I've been getting paid $80k a year for the last 5 years doing no work | Hacker News Reader

I've been getting paid $80k a year for the last 5 years doing no work

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If OP answers the phone and puts out one major fire a year that saves the contract, they are worth paying to sit around all year.

The contract with the client is likely 50x their salary, so paying an employee 1/50th to be ready if something goes wrong is very much worth it.

My job is similar. I am paid x and I exist to ensure a contract worth 140x goes well. And it goes well 99% of the time, so I fix the 1%. There is no work at the company that I could complete, but also completely ignore immediately it if I need to work on the main contract.

It is a double edge sword. The account manager will be so accustomed to not doing work that it might be painful when the time comes to do more work. It is only a matter of time.

this is true. I backpacked around several countries for about 8 months a few years back. Returning to work was...a shock.

Amazing! That's the life.

It's insane to me how things like this can happen in companies, and especially for it to go on for so long. You would expect someone to notice something at some point.

But good for them, they are doing everything right, doing as told "not stir the pot", I hope they can enjoy this situation for a long time!

I worked as an IT administrator, over the years, there was less and less to do... in the end I showed up, and waited for anything to break, or anyone to have a problem... and surfed way too much.

It crushed my soul, and I find I have zero initiative anymore. That was 10 years ago, and I have yet to recover.

I had a similar experience in a previous role (minus the lack of recovery), and I second this: there is a mental/emotional cost to "getting paid to do nothing". I suspect it's similar to why some people feel driven to work even when they've become "financially independent".

If you don't mind sharing, what did you do after that job?

I worked at a job shop making gears for 5 years, until March 2020 when I got Covid and then Long Covid... I've been short of breath since then. I recently learned that my boss described me as "slow, but you never had to check his work, or that he was working"... so there's that. 8)

I'm hoping to make it back into programming, something I did before that.

>I have been getting very threatening DMs from some very angry people threatening to do everything in their power to DOX and report me, so this post will be deleted shortly.

Why are people so angry, over nothing too

I was about to quote and comment on this too. What is wrong with people.

No surprise for government workers. We were raised to get into a government job, doing nothing, but eventually I ended up in a different, more interesting career path. Less fat.

Meanwhile...https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29867290

I wish I was this lucky.

And who the hell gets annual 5% raises?!

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