Ask HN: Where do you find low-stress remote programming jobs? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where do you find low-stress remote programming jobs?

4 pointsbluetomcat5 comments

For context, I am in my late 30s and into the eighth year of working a home-based programming job at a fully-remote company. It's a small family-owned European business with a very flat hierarchy. While the growth potential hasn't been great, it has been a very stable and predictable job that has allowed me to build some savings, purchase and furnish a home without using a mortgage, and be flexible with my family. I am based in a relatively low-cost-of-living-area in Eastern Europe, in a medium town with 100k population.

However, I feel like I am stagnating career-wise. I also feel like needing to take a career break for at least 6 months, in order to overcome some mental and physical health issues related to anxiety, and to read some books I've never had the time for. I have enough savings to provide for my family in the next year.

What makes me question leaving my current job is the current state of affairs with the remote job market. The remote job posts on LinkedIn look rather different in comparison to 2017. I don't want to be an "outstanding engineer" in "a fast-moving team" that "disrupts industry X" and "champions best practices". I don't want to be engaged in the "whole product lifecycle" and in optimising the CI/CD pipeline. I have never practised AI/ML, either, and I am not overly excited about the current trend of generative AI.

What I do want is to leverage my 20 years of experience in actual old-fashioned programming. I know C11, Python 3, and have played with C++17 idioms. I know the Linux programming interface quite well. One of my hobby projects is a table-driven, hand-written shift-reduce parser for a toy language. Are there any "boring" remote jobs that would require a similar skillset, and if so, where do you find them?

The tech/programmer job market tightened up over the last few years, and remote jobs got more scarce as companies required their employees to return to the office. Lots of people want to work remotely or from home. Finding any remote job presents challenges. You probably know that.

"Stress" and "boring" don't describe attributes of a job. They describe how a person interprets and reacts to a job. What I find interesting and not stressful may cause someone else to experience stress and boredom. Some jobs and managers impose lots of demands, or create less than ideal work environments, and those conditions may cause more people to experience stress, but the stress still comes from the people reacting to the job that way, not as an inherent property of the job.

You might try freelancing. You can choose your customers, set your own pace, and probably won't have to work on-site. Freelancing can cause frustration and stress too, but in general you have more control over the situation than you would as an employee.

Have you considered approaching your current employer, asking to take a leave, and then coming back in a slightly different role?

Everyone's experience is different, obviously. But when things have been boring that's also meant an organization that lacks ambition. That in turns meant leadership and management with less than stellar understanding of those roles. Talk about a feeling of career stagnation.

They will probably accept a request for unpaid leave, but there isn't a different role I can imagine in that company. We are a small programming team of 10 people managed by a single team manager. The majority of the rest are support people. The rest of the management is family-based. The company has been keeping roughly the same number of employees for more than two decades and is not growth-oriented, but manages to stay relevant in business.

It never hurts to ask. For all you know they've had a role in mind for you but don't want to risk making such a suggestion.

You don't have to threaten: I want this and this or I leave.

The point is, if you're prepared to leave if necessary, you lose nothing by asking.

p.s. Unpaid leave is expected. That said, it could work to your favor in the sense they don't want to lose you.

Low-stress, high-ambition, high-pay. Pick two. Tutoring high school students comes to mind.

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