Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work(truzzi.me)

507 points by ftruzzi 5 years ago | 408 comments

cletus 5 years ago |

So there are two issues with this:

1. If I were looking to hire someone and read this, I would immediately be turned off. Why? Because part of being an engineer (or any employee really) is doing a bunch of stuff people don't enjoy doing. This includes:

- Writing documentation

- Writing tests

- Fixing bugs

- Talking to partners about a change/launch

- Talking to lawyers

- etc

So I would be wondering: if you're signaling you don't want to do those things, that means someone else will need to do all that for your code, which is not great for them and tends to be much worse.

Like you're basically saying you want to cherrypick the parts you enjoy and not give a damn about anything else. You might say you're only costing $1/hour but the risk of a bad engineer can mean you're still expensive or a loss.

2. You don't factor in the time cost of me or my team in onboarding you, dealing with you, dealing with your code and so on. That's a big part of the filtering in hiring. People are deciding if they can justify that time investment and the opportunity cost involved.

wpietri 5 years ago | |

I don't read this as a signal he won't do the work. From his talk about the stuff he enjoys doing, I don't doubt it includes things that feel work-like. He just wants the work to be meaningful. That seems reasonable to me, and that's how I am. As long as there's some point to the work, I'm happy to do the tedious stuff all day long.

I recently user-tested a job posting for a high-meaning job. [1] Some people were very excited by the meaning, and were strongly motivated to apply. Others cared very little or not at all about the purpose; they worked because they wanted money for other things. Both are perfectly valid ways to approach work, I think, but I would handle each kind of employee differently.

[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yNITCTtVh5qHPof12cSf5PWh...

ftruzzi 5 years ago | | |

Thank you.

Writing tests and documentation or diving deep into debugging hard issues is what I consider part of "good work" (and that I have also enjoyed doing), and I can't wait to do good work. It just has to be compatible with the rest of life. It's mostly the way we work that has to change rather than the content of the work.

pinky1417 5 years ago | | |

Right. The key passage is under rule 1 from the article: “You will give me interesting or meaningful work.”

First, the author says interesting OR meaningful work. So even if it’s true that the developer won’t be interested in, say, writing documentation for a legacy steel manufacturer, this developer might be happy to do so for a good non-profit.

Second, the author never said documentation and the like weren’t interesting. Perhaps that’s true, but Francesco merely wrote that he prefers Python over PHP and had a few industries he thought were interesting.

We all have skills and industries were interested/not interested in. And I think we and Francesco generally recognize some unpleasant work must be done in any field.

fsckboy 5 years ago | | |

> He just wants the work to be meaningful.

well, he just slid down to "more unreasonable" with that clarification :) I can understand a "great coder doesn't want to write documentation" broadcast message, but if you want meaningful work to your standards, it's really on you to find the companies doing it and apply to them.

I would extend the common good advice to employees to this applicant: Offer to your manager solutions to problems, rather than just complaining about problems; managers have enough headaches, what they ache for are helpful employees; this also applies to hiring managers, so find a hiring manager who will want you, don't make him find you.

travisjungroth 5 years ago | |

Those aren't "issues" with his post. They're just reasons that you would hypothetically (you're not even hiring someone) be a bad match. That's it. Doesn't mean you're bad, doesn't mean he's bad, doesn't mean his post needs changing, doesn't mean your company needs changing. None of that. He advertised himself honestly and it's clear it would be a bad fit.

If your concerns are onboarding process and talking to lawyers, you would be absolutely out of your mind to hire someone who says "I'll work on stuff that pleases me when I feel like it for little money. And no tech screens, please!".

A better match is an owner-run tiny software company. "We have an open source Python client library. It needs type hints. Sound interesting? Here's a link to the repo and some docs. I'll give you $5/hr in ETH up to $100 for whatever you do by the end of Friday." Then on Friday afternoon you maybe have some type hints and pay out up to $100.

I'm picking on your comment in particular, but it's crazy to me how much criticism this guy is getting. He wants to try something new, and so many people are telling him what he should be doing, or why being on the other side of this trade is so terrible. Let's just let them make up their own minds. Let's stop trying to cram each other into little boxes.

tartoran 5 years ago | | |

> Those aren't "issues" with his post. They're just reasons that you would hypothetically (you're not even hiring someone) be a bad match. That's it. Doesn't mean you're bad, doesn't mean he's bad, doesn't mean his post needs changing, doesn't mean your company needs changing. None of that. He advertised himself honestly and it's clear it would be a bad fit.

Totally. If I retired early I'd still want to work on something. I was thinking the other day what I'd like my next job to be and it involves taking a pay cut, working on something meaningful where I can explore new things, work at my own pace (not exactly a lesser workload but when I want to), and having nothing to do with nonsense corporate structure and culture. Yes, startups are dogmatic in their own ways and would avoid those. Why am I still taking jobs like this from time to time? Because I didn't get there, I can't afford the pay cut yet. Wish me luck.

fnord77 5 years ago | |

I suspect dealing with this type of person would become a huge issue. This work request hints at overblown entitlement. I've seen these types in action, the relationship between this worker and the manager/other teammates can turn abusive.

Also imagine the impact on morale of the other teammates when some primadonna gets the cherry picked work and everyone else gets the drudgery. Pay or not.

Run.

manquer 5 years ago | | |

As opposed to the overblown entitlement seen from managers and leadership?

Typically this kind of setup works best when working independently. However in my experience doing similar setup in tech and other industries, many team mates have been grateful to work and learn from someone who otherwise would not work in their org or team.

It works other way around too, I would happily work in a team for much less pay if I can work with people I can learn from even if they do all the cool stuff.

