I don't want to work very hard

[flaneur]

I've been a professional developer about ten years now and I don't want to do it any more. I don't mean developing, I love coding. I mean work.

At every workplace (big to small, profit and non-, startup to hegemony), I'm enthusiastic the first couple weeks but inevitably slide to keeping up appearances with 2-6 hours of actual work per week. Sometimes I like coworkers and projects, sometimes I haven't. In any case, after a year or so I'm completely frustrated and I leave, to happily live off savings for a few months. Yeah, the million-dollar question from 'Office Space', find a way to make a career of whatever you'd do if you didn't have to have a career. It's possible, but it's the "career" part I hate. I fail to understand the Protestant Work Ethic. I don't see any reward in work, just lost time.

I've studied history some, things are great in America: abundant food, clean water, safe streets, no civil strife, no wars (yes, two occupations), effective medicine, efficient sanitation. It's not utopia, but there's no need to bust my ass to 'change the world'. The last 50 years are some of the best in history and the good times will likely keep rolling, so why waste them? Any if they're going to stop, why waste them?

Does anyone else feel like this?

I'm winding down on the best job I've ever had, two years at a small non-profit. It's taken longer, but I'm just as fed up with working. My plan is to take the money I've saved up and start a business. I think I've found a niche with a need, and if I can put enough in my pocket that I can buy insured and very low-risk securities to quietly live off a trickle of interest.

I've already done all the lifehack stuff, so I don't own or want to own much. I want my time, all of my time, to pursue my hobbies and relationships with friends and family. Consulting doesn't work, I'd have to charge hundreds per hour to work as little as I'd like, and that's before the client management/sales overhead. I've read 4 Hour Work Week and found the nuggets of good info in the fog of bad writing and hyperbole, but it basically comes down to becoming a manager. And if I was OK pushing pills I'd probably go hang out on the Digital Point forums to pick up some shady deals, but I have too much of a conscience.

I know it's not the PG startup plan, where you work like hell for a few years to make something people want. I just want to make a bankroll and get out. I'm not sure why I'm posting, except that hanging out here and reading about startups has made me think it's possible to break my frustrating cycle of work, and I'm curious to hear what folks think.

[BigCanOfTuna]

"The thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make practical everyday life more refined, with a bleak capital gain as the goal, was unbearable to me. - Einstein

I think most people on HN could relate to this quote. Like it or not, as professional developers, we rarely create, but simply refine. It was fun at the start of my career, but now my professional life seems rather unimaginative.

[kqr2]

Great quote.

http://books.google.com/books?id=dJMpQagbz_gC&pg=PA31...

The pre and postamble to that quote is particularly apropos:

I was originally supposed to become an engineer but the thought of having to expend...was unbearable to me. Thinking for its own sake, like music!

[nihilocrat]

I think we could learn a lot by interacting with people completely outside of our industry who you know are not doing the work for the money.

[bprater]

Wow, I've never heard that quote! I love it!

[illumen]

"Instead I decided to work on weapons that can kill LOTS of people... fuck those guys who didn't get me in school." -- Bert.

[GrandMasterBirt]

At some point though we start to create problems for ourselves. It depends on the job. Some jobs let your creativity go wild by pushing your limits and mental capabilities. Sometimes they don't and they feel stale and not moving anywhere.

The stale jobs (and I see this) cause good thinkers to start thinking up big problems to solve. They don't like to be bored with monkey work (coding where no amazing creativity is necessary).

My last job pushed my capabilities to their limits. However my current one does not. And right now I feel like I am not learning anything, not getting better (getting worse if anything), but I try to learn from anything I can. Eventually if this job does not pick up I will be forced to leave not due to bad people, but due to boredom.

Last job I went on google news, hacker news, the daily wtf when I had down time. Here I do it because its the only way to keep sane. Damn you economic recession!

In any case next interview ask the question: "I like a challenge and chance to improve myself in things I am good or bad at and feel that my job should be something that forces me to become better than I am today. Do you think this position will challenge my abilities to their limit, and I don't mean can I do a 10 day project in 5?"

[zupatol]

Have you tried working part-time?

I'm not sure this would help, because I don't really understand how you can love coding and hate working at the same time. Here is what I do:

I have an arrangement with my employer that I will not work full-time for more than 9 months straight. After 9 months I have a 6 months break. The arrangement is tacit, it's not in a contract, but it has been working for the last 3 years. It took me one year to find such a job. I turned down another job where I could have worked 3 days a week, because they wanted me to first work full-time for 1 year.

