in their ways and don't want to change. I'm not so hellbent on using hip new tools - like git or an issue tracker - but I push really hard to get people to communicate and interact. Unfortunately, everyone has carved out a niche and there's an understanding to stay out of each others' part of the project.
Which general domain or area are you working in? Is this your first job?
I also have some imposter syndrome about being a "real" dev. I think that's because there's so many ways to go from here. Whereas, for example, if you were a doctor you would basically lock in your area of practice and then put your head down and get it done. For us, you could: build your own product, climb corporate ladder at BigCorp, startup world, freelance, freelance while traveling, consult, be a product manager instead, etc.
The cushy part is tough to give up, but the free hours don't really make up for the existential dilemma that eats at my soul every day... I know right, first world problems.
I've been on some pretty bad teams and management just tells the lead to task them and deal with it. I once was in a meeting with our manager and the whole team minus the sleeper in which he told all of us (the lead and all junior devs) that it is our responsibility to the team to motivate mr. sleepy. Aside from dead weight, he was also rude and not personable. But I would be too if I had to sleep through the day to get a paycheck.
It's not so much imposter syndrome as it is my unwillingless to let go of good money for a sane workplace. I'm fairly confident I could get a job in a reasonable work environment with legit devs, but i would have to cut my salary by 1/3 or 1/4. And getting paid less to do work - even if it makes me happy to feel productive doesn't seem like a wise choice, on paper at least.
What does happen with great regularity is that do-nothing jobs evolve: a capable person is hired to do a productive thing, the need for the thing is obviated, but no one fires the person. This is an emergent condition based on limited information: in a large organization it's impossible to know what everyone is doing, and everyone was hired to do something useful at some point, so the default strategy is to assume usefulness. In the case where a person's work is no longer useful, there is no reason for the employee to acknowledge this fact, and so the do-nothing job often continues (paired with powerful self-delusion).
So how do you get one of these jobs? You don't. They just kind of grow up around you. However, the correct response in this situation is to evolve your role or quit. If you don't and "coast", then you may find yourself unemployable later when the job is (belatedly) eliminated.
I personally don't know what drives people to work for other people... Well, otherwise no one would work for your own business I guess :)
I’m lazy and unmotivated. I have no goals and no plans for the future other than dying before I run out of money or life gets too unbearable.
I have to get up in the morning and make money to get by. May as do as little as I have to.
I've done a few businesses before. It's extremely stressful when it goes bad. My bosses now haven't had a vacation in years. It's easier to fire the boss and get a better one than for the boss to fire a star developer.
When it goes well, you get more money than the people who work for you. Sometimes. With tech, the larger cut often ends up for the people who do the work.
So all things given, if you're an engineer, it's probably better to work for other people. The only reason I see to own your own business is if you don't trust someone else to be in charge.
Absolute return - the downside risk is reduced compared to running your own startup or small business, most of which go out of business in their first few years. And stability.
(I'm an employee and single-member business owner.)
Mortgage lenders (and probably other financial institutions) are generally happier dealing with employees, too. I’m not actually convinced it’s entirely about immediate risk: employees get laid off frequently enough that I don’t think the short-to-mid-term risk difference really justifies the preference. Rather, it’s that working a normal-looking day job is a conformity signal.