Also I think he meant what kind of project he will work in not what all he will do in that project. Even if he did mean it that way, it is no different than in many regular roles where Senior ICs anyway pick and choose work they wan and junior members get the grunt work .

regularemployee 5 years ago | |

> is doing a bunch of stuff people don't enjoy

I enjoy writing documentation and writing tests. To me, writing documentation is like teaching others about the awesome product / features we have built, and also the different technical tradeoff decisions we had to make.

I can't grasp the mindset where an engineer builds something really cool that they are proud of, but don't enjoy talking about it / teaching people how to use it.

jrockway 5 years ago | | |

Explaining how you did the thing that you already did cuts into the time for building the next thing. The difficulty that people wrestle with isn't whether or not documenting something is valuable, but rather whether documenting that thing should cut into their sleep, recreational activity, or The Next Thing.

manquer 5 years ago | | |

I actually like writing tests and documentation however i end up hating doing it for many reasons

- If I am able to focus on code, documentation or tests, I like doing it. Writing tests is sometimes lot more challenging than writing the code it tests. However context switching to difficult. I hate having to switch between the three

- The pressures of delivery makes it quite difficult to allocate meaningful time for either without cutting into scope.

- If your team does not value both to either read docs or maintain tests it become frustrating to be the only person doing it. If no one values it it can be demotivating.

- I have also seen teams either just focus on arbitary metrics like code coverage but not quality of tests or look at metrics like comment coverage/ number of lines of documentation, not whether docs are useful, how quickly someone is picking up by reading the spec, does it reduce bugs etc, quality and simplicity of language etc.

- It is a constant battle to keep both in up sync since i find it difficult to write code, tests and spec together. Once or twice a month I spend few days in trying to update both, which annoys me as they are out of date and I can only spend so much time on them.

fnord77 5 years ago | | |

it's almost like a form of solipsistic narcissism (the way The Last Psychiatrist describes it). Nobody else exists except as a supporting role. Why should they have to explain their genius work to anyone...

teachingassist 5 years ago | |

I agree the author hasn't emphasised those things. If I was in need of those things, I might not automatically engage with the author.

But, you've given a list of what you don't like doing - that isn't a universal list.

Given that the author asks to be deeply involved in a human-centred project, it is not obvious to me that they don't like or are not prepared to do these things.

cletus 5 years ago | | |

The specific list of things doesn't matter. It'll vary from person to person and project to project. The point is, there'll always be something.

My point is that if you're signaling from the outset that you want to cherrypick those things then I, as your employer, don't actually know what you will or won't do. I don't know if you'll follow up on tricky-to-reproduce bugs (as an example) because that's "boring".

That's just creating work and uncertainty in dealing with those issues.

throwawayboise 5 years ago | |

Exactly. I hire you (and pay you) to do what I need to be done, not what you want to do. Of course we both look for a situation where there is a lot of overlap in these things, because that means you are a good match for the job I am offering. But it will never be 100%.

DiggyJohnson 5 years ago | | |

How does the experience of a consultant fit into this evaluation?

spartanliving4u 5 years ago | |

Exactly. Most developers do not seem to understand the cost of onboarding, dealing with them, dealing with their code and so on

patcon 5 years ago | |

I feel you've misunderstood his point. The stuff you (or anyone) perhaps doesn't like is stuff that someone else LOVES. I absolutely love writing docs and tests and fixing bugs, and would be willing to get paid less to work on public code that allowed me to spend what I consider the right amount of time tending to those things :)

Putting this call-for-employers out there signals (at least to me) that he can be a a really good deal if the employer takes it to task to find his complement, instead of creating a scenario where the employer gets to delegate it all wholesale to one person, regardless of their goals for growth and enjoyment. It's upstreaming the concern, and just getting to work on the things he loves at a pay cut for the inconvenience of matchmaking

cranium 5 years ago | |

I don't disagree with your first point but I think much depends on a person work ethic and what it means to them to do a good job. An engineer worth their salt would understand that success is not only writing the fun bits but also: the tests to make sure everything works as intended, documentation for their failing memory and having other contribute, bug fixes because we can't have those laying around, ...

As is, the signal is too weak to know if the person just wants a toy to play with (I doubt) or if they are ready for the full package because they understand it's how it should be done. Definitively a point to check thoroughly before hiring – but it would be the same for other candidates, right ?

mlazos 5 years ago | |

This is such a bad faith argument that’s putting words in the author’s mouth. We all just want to be motivated to come to work everyday and be working on a product that we find interesting. I hope everyone understands everything can’t be a toy project (I think people do understand this) and even if something is interesting or meaningful it will still involve some level of “bullshit work” - the stuff you’ve listed. Every job has a bullshit to fun ratio and I think the author wants a fun part that he’s interested in and a ratio that’s acceptable. Nobody expects that ratio to be zero.

brightball 5 years ago | |

I had a developer on my team at my last company who was like this. Avoid at all cost.

jascii 5 years ago | | |

What do you mean by "like this" and why in particular should that be avoided at all cost?

OJFord 5 years ago | |

I'm reading your comment before TFA, but in doing so my reaction is Uh what? Interesting can include docs, tests, bugs, partners, lawyers - it's whatever the topic is that all that is the work around. Again, I haven't yet read TFA but I don't tend to think that people seeking 'interesting work' are looking (and I don't personally want) to just crank out code.

In fact, can't we go further? Is there anything interesting about it if you can just crank it out?