Work doesn't seem to turn me off as much as you, but then I only worked full-time for one year, the year my first IT employer trained me as a developer. I then worked 4 days a week and eventually quit because they wouldn't let me work 3 days.

It's not that I don't like work, it's just that my extremely time-consuming hobby is more important to me. One obvious downside is that I have less professional opportunities, so if I worked more, my job might be more interesting.

I am not sure I could afford this, or even have the courage to try it, if I hadn't also inherited some money. On the other hand I haven't tried the lifehack stuff.

I am in Switzerland, a country where unemployment tends to be low, but where working part-time as a developer is uncommon enough for lots of people to think it can't be done.

[wingo]

I also work something similar (three days a week). I recommend it highly. This year has been one of the most productive of my life.

This quote is nice:

"Perhaps I am more than usually jealous of my freedom. I feel that my connections with and obligations to society are at present very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which I am serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful, and only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him. But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, neglecting my peculiar calling, there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage."

H. Thoreau 10 January, 1851

More here: http://wingolog.org/archives/2007/12/18/in-which-our-protago...

[flaneur]

Huh. Somehow it had not occurred to me to try to make this cycle explicit. That's a really interesting idea, thank you.

[ecuzzillo]

What's the hobby?

[ilamont]

Several quotes came to mind when reading this:

"If you win the rat race, you're still a rat." - Anna Quindlen, Harvard Commencement speech

"No man on his deathbed ever said, 'I wish I had spent more time at the office.'" - The late Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas, speaking at another Harvard Commencement

There's another quote that also springs to mind, but I can't remember who said it. It is "time is the ultimate luxury." I think of this more often as the years go by and more responsibilities land on my plate, and my personal and family time suffer. I like what I do, but there are real sacrifices that come with leading a career-driven life.

[odimrof]

> "No man on his deathbed ever said, 'I wish I had spent more time at the office.'" - The late Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas, speaking at another Harvard Commencement

No, but I bet a lot of men have said, at least to themselves if not out loud, "I wish I'd had sex with a lot more gorgeous women." cf. Little Miss Sunshine.

Spending more time at the office is a fairly reliable way of upping your odds when you're not at the office.

[sidsavara]

Dude, I could have written your post (with some minor changes) I feel the same way quite often.

I think it happens after you have a certain level of expertise at your job - you're not really learning anymore, you're just maintaining, putting in new features, etc. I don't job hop TOO often, but I have worked on average 2 years per job. Part of that also is geographic as well as career considerations, but it was always about the right time to leave.

I too am into Lifehacking, loved the 4HWW etc. So I think I come from a similar perspective. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to the question, or I would not be working at my current position. It is good, and the money is good, people are awesome, etc - but it definitely feels like "work."

I think the bottom line is if your hobby can't make you money, you need to make money somewhere, somehow, to trade for the things you need (food, shelter, etc). Some of this can come from the government, depending on your personal standard of living that you are accustomed to.

In my case, I am happy to give up a portion of my life for a relatively easy, enjoyable job so that I can live comfortably, eat well, etc.

In the long run, I would definitely prefer to not trade my hours for cash programming, and would prefer a website (or large conglomerate of websites) that provided passive income, but I am not there yet.

If you would like to work together on something, you can contact me sid [at] sidsavara [dot] com.

[flaneur]

Ah, I follow your blog. Tried out TimeSvr after your review. I'm going to ponder my options for a few weeks. I may be in touch, but thanks for extending an invitation in any case.

[felixc]

As much as I sympathize with your sentiment, I'd just like to point out that the real benefit of a larger-than-necessary paycheque is being able to actually save money for when you are too old or technically outdated to continue working.

It's certainly enjoyable to switch on and off from work and live off savings, but then you eventually get to the point where you can't find a job to switch back on to, and your savings are all gone...

[yason]

Well, for all that matters, I could just die today and I'd be pretty damn unhappy if, before it's my time, I hadn't had a life that's true to myself.

Saving for the future conflicts in part with the desire to live a full life today.

Taking sensible care of your money is wise, spending a bit less than you make is wise. Trying to get lots and lots of money and giving way too much to your work now in hope that you can then, at some time later, retire and finally start living for real is an illusion. Because you never know what's in the future and you never will.

If you haven't learned how to live and let go before you retire, you sure don't know how to do that when you actually do retire -- in fact, you're going to spend most of your remaining days learning just that. Most people seem to fail in that, because transitioning from a "drone" to live a full life is hard. Really, really hard.

