The arbitrary 8.5-9 hour workday drives me nuts, because a lot of the time, I really only have 3 or 4 hours worth of work to do. I generally work quickly and I value my time. Can I make a decent living doing something that gives me this kind of flexibility?
Was a window washer for years. If you work for yourself the pay can be good… really good, like 6 figures part time good.
If you get routine work from local businesses you can just show up when it’s convenient, do your thing, get paid, and decide if you want to hit another one of your jobs or call it for the day.Great, honest work.
IT or software development.
As someone in the field. I assure you, you do not work just a few hours and then go home. Software development take infinite time and any well run shop will definitely notice if you work a half day by your output vs others. IT is even worse since problems are basically constant.
I guess you can work at badly run shops, but enjoy being laid off and then failing to get a job eventually from having a stale resume.
failing to get a job eventually from having a stale resume.
People have been saying this but I have yet to encounter such issues as a network engineer or sysadmin. I’m going to dodge this recruiting hell others are willing to go through until the day I die. More than 2 rounds of interviews are just HR buffoonery. Expecting expertise in every single branch of a field is nonsense and only accomplishes that applicants lie on their resumes. There are days when everything is running smoothly and all I have to do is sent 3 emails out of home office and there’s nothing wrong with that.
For software engineer resume rot is definitely a thing. Everything has a 5 year timer on it even thr stuff that doesn’t out right die. C# has been around for like 20 years something like that but try to only know about the ecosystem from more than 5 year ago and you’re gonna have a bad time.
I can’t speak on network or sysadmin stuff, but I do know from a coworker friend that they get paid way less are are considered more expendable, so you’re probably right that it’s work that doesn’t change much. Still I’m surprised to hear you say that you have a lot of downtime or maybe I have only worked at trashfires
I’ve been around for a while and there are plenty of IT Jobs that’ll burn you out but there are also super chill positions. My last job change was a downgrade money wise and my boss who I was supposed to replace soon made fun of me for that decision but he missed his daughter growing up because he was working 24/7. She’s an alcoholic now and doesn’t want anything to do with him but “if you want to succeed you have to make sacrifices” he always said. The guy next door to my office literally died in his sleep after being completely stressed out for a year. Heart just stopped. Mid fifties. I quit shortly after. I now only take jobs that are chill as fuck because I’ve learned from their mistakes.
Resume rot and working and to you drop are very different ideas. It’s not worth taking a chill job if it means that you’re unhireable for your next job. There are plenty of chill jobs that grow your resume.
Yeah as long as it’s not a start-up, or you can work from home
If anybody here ever has to work in a startup, MAKE THIS YOUR BIBLE:
https://www.amazon.com/Slicing-Pie-Handbook-Perfectly-Bootstrapped-ebook/dp/B01LZJWFXH
( you can read a sample of the book, on that webpage, which is why I linked it )
& read “Founder’s Dilemmas” and “Disciplined Entrepreneurship”, too ( the last one will quickly inform you if it applies, & if it does apply, then make it your bible, too. )
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You’d be surprised how many jobs just requires you to sit in a chair all day looking busy.
I do my dayjob, in an office with the screen not visible to anyone else, and when there is no work to do I go ahead and do some of my independent work. I look busy as heck all 8 workhours. I get no extra reqests to “help out”, or last minute critical whatever.
I make 2.5-3x my job salary.fiverr, taskrabbit
You’re setting yourself up for failure through. if you work for 3-4 hours, they’re only going to pay for for 3-4.
Being there for 8 with only 3-4 hours done gets you paid for 8 with being available for another 8.
You’re better off finding a place that is understaffed and can keep you busy for 8.
Historically, I’ve used the idle time to learn new skills.
delivery driver/postal carrier? you are given a route and do it. it might take more or less than 8 hours etc, but you aren’t sitting around killing time until it’s time to go home
Postal carrier is BRUTAL. Mandatory overtime like crazy. You’ll never see your family.
UPS is preparing to strike because the job has so much mandatory overtime and other pressure for not enough pay.
Nope, I even had one of those it was in maintenance. I had a set list of daily, weekly, monthly tasks , as well as w/e can up in between those, and on call certain days on a rotation with the other guy. As soon as our work was complete we could clock off and just go onto call frte remainder of our shift instead of mill around doing nothing waiting for a call. But with weekly and monthly routine maintenance tasks to do it was usually only a few days a week that we could knock off early and just be available if needed.
Then all of a sudden the manager got all whiny, “I have to be here mywhole shift , why don’t you guys” blah blah blah. Fucking cry baby.
Anyway I refused to follow their orders of staying till the end of my shift until I eventually was fired. Because I was following the shift I was hired to do, and given no valid reason of why the shift needed to change, other than some butthurt sack of shit.
So the tl:Dr of that is it might start that way but eventually some piss baby is going to get it changed on you.
Damn near every workplace becomes a little tyranny run by a petty person who flexes their power for no reason other than to justify their existence.
We all need unions.
lmao…
That is why self employment is what we all need, not unions!
It is astonishing how fundamentally-differently people think, when they’re part of a herd/corporation/institution/union, vs when they’re the beginning-middle-and-end of the whole chain-of-command.
The difference between mgt-vs-workers-and-workers-against-mgt outfits vs worker-owned-business is astonishing, from what I’ve read & seen.
I’d make divorce-of-accountability-and-responsibility-from-authority illegal, forcing all shops to be worker-owned.
YOU make the decision, & YOU are responsible, and YOU eat the long-term consequences: it makes for distinctly-different decisions!
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Get into a trade, and start your own business maybe? Like carpentry etc. You gotta learn and it’s a life long process since every job is different, but I’ve gained some much needed autonomy this way. The job is done when you are done, and that’s when you get paid.
It’s not for everyone, and takes some capitol and experience so that’s a fairly large barrier to do this, but after 16 years I’ve finally gotten some much needed freedom.
“Is there a job that will pay me a full wage without requiring me to sit at a desk all day because I’m ‘supposed to’?”
“Yeah, just invest 16 years in learning a trade and building a business, you can totally work 4 hour days.”
What is with the comments here? Did you even read the post?
There are different categories of freedom.
Some people feel need to be at a desk, others feel need for fresh air daily.
Some prefer salary, others prefer independent-contractor.
Life’s certainly longer than this-quarter, so why not consider investing in long term solutions?
As the internet memes point-out:
“if you’re going to live to be 30 anyways, why not be 30 and a doctor and have your life set from then on?”
( something like that, some mom got her daughter to earn her MD, on this logic, & good for her, though I’d not want to be in medical-culture … ever, actually … family was.
I’d prefer the trades, now. )
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