The interesting work in my recent memory has been about reading, learning, thinking; not cranking.

dragonwriter 5 years ago | |

> If I were looking to hire someone and read this, I would immediately be turned off. Why? Because part of being an engineer (or any employee really) is doing a bunch of stuff people don't enjoy doing. This includes:

[...list of things that, as an engineer, I enjoy all of, as long as I’m engaged with the project, and none of which conflict necessarily with OPs requirements...]

Sounds like you just read your own stereotype of engineers ans what they like into that.

> You don't factor in the time cost of me or my team in onboarding you, dealing with you, dealing with your code and so on.

Well, no, nor does he factor in the potential value of his work on the other side, either. He offers to do an interview and let you, as the hiring party, factor those things in by setting a pay scale, for which the only up-front limits he proposes is that the hourly rate must be positive. Typically, that’s how factoring in value and overhead works in hiring, the hiring party, not the hired party figures them in and decides if and at what rate to make an offer.

icedchai 5 years ago | |

Yep. I've been in tech for 20+ years, everything from a junior engineer to CTO and founder of a small company. A lot of the work is pure drudgery. I'd say 10% to 15% is "interesting." Usually that doesn't last for long.

sanderjd 5 years ago | |

The way I would sum this up is that it seems like this person thinks of their code as an asset rather than a liability. I think of code the opposite way around. It's not a perfect analogy, because of course the functionality of the code - along with all the documentation and processes to maintain it - is an asset, but the code itself is not the thing, it's just the thing that gets you to the thing.

emrah 5 years ago | |

Writing just tests is not ideal, but writing tests in general can be very challenging and interesting given that you need to understand what the code under test does and figure out (edge)cases to exercise/break it.

actinium226 5 years ago | | |

This is why you write the tests first!

MichaelGlass 5 years ago | |

Regarding your first point: I want to do those things if I'm convinced they help the "good work". I might not want to clean the dishes but I'll do it until I can delegate it.

vmception 5 years ago | |

A lot of "flat organizations" have the issue you describe too: the engineers lack leadership and don't choose the unsexy work.

agentultra 5 years ago |

If you expect the interesting work to land in your lap you are either one of those people that redefine (maybe invent) entire fields of research or you're incredibly lucky. In other words, your work speaks for itself and people want to give you more of it. For most people we need a job in order to keep up with the rising costs of living.

If, however, you're like 99.99% of people and are good at what you do then you'll have to find what is interesting about the job. I've worked at a company that replaced clipboards with iPads in a factory. If all it was to me was a form-builder application and the technology under it I would have been turned off ages ago. But I was incredibly curious as to why the product as successful and growing, what our customers liked about it, and I pushed for developers to visit the factories and see how people used the app. The results were quite surprising and it fed out team with dozens of ideas.

Technology for technology's sake is fun for a while but will eventually bore you. It helps to have a reason to work on what you do. Which I think is part of what OP is saying but I think you can find the reason in a "boring" job as well. You just have to be curious and look for it.

Although avoiding working at feature factories where the developers are just cogs in a Kafka-esque Agile Machine is a whole other can of worms. The OP's strategy seems like an interesting way to avoid it. Best of luck!

blentz 5 years ago |

I’ve been on the receiving end of similar requests before.

“I’ll work for free or nothing if you let me do what I love under the umbrella of your organization because I love it so much.”

I did one or two agreements like this and then stopped altogether. The individual would start their work, others would start to depend on its existence and the individual would leave in a matter or weeks or months because something else better came along for them. There was no incentive to keep the relationship going over a longer term. My organization just wasn’t setup to see any upside to short lived but high quality team members.

Is there anyone out there who does work agreements like this currently and benefits from them? Would love to hear more details. Perhaps that feedback could help Franceso with his pitch.

Franceso please come back in a week and let us know what kinds of offers you received. Will be very interested to see where this goes.

yongjik 5 years ago |

A generic advice: 15 years ago I might have felt similarly, but now I think it's the other way. If you want interesting work, demand higher pays and try to get into such positions.

When you're highly paid you will get more interesting work, because the company will see you as a valuable asset that should be working on "hard" things. When you're being paid a penny, the company will think you're worth a penny and will assign you menial tasks.

BTW I didn't really live up to my own advice, either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

therealdrag0 5 years ago | |

It's not just about pay it's also about earning respect (by delivering good and making valuable contributions to the team) and your relationship with your manager. My manager literally asks me, "What do you want to work on?"

dorkwood 5 years ago | |

In my experience it's more to do with whether you've proven you can do a particular type of task, and do it well. Project managers will then give you that type of work because you're a safe bet.

I've worked with people in the past who felt like they weren't getting any of the interesting jobs. Their solution was to go to their manager and complain that they were being passed over. But if you're not proven at a task, then you're a risky bet, and you'll only be picked if there's no other option.

My advice to those people (and this won't necessarily work in all industries) is to make yourself less risky. Share a weekend project with the team where you worked on the sort of problem you find interesting, and make sure it's good enough that it gets people's attention. If you can make some important people say "wow, I didn't know you could do that sort of thing!" you'll probably notice you start getting more interesting jobs after that.

varispeed 5 years ago | |

This is what I found as well. At high pay, you may be getting into building MVPs and prototypes - these don't require "boring" things like extensive testing or documentation. The board will see that their idea works and then only "boring" part is hand over to dev teams to "productionise" it.

dkyc 5 years ago |

It's almost funny how this is the polar opposite of what you often want when hiring. You're hiring to add manpower to tackle the kind of unexciting tasks that you don't naturally find people drawn towards from your existing team (and then, people's responsibilities expand, or they turn 'boring' work into interesting work by redefining the problem or attacking it on a deeper level).