Living now doesn't mean careless, extravagant spending and ending up broke. But all the work you've put into your savings needs to be periodically extracted out and enjoyed by yourself because that's what life is.

You can never control life to the extent that you could be certain you won't run out of money, even if you try. (Well, one way would be to kill yourself as soon as you have lots of money -- then the money and security has outlasted your own life.)

I've learned that the only thing you can do is force yourself to trust that you will always get enough money somehow, somewhere, for everything you really need in your life at the time. If you try to think something else, it's an illusion. Life is at stake in many ways, all the time, there are endless ways it could change or end each day and each hour. And you won't have a say about it should something happen.

You can only trust that your life finds its own way and that's all. The rest you can choose to learn to enjoy.

[mhartl]

when you are too old or technically outdated to continue working

I'd be willing to bet that, for the current generation at least, that will never happen. (But I still max out my retirement account, just to be safe. :-)

[peakok]

I might be downmodded to hell with this message, but whatever... I feel about the same.

Do you have some sort of nobility in your ancestorship (or in the army) ? I noted that this feeling would be more frequent among descendants of aristocrats. During the Aristocraty paradigm, work was despised more than anything else. We are now living in a bourgeois world, where work is sanctified as the alpha and omega.

I don't like work. The one thing I dislike more than work, are the people who try to make me feel guilty for it. Usually, these are the same people who do not know how to enjoy life outside their work. They are hypocrites, because work is their escape route from boredom rather than a burden, and the truth is that if you allowed them to quit, they wouldn't. Or not for long. Because the true burden to them is exactly doing nothing special. They don't understand people can be different and actually enjoys spending time doing nothing special. As your nickname suggests it, we have a word in french for the vertuous laziness : flanerie. While these people find it intolerable when they don't work, we are pretty much the opposite. The zeitgeist is certainly on their side for now.

I have a true respect for hard work, but no admiration. I am deeply unimpressed by success stories and rich people who worked hard to climb to the top of the ladder. This kind of satisfation is foreign to me. I don't ask for your admiration, only for the respect of who I am whatever might be my activity and my aspirations. I doubt I'll buy all your products, but I won't harm your family or ask for your money, and I despise the nanny state as much as you probably are.

Go in peace, my brother ;)

[bufferout]

Look, I appreciate your candor and all but I can't help but think if I was your coworker then I'd be pissed at having to carry your sorry arse.

Shit or get off the pot.

[ghshephard]

Difficult to tell. Our most highly respected individual contributor in our department comes in at 11:00, leaves at 5:00, and basically works on whatever catches his fancy whenever he pleases (Which, thankfully, usually results in a reduction in labor for our and other departments each time he releases some new code/product)

When particular tasks are placed on his plate - he is so overwhelmingly competent, that he simply nails them and moves onto the next task. The goal is to get _very_ good at your job so you do _less_ work.

And he is easily the most popular member of the team. People love him to pieces and I've never heard anyone suggest he isn't carrying twice the load of everyone else.

As I tell my team - Our Goal in life is to become so proficient at our jobs that we only need to come into work for an hour a day. If we develop our level of excellence, or ability to automate, and our ability to deliver to that level, I'm more than happy to have them in the office for as little time as is required to complete the tasks of their position. (presuming that the median person with those responsibilities would take 40 hours a week, of course)

As it turns out, with the exception of Director Level employees, the most highly paid _contractor_ in our company works for precisely 2 hours, from 9:00 - 11:00, each day. They are available 24x7 for assistance, but, if they do their job properly, they rarely are called in for help.

That is where I think we want to be. That should be our goal. Spend our time with family, in nature, pursuing those objectives which bring us inner happiness.

[flaneur]

Fair enough. For what it's worth, I've never received a negative performance review or been told I was underachieving. Maybe that sounds like a "Ooh, I'm a 10x rock star!" boast, but I think it more likely my work environments have been undemanding.

[strlen]

Have you considered that it's the lack of challenge and the fact you aren't actually working much that's the issue? Have you tried to embrace a project that involved a skill set that you didn't have?

On the issue of starting your own business:

There's a reason entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship: there is risk involved. It may work, or it may not. You may build something people want and sell it, cashing out - or you may fail or may only be able to get it into a state where it brings profit - but not into a state where you can walk away from it, wealthy. You can then move on and do something else (with higher chance of success) but now that's eight years of working longer hours vs. four and so on.

That's not to say you shouldn't start a business (I certainly want to start my own at one point or another), you just can't hope that it will magically solve your problems.

I've been reading Thoreau's Walden, where he mentions a Native American basket salesman who would argue when selling his baskets: "if you don't buy my basket, my people will starve"; Thoreau then argued that it isn't "how to better sell a basket" that the salesman should worry about but how to avoid relying on selling baskets not to starve.

Likewise, instead of thinking "how can I generate passive income for myself so I don't have to work" start thinking "how can I structure my work/life that I don't need a passive income to be happy and productive" (it could be reducing your living standards down to the basics where only consulting/part-time work is needed, it could be finding an area in which you're more excited to work - and if you can't find a job in that area, create one for yourself).

[webwright]

"I think I've found a niche with a need, and if I can put enough in my pocket that I can buy insured and very low-risk securities to quietly live off a trickle of interest."

Markets are pretty efficient. It's pretty unlikely that you've found a niche where you can make a good living without any work. If you do, it won't be long before someone who wants to work hard comes around and blows your business out of the water. But if you hit it right, you might be able to make a pile of cash before it happens.

It's the startup equivalent of stock market timing, and I imagine you have about as good a chance of success.

[ggrot]

Job markets are not as efficient as real markets where you buy and sell things because jobs are not liquid. If I find a job paying $50/hour and someone else is working doing the same job earning $30/hour, I can't exactly make any profit arbitraging the market to efficiency.

For a pretty small investment in time and money, most grocery store cashiers could learn to become plumbers. Plumbing routinely pays 4x a grocery store cashier, but it is harder/nastier work and often deals with fecal matter.

[thomasmallen]

Here's what you do:

1. Work your ass off to have good savings if you don't already. This may take a few years.

2. Make sure that there are people in the US who would like to work with you as an independent contractor so that you know you can make a buck when necessary.

3. Move to a foreign country with an advantageous exchange rate (Argentina comes to mind).

4. Buy some property in a place you like and relax! Your money will go very far in such a place.

Living in the US and not working are fairly incompatible unless you're loaded.

[kareemm]

i ended up following this model exactly, tho haven't bought property yet. i am writing this from buenos aires and am heading to cape town on sunday for 3w, then india.

i was a developer at a couple of big media companies for 4y. ended up leaving the last one to start my own company. left that 7m ago to travel because i was burned out. this summer i spent 4m consulting in vancouver, where i was able to spend time with a lot of great friends who i hadn't seen in years. that was amazingly recharging.

left vancouver in oct to come to buenos aires. i spent 4-5 weeks of hanging out in cafes, reading, visiting antarctica, hiking in nature, and experimenting with ideas in an inspiring city. being away from the distractions of everyday life was helpful to evaluate the best direction for pursuing my calling (not a job, or a career - more here: http://is.gd/b7h8). it has been friggin amazing and i'm totally recharged.

you know that fire in your belly that causes you to be obsessed with what you're building? i haven't had that feeling in ages, but i've got it now. i was lying awake in bed until 430a yesterday thinking about a feature, so i said screw it - i got up and implemented it and was up until 630a. can't even remember the last time i even considered that.

i guess my point is that you can definitely get that fire back. my first thought when reading your post was that you need to take time to chill and figure out what your calling is. it won't feel like work when you do.

[mcdowall]

#4

This site comes to mind... http://www.privateislandsonline.com/

Just make sure theres no local pirates!

[Prrometheus]

>I just want to make a bankroll and get out.

Life is hard, man. It's easy to find a way to waste your time and get by. But there is no easy way to make a bankroll and get out. To make enough to live off of for the rest of your life, you need to provide as much value to the marketplace in a short period of time as an average man does over the course of his whole life. You think that's easy?

[nora]

Marry a doctor or lawyer.

[mattmaroon]

Sugarmomma FTW. I married a teacher though, so startup it is. At least I get free health insurance.

[epi0Bauqu]

And take care of the kids.

[GrandMasterBirt]

I did... in training :)

However be careful, a smart person with nothing to do is a very unhappy person.

[noodle]

> Does anyone else feel like this?

yes. if only there were an easy answer.

i think the best one is to create a good product for which there is a need, not necessarily an innovative one, and set it up to autopilot mode similar to what was discussed in the 4HWW. except more tech-oriented. as an example, you don't need many customers to pay you for shared hosting to have a decent level of income.

if you don't have much in the way of personal wants/needs, it isn't really that tough to get by in the 20k/yr range.

unfortunately for me, some of my hobbies are expensive, so i have to work a real job. for now, at least.