When you have a growing business, money is probably not not the primary concern, but the last thing you can afford is someone on the team being picky about which tasks are beneath them.

No judgment here, I understand OP's sentiment, but I cannot remember any situation in my career where 'hire me, I only work on what I find interesting but it'll cost you comparatively little' would have been an exciting proposition (on the hiring side).

Popegaf 5 years ago |

As others have suggested, have you considered joining an opensource project?

- https://github-help-wanted.com/

- https://up-for-grabs.net/

- https://www.codetriage.com/

- https://opencollective.com/discover

I'm sure there are organisations that would love to have some technical volunteers. Maybe try and find NGOs you believe in and send them a private or public message?

Or, if you want to get politically involved in your country, you could try and find yourself a political party you believe in, ask them if they have any technical tasks, and see from there.

tayo42 5 years ago | |

Yeah I don't know why someone would essentially give away their talent and time to a for profit corporation. There are so many better alternatives

isbvhodnvemrwvn 5 years ago | | |

Well, money.

lnsru 5 years ago |

I have nice boring job. Few years ago I was upset with the boring part. But with kids and mortgage I don’t really care anymore. I am very happy to be paid more than a manager in a small company being only individual contributor in big Corp. I also have approval to sell my hardware from big Corp. So I can explore new things with commercial potential without a fear. Life is good.

toomuchtodo 5 years ago | |

Stability and work life balance are terribly underrated.

AlwaysRock 5 years ago | | |

I'll take a boring stable 40 hour a week job over a fun job that somewhat frequently requires 50+ hours. Time is the only thing I cant get back. Money really is just a number after a certain point.

plutonorm 5 years ago | | |

Depends on personality. For some its poison and burnout and depression are not far behind.

sturgeongeneral 5 years ago | |

I may be conflating 'boring' with 'rote', but how do you think the nature of your work may affect your job security? This is something I worry about sometimes, because I find that the work I'm doing could eventually be de-valued or automated. Still, I very much appreciate your position as I'm in a similar boat.

skeeter2020 5 years ago |

>> No fixed hours, I will work when I want.

>> no daily stand-ups

>> Meaningful work means work that I care about

>> This whole thing is not about money, so what the work is about comes first

There is a profound mismatch between what this person is offerring and what anyone would want from a developer, or even the core requirements for effective software development. I'll pass.

CleanCoder 5 years ago | |

I am most curious about the "no technical interview" part and "my work speaks for my skills" while OP's GitHub is just forks.

This all really reads in an uncomfortable way and I would never risk investing into somebody by guessing if whatever I need done, as a business, will be interesting enough for this person to put genuine effort into.

I feel like OP needs hobbies to get the fun/interesting itch scratched and then go back to being a "code monkey" like the rest of us, doing "boring" stuff to pay the bills.

I've been there myself before and the most valuable lesson I've learned is that motivation != discipline. Motivation comes and goes and if you base your productivity solely on that you will burn out. Being disciplined though allows to get the "boring" out of the way first, leaving lots of time to explore other interests.

qiqitori 5 years ago | | |

> I am most curious about the "no technical interview" part and "my work speaks for my skills" while OP's GitHub is just forks.

On Github you have to fork a project first if you want to create a pull request. I randomly opened three of the forks and saw that he'd made pull requests for two of them.

ctvo 5 years ago |

Without a need for money, I need to rely on this person's ability to be a professional out of the goodness of their heart. Nothing in that post or their previous work says I can rely on that. Frankly nothing in the post or their history shows they have the ability to deliver value that outweights the headache of planning, managing, and integrating them into an existing team knowing how fickle the relationship can be.

It's not similar to a contractor relationship, since there there's at least contracts and deliverables that give some clarity to planning.

lstodd 5 years ago | |

As if a craving for money somehow makes professional out of .. whatever.

You completely misunderstand what "professional" means and what the "professional pride" is about.

veltas 5 years ago | |

There is an interesting question about whether they will contribute valuable work, knowing that they probably won't be that professional as you say. When I don't care about quality I can often produce really good results early but that might not be conventional or that maintainable. Maybe it's healthy diversity in approach for a company, better at writing interesting prototypes than a final product?

jmchuster 5 years ago |

It seems that if you want to be supremely picky about what you do, and don't care what you get paid, then the obvious answer is to just do your own side-projects, open source them, and have a paypal tip jar where people can send you some money. This pays closer to the $0/hour side than the $100/hour side.

You might also consider working on side projects with an emphasis on them making money, but then I think you'll quickly find that you'll be required to do work that you don't consider fun and interesting, so you'd probably have to give up before it got far enough to become an actual money-making venture. So again, closer to $0/hour.

Or maybe you'd like to do contract work, but again, to fully complete a project for a client is most certainly going to require that you do some work that you don't like, so I don't think anyone is going to pay you for delivering something that's only partially complete, so again, $0/hour.

moritonal 5 years ago |

So Francesco says they refuse to do technical interviews and says their CV and Github are proof enough.

The CV shows experience as a freelance engineer at Apple for a bit, then an engineer for Samsung which they were made redundant from. Their GitHub is 3 projects, a python script, a breakout board and then a beta libary. They argue that's fine though because they'd work for £1/hr, but the real cost of an upfront hire is my time, not money.

The author seems to not understand how key money is for the relationship between manager and employee. I have plenty of employee's who'll work on interesting stuff in their own hours, but I pay them so they stay around and do the boring bits like docs, DR, testing, support, bus-factoring.

decafninja 5 years ago |

This is interesting!

My own anecdote: when I graduated from college I had zero experience aside from one internship at a small noname company. No one would hire me. I started reaching out to local companies big and small saying I would work for free if they'd use me. Not just programming jobs, but also general IT or even helpdesk jobs - anything remotely computer related. None took me up on my offer. I suppose they saw me as more of a liability than an asset, or that onboarding costs still wouldn't be worth having free labor. It was an interesting eyeopener.

But since you're experienced, your story is different from mine.

ChrisMarshallNY 5 years ago |

I wish you the best of luck. I can relate to where you're at.

One thing that I have been doing, my entire adult life, is shipping product. A lot of "ship" is not fun. There's all kinds of boring stuff, like good design (as opposed to "just enough design to get started"), good coding (as in "code I'll understand when I come back to refactor in three months"), good quality (as opposed to "Who cares? I'll be out of here, before they run out of integer space"), good testing (as opposed to "I'll write a few unit tests that show it handles low-hanging-fruit problems"), accessibility, localization, aesthetic design, supporting documentation for users, administrators and developers, etc. You get the drift. Lots of "not-fun" stuff, there.

For me, I've always enjoyed "finishing" projects, and that means shipping them, so users get their grubby little paws on my work, and start abusing it (and, sometimes, me).

I'm taking on a CTO role (I've actually been doing it for months, but we're formalizing it). I was asked to write my own job description. I used words like "Accountable" and "Responsible" a lot. I got used to that, working for a Japanese corporation for 27 years.

Not fun. But I get to run the whole show, and ship. That's my idea of fun.

Oh, and I totally relate to the thing about LeetCode interviews and whatnot. I have tens of thousands of lines of code, ship-ready projects that people can clone, build, and run, dozens of articles, etc. It has been my experience that these are totally ignored; which I consider...not sane.

I have found the greatest pleasure in writing software that helps people help people. These organizations don't usually get "top-shelf" talent, so they tend to have a great need.

Again, good luck.

catonmylap 5 years ago |

Why not just working on some open source projects? If you do some interesting helpful work, some people might even sponsor you.

yosito 5 years ago |

I'm not primarily a financially motivated person. And I would prefer to spend my time doing something interesting. But in my experience, taking on some one else's projects that are interesting but not well paid has always gone badly.

Positions are usually low paid for one of two reasons: either there isn't a budget for it, or there is but they're being cheap and cutting corners. If there isn't a budget, that's a sign of a failing organization or a bad startup idea, so probably not a job you should take. If they're being cheap, that's a sign that they don't respect or value the people doing the work, which is a huge red flag.

I've taken jobs that were essentially volunteer work because I got to work on projects that were interesting to me. I've also taken jobs that weren't that interesting to me which paid generously. In the end, much of my volunteer work wasn't valued, and seen as disposable. The more highly paid work never got interesting, but having a decent amount of money took off a lot of the financial stress and ultimately made me happier and enabled me to spend more of my free time on things that interested me.

At this point, no matter how interesting, there are only two people I would do underpaid work for: myself, and my grandmother.

vehemenz 5 years ago |

What about PHP or Java has anything to do with not "programming at a more advanced level"?

These are general-purpose programming languages. Due to their design, some patterns/paradigms might seem more natural to implement, but you can build anything you want with them.

For an experienced programmer eschewing conventions with this "resume", I am surprised by this comment.

MsMowz 5 years ago | |

>For an experienced programmer eschewing conventions with this "resume", I am surprised by this comment.

They only have about a year of full-time engineering experience, so they might not recognize this yet. (Not trying to talk him down; plenty of people without much experience still do valuable work, but it's only natural to have blind spots.)

atraac 5 years ago | |

It kinda makes him sound like a spoiled junior who only touched the 'hip' stuff and is disgusted by a sign of stability. I remember being in that place as well.

jrh206 5 years ago |

This attitude comes across as a little arrogant, and I'm not sure whether it's warranted without a host of achievements to back it up. Nevertheless, I hope the best for the author, who seems to know what they want.

I think they would have better success by actively seeking what they want, though, rather than expecting it to turn up at their doorstep.

tyrex2017 5 years ago | |

imho this post is pretty much going for what you want! :)

hprotagonist 5 years ago |

rattle your network until you find a tenured professor who has interesting-to-you grants, and talk them into letting you join the lab as a visiting researcher.

if you do it right they’ll be overjoyed to have technical staff who aren’t degree candidates and you’ll get something tasty to intellectually munch on.

tgb 5 years ago | |

My lab actually did this for a bit. They hired a programmer who was retired but bored and just wanted to do something for far less than market rate. She was great and got a lot done but two problems:

1) It took my boss significant effort keeping her busy with things to do: explaining the problems we needed solved, etc. is non-trivial

2) Since she was working for so little, she could basically dictate what she was or wasn't doing. The very fact that she wasn't on a real salary meant it was actually harder to work with her in some sense.

public_void 5 years ago |

> You will give me interesting or meaningful work

Have you ever worked on something interesting or meaningful at a job? You list a bunch of random topics, none of which are inherently interesting or meaningful. I've worked on flashy projects - most recently self driving at one of the bigger companies doing it. Guess what? In an eng org of hundreds, at least half the people were still doing shit work that had nothing to do with self driving.

Beyond that, if I want to hire you for interesting work, it falls into two buckets: mission critical, or irrelevant. I can't hire you for mission critical work because I have no confidence you can do the job, so I can only hire you for irrelevant work. If I hire you for irrelevant work, it makes me no money, so I pay you no money. Why even have this arrangement? Just go start your own side project - at least then you own it.