[flaneur]

Yeah, my current expenses are a little under 20k/y. It's how I affored the idleness between jobs, and I've stretched it as long as I can.

[tarkin2]

I am starting out in the development world. I simply want a job that will push me to the point where I'm confident with my programming and design skills. After that I want to freelance, so as to give me more time to concentrate on the mountain of things that interest me. Or work for two years, save up money, then don't work for 6 months to a year (my living costs and needs are very low) so, again, I can work on the mountain of things that interest me.

Ultimately I have decided I will to work to live, and hopefully not work too much so I have to some time to live. Even if I succeed at creating a startup it will only be a means to a financial end. I'd quite like to live like a victorian gentleman, but filling my days with cognitive pursuits instead of prancing around London.

[jmtame]

I want to say that you have a larger calling in life to do something bigger than what you're doing now.

[diN0bot]

snap

[peregrine]

I agree and disagree. People here will crucify you for what your saying but it sounds like your exactly like me. I'm not even out of school yet and I've been working part time developer during the year and full time during summer/breaks(pay the bills). Anyways I'm already starting to feel bored and distracted.

May I suggest going to school? Getting a phd and then become a professor and sit around most days grading papers and lecturing. Seems like the kind of lifestyle you'd like.

[etal]

Being a professor before tenure does involve a fair amount of work. Lecturing, less so, and just being an indefinitely ABD grad student is actually fairly sustainable.

Heavy administrative overhead affects people differently, though.

[maximilian]

Grading is the worst job I can think of. It alone steers me away from most teaching positions.

(shudder) I have to grade finals tomorrow. egh.

[quantumhobbit]

Grad School can induce quite a bit of burnout as well.

[yason]

I feel mostly the same way. I love coding but I don't like working, nor a career, nor having a job. I've been working part-time for a couple of years now which helps a little. I currently do 4-5 hours a day in the average, and whenever I get excess money I take a week or two of unpaid time off.

I try to maximise the part I really love, coding in a flow and creating and making stuff (which counts to most of the "productivity" anyway), and minimise the rest of the stuff that would just get me more entangled and drowned in work.

I spend little and I live a small life, giving me more leeway -- something I've been very grateful for to myself. But I'm still not entirely happy because I can see the potential in myself to do something that's great in terms of where I feel I should be going in life.

I've considered starting a company as well because I might find a way of working that gives me what I think I want. Something small, I intend to make a small living, not a fortune -- given the amount of money associated with programming and IT services, I might be able to do it with less hours.

I think that time is the wealth that separates the rich life from the poor life. And you don't have to be rich to live a rich life. Few people can afford time for their life these days.

[tptacek]

Yes. What you're looking for is a job in enterprise IT.

[flaneur]

I haven't been enterprise IT, but I have been an enterprise dev. That was the place I got away with 2h per week.

The problem is that not all my hobbies are digital, so I couldn't pursue them while 'at work'. And I just grew to resent the 38h sitting and 15h commuting per week.

[drawkbox]

With the 38 hours free at work... You really shouldn't waste these valuable hours. Ideally you have a job that challenges you enough to fill your time... but in any case. < < <<USE THAT TIME>> > >

- Write a book about a cube dweller in your position that on lunches and in down time he is saving the world with a team all controlled from his work PC where he is doing "nothing". Apparently that might be an untapped market judging by the response here.

- Find a problem at work, solve it, sell that.

- Create a community or site/product for one of your hobbies, even it is is knitting.

- ???

Morale of the story is, find a way to build something of value with this time. That something might help you, your like minded peeps, or even your company (although you might have to get reinforcement externally before you sell anything internally, I find this route works best).

Just do it son! And don't feel too bad if you try to contribute and it is knocked down. Have everything as dual purpose for your own and possibly your company's good. But make sure it has some of your own in it.

You have the power to create value.

[coliveira]

You have to understand that, short of winning the lottery, you need to do some work to make money. Since you hate any work, you should work only at something that pays extremely well to justify the hassle. Maybe Wall Street (if it ever recovers) would be an option. Or start an MBA.

Then, once you get the job that pays a lot, save money like crazy for a few years.

You can also start a startup, but the problem there is that there is no guarantee of making any money. You can get rich and quit work, as pg, but otherwise you need to start again. And if you don't like work, this is the worst scenario.