Consider this: join a company doing something you don't like (making an absurd amount of money because of the industry), demonstrate/develop your expertise, identify the parts of the company that are interesting to you, then go work on those. People doing interesting satisfying work didn't just get there accidentally.

azhenley 5 years ago |

My advice: pursue a PhD. If you can find the right advisor, then you will have almost complete creative freedom to pursue interesting projects while getting paid to do it.

JoeAltmaier 5 years ago |

Anything is interesting if you engage with it. And being bored is a state of mind. It's a fallacy to say "that's boring". The bored-ness is in your head, not in the task.

andrewzah 5 years ago | |

This is certainly true. Being bored to a large extent is a personal choice. Things can be as interesting as you make them, but it requires looking at things from different perspectives sometimes.

freetime2 5 years ago |

I feel like you would be better off finding companies that interest you, and inquiring if they would be willing to hire you as a part time contractor.

What you’re proposing here feels like such a deviation from the typical hiring process that I just can’t imagine many companies going to the effort of making you a personalized proposal just for you to turn it down as not interesting.

Being unable to find anything that interests you also comes across as a bit of a motivational problem that could scare companies off from investing in you (if not with money than with time).

Just my two cents. I don’t consider myself an expert on interviewing or hiring, so I could be wrong!

echelon 5 years ago |

I was just replying to a flagged comment [1] and it became impossible to respond to,

> Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the intersection of "interesting" work and "valuable" work is pretty small.

Your comment was flagged/dead, but I absolutely think you are right.

Look at most of the jobs today. Laborer, factory worker, package sorter, delivery driver, fast food worker, government process worker, ... These aren't particularly interesting or fulfilling.

Apply that lens to our industry, and what do you see? Plumbing grunt work, glue code maintainer, migration work, form collection CRUD. There are so many jobs that don't do anything particularly novel or exciting. You might even be building something you hate, like ad tech.

I don't think the comment is too off base. Maybe the scale and tone is wrong, but there's certainly plenty of boring work.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26863367

thenoblesunfish 5 years ago |

Question for the author: would you really work for $1/hr? Why? That’s essentially zero, and for zero you could work on whatever you like all day. Is it being part of a team? Being able to say you have a job (and put in on your resume)? Is it that you don’t have your own ideas of what to work on?

xwdv 5 years ago |

A lot of people are saying "I would never hire this man".

You're looking at it wrong. The idea is to find interesting problems that have unknown amounts of ROI but should still be tackled by someone. Give him some cash and something interesting to chew and see what he comes up with. It's kind of like tending to a houesplant.

If he produces nothing of value, then fine you know the idea was probably a dud anyway, but you didn't have to spend any time on it. And if he does spawn something of value, you can take the work and have more qualified engineers work on it full time.

Personally, I find the best use case for people like this is to throw ethically questionable tasks at them. Stuff you shouldn't really have a full time employee doing, but would be perfectly fine outsourcing to a contractor who works off the books.

andrewzah 5 years ago |

Getting paid appropriately to do work that you genuinely enjoy is a privilege. It certainly is nice if it works out that way, but most of the time it does not. A lot of the work that needs to be done in the software world (that pays well) is just not terribly interesting.

My work is not always very exciting, and that's okay. I work normal hours and have purchased my own beautiful home at 24. After work I have freedom to do whatever, and enough money to pursue pretty much any hobby that I want. My employer sponsors books, courses, and conferences, and provides great healthcare.

I would rather have a stable, but boring, job over being broke and working on something interesting.

alex_c 5 years ago |

Interesting thought experiment! Let's take it one step further. Can the "pay what you want" value be negative?

As a manager I would be responsible for providing you with a steady stream of interesting or meaningful work. I would have to structure the work to fit around your flexible schedule, shield you from doing the parts you don't like, and change it up if you start getting bored. But I would not be able to rely on your output for anything mission critical.

How much would you pay me to provide this service to you?

(Please take this as tongue-in-cheek not as a snarky comment, it genuinely is an interesting thought experiment despite the obvious issues it raises).

ftruzzi 5 years ago | |

You raise a very valid point and yes, it could be a net negative.

However, what I was trying to do here is to reach organizations or people that already work the way I'd like, so that work is already organized in a flexible/async fashion and the arrangement can be a net positive for them.

And I think you should apply the same reasoning to the definition of "interesting work" or "meaningful work". Try to see the big picture, from a bird's eye view: a piece of work can be interesting or meaningful even if it has boring parts. Almost anything has and we probably wouldn't be here as human beings if we couldn't handle that. Carrying sick people up and down the stairs is strenuous (and repetitive?) but can still be a net positive because you feel so good for helping them. Same goes for writing software or any other kind of work.

I think that, as a manager, you should not shield me from the boring parts of any work but you should make sure that my overall "working experience" is a net positive for "interesting" and/or "meaningful".

Thank you!

erdo 5 years ago |

Given he seems to have a pretty low tolerance for boredom, I'd expect any potential employer to worry about this: What if he starts working for me, and a few months later (after having started some big refactor job for example) he decides it's no longer interesting, and leaves for someone else paying 1$ an hour

alert0 5 years ago |

Consider academia. I have a very similar opinion to you about interesting work (less so about meaningful). I was working at Google doing web development even though I have a security specialty, everyday was like pulling teeth. It is just not worth it and I'm not sure it is sustainable for me. Academia has always been appealing because you dictate research direction. I ended up going from part time, to 80% time, to full time over a year and a half for a small company. My work here is mostly interesting and I'm happier than I've been anywhere else.

rima8 5 years ago |

This guy worked in my team for a long time, and by writing this post he gained back my respect.

While I think he is a missed opportunity for consensus-workplace-realty in which we live, anyone that sets their own rules and principles and firmly acts from there is worth my esteem, especially if those principles don’t hurt any other being and on the contrary represent an element of novelty in the too constrained way we look at the world of work. Clearly he has to define better what he can offer vs what not, for in every contract or exchange of whatever good the rules have to be well defined on both ends.

What employers often don’t take into account is how costly lack of motivation is. I’d rather find 2 Francescos than hiring 20 standard employees that work just for money and are guaranteed to either stop producing quality work or leaving the company after a few months, years at the best, bringing back the cost of hiring someone new over and over again, or even the cost of keeping a bad hire (especially with the EU regulations)

There’s no price for talent mixed with a clear statement of interest in doing only something exciting, especially when you make the price… you’d have to be a fool not to try out someone so sincere and willing to put on the table their intentions, and then take it from there.

I might be wrong of course, I work for the biggest corporation out there and don’t hire directly, but seems a good deal to me!!

aynyc 5 years ago |

His requirement is basically volunteer style job? For example: run an app that track or take in abandon pets for an animal rescue/shelter.

1. interesting work, checked. 2. part time, remote and probably asynchronous, checked. 3. no interviews, just build the web app or iOS app, checked. 4. probably minimum wage, checked.

pketh 5 years ago |

Having been consistently unemployed in the past, some experience and advice:

How people value you – and treat you – is directly reflected in how they pay you. Working free or cheap actually encourages employers to micromanage and committee review things because inexpensive things/people are seen as less reliable or professional.

If you want interesting work, my advice is to make it yourself. Find a problem you're passionate about and make something beautiful of it.

You'll improve your own skills, have more fun, and eventually employers will be coming to you.

ggggtez 5 years ago |

Others have said it but it bears repeating: Entitled

No interviews? No fixed hours? Maximum 10 hours per week? He'll refuse to do anything he doesn't think is interesting?

Who would even want to hire someone like this.

jokethrowaway 5 years ago |

Caro Francesco,

What you propose sounds great but I think your article works better to find like minded people who share your thoughts (definitely count me in on that) than to find some work offers.

Maybe with HN's reach you would find something, but I think a normal contractor's pitch + vetting for interesting jobs would work best.

I would also recommend looking into building your own project

My way of dealing with this problem has been: - Do contract work and vet the work; worst case scenario, you can drop off with some notice and not much will change. I did some employee time but that was mainly to get benefits (eg. paternity leave) and some fixed money for a period of my life I knew I wouldn't be very productive in - Raise the price of my services; this tends to filter out the worst jobs, albeit VC funded startup and rich tech companies have plenty of money to waste on chair warmers. Established mid companies without funding doing something you care about and with a remote first culture (pre-COVID and post-COVID) work best. - Build your own project, add almost-passive revenue streams; outsource the boring bits you don't want to do - Save money and try to reduce your expenses so that your passive revenue streams need to cover less money (making it easier to survive on passive revenue)

Not a recipe for optimising for wealth, but for freedom.

PascLeRasc 5 years ago |

It's so good to hear someone else put into words what I feel. Having fulfilling work has been absolutely my #1 goal for as long as I can remember, like since I was 12 or 13 years old, and by that I mean it's more important than getting married, saving for retirement, traveling, having fun. It is a constant thought every waking moment in my life, the same way when you're hungry it's on the forefront of everything you do.

the_only_law 5 years ago | |

I was always deathly afraid of this, in fact I was never really interested in wage labor period. For some years my ideal was doing independent consulting where I had control, I could pick what I worked on and could get a ton of exposure both to technical issues and wider business experience.

Well it quickly became apparent that that really wasn’t an option for some dumb kid. I had tried freelancing for a few years but got sick of the overwhelming amount of people who just wanted me to update their WP site. After humming around for a year or so I gave up trying for anything greater and just accepted a string of low paying, “boring” development jobs.

> I genuinely believe that for those of us who feel this way, there is nothing else to do but pursue it.

Yeah I’m starting to feel this way again, so fuck it, might as well. I haven’t been nearly as productive as I should have been the past years though. I have a better idea of what I want and there’s really only two choices. One of continuing stagnation or one of putting in the work and attempting to pursue something better. We’ll see though, I’m not betting on anything working out.

shubik22 5 years ago |

I definitely sympathize with the author's dissatisfactions. It's difficult to find meaningful, interesting work that pays well, and when you find yourself sacrificing one part of that equation, it can be very disheartening.

However, the answer to this is not to just cut out the "pays well" part of the equation and assume that the rest will follow as a result. As others in the comments here have pointed out, interesting work is hard to find, full stop.

I would actually think that the non-conventional nature of the author's offer would actually decrease the quality of the work. In my experience, work can be enjoyable based on two dimensions: the technical aspect of the work (am I learning? is this engaging?) and the "organizational" nature of the work (is the company well organized and run? are there clear expectations? or is there just chaos everywhere?). Even if work you can find from this kind of offer is better on the first dimension, I imagine it'll be far worse on the second dimension.

That being said, I hope the author proves me wrong and finds a work situation which makes them happy. Good luck!

brailsafe 5 years ago |

It's baffling to me why so many in this thread are so cynical, when burnout and bullshit like being a "passionate" engineer are so hyped. Of course you need to do some things you might hate doing in any given job. But, software engineering is a stressful and often times unforgiving drudgery. The vast majority of startups and companies serve the most vapid or ethically questionable markets, or are totally opaque in terms of where your value goes. Every startup ever asks you to "believe in it's mission" and that's typically to acquired (but ostensibly to change the world, through handcrafted advertising). If you do participate in the drudgery of programming for one of these hapless corporate entities or pointless startups too long, especially with no other personal reward than money, the thought to end your life or switch careers might cross your mind frequently. Good job OP, I like the idea.

mrfusion 5 years ago |

Anyone here want to make a job board for “interesting” work? There are lots of retired software engineers (and managers who miss coding) who would love to work a few hours a week.

11235813213455 5 years ago |

I think there's no really "boring" developer jobs. There are strict jobs (where you have very little freedom), and they can be more boring, but if you get more freedom, even a repetitive job can become interesting, by finding and making the right tools to automate more, etc..

danans 5 years ago |

The most interesting thing about this is that the writer is in a position to be able to work part-time for only 10 to 20 hours a week at a very low rate.

I imagine they are not supporting a family or a mortgage, or if they are they must have a significant alternate source of financial or housing security, and that's not a bad thing.

I wish more people had the ability to put out such terms for their employment without worrying about keeping the roof over their head.

They would likely have to drop some of their more naive requirements though (i.e. no Java or PHP, only "interesting" work). The road to interesting work is paved with the mundane, no matter how cool the job or technology is.

mrweasel 5 years ago |

> No PHP, Java or maintenance work.

I can understand not wanting do maintenance, but I also wonder: How much is there to be made from dealing with all that legacy stuff from the last 20 years? I suspect it’s a lot.

MrDOS 5 years ago | |

Ignoring the money for a second, I think for some people (author clearly aside), maintenance work can be the interesting work. As long as there's buy-in from the business side of the house – they understand the goal in its full extent is to reduce technical debt and increase future development agility, and that there will be no visible changes to end users – it can be very rewarding to refactor old code.

andrewzah 5 years ago | | |

Yes! Maintenance and refactoring is a huge creative opportunity, if management isn't thwarting you. Dismissing languages and maintenance outright makes think the author is just difficult to work with. Even in modern places, maintenance and refactoring simply need to be done every so often. That's part of the job, we can't only work on things that we want on someone else's dime.

lordnacho 5 years ago |

Looks like you're a decent enough coder, you're still young, and you want something interesting to do. Why not start one of the many startups that people here on this site tend to start?

journey_16162 5 years ago |

I work on my own project mostly, at the expense of not earning almost anything. (I freelance to earn money and spend minimum time, to have most time for the project).

Some of the work is exciting, some of it is boring, but I like it on average. Though it's much different when there's a goal in mind (to finish your own project). It's still good in a way, because I think, ok, I will work 2 weeks on that boring stuff and can't wait until it gets more interesting, then it gets interesting and I have my reward, back to the boring stuff. I find that this chase of seeing completion creates the passion even for the boring stuff.

Of course I don't want to keep it up endlessly. I will either try to turn this project into a product and see how it goes, or I will open source it and get a full time job (freelancing is a bad strategy for building a business by the way. If I could go back in time I would never start freelancing, but get a full time job and make savings if I wanted to start my own business).

I will second what others have said, start something yourself in your free time. Get a boring job that doesn't require much time if you don't care about the pay. I think there was a popular thread about that recently.

Or maybe change your industry, i.e. game dev. From what I have heard, the pay is low, precisely because there are a lot of people who want to do it just because they are passionate.

doggodaddo78 5 years ago |

Be careful. I got brain picked after a via HN startup interview and job offer that turned out to be fake.

Ecstatify 5 years ago | |

What happened? Sounds interesting.

doggodaddo78 5 years ago | | |

Great interview w a 3-person (didn't meet other 2) startup. On-the-spot offer.#? No paperwork yet, handshake/verbal offer.# Met in-person the same-day. Didn't want to grab lunch or do anything celebratory.# Acted very impersonal and rushed.# He was overly focused on raising money.# He just wanted to know a bunch of immediate solutions without looking at any systems or code.# Never heard from the other people, which may not even exist.# Cap table was 70% him and everyone else was an employee with a pittance.# After that meeting, the dude makes a snide remark by text and ghosts me.####

Someone official at YC told me such a story was intellectually-uninteresting, it sucks/too bad, and HN/YC has zero responsibility.

# Red flag

steelframe 5 years ago |

When I found myself with a mandate and a budget in a previous company, I set out to hire a team. The health, happiness, and productivity of the team overall was my top priority. In terms of budget I didn't think in terms of what I got from any one individual contributor vs. what I paid. Rather, I assessed the cost of the total team vs. what the business was getting from that team.

Francesco's experiment seems to rely on an assumption that he can bow out of things that teams typically need their members to do (such as daily standups) if he accepts less pay, as if the team-level work could somehow be parceled out and evaluated in a piecemeal basis in terms of budget. The issue with that is that there is a level of engagement that is non-negotiable in a team. If I thought Francesco would act as a force function for the team and help them be more cohesive, faster-moving, and results-driven, then I would bring him on-board and pay him comparably to what I paid the other members of the team who were producing equivalent results. If Francesco decided that he didn't want to do the sorts of things that the team required of him to be an active and productive participant in the team effort, then to me Fencesco's value could very well be negative.

jjk166 5 years ago |

You're never going to find a job that's constantly interesting and fun. Even if you love doing something normally, there will be days when you have to do it, and that will eventually become unpleasant.

Don't strive to do what you love, do what you take pride in. When you are working towards a goal which resonates with you personally, all the tedious, unpleasant, painful moments and all the other obstacles in your way just make your eventual triumph sweeter.

Tade0 5 years ago |

The project I was working on was moved from Milan to Poland in what was most likely an effort to downsize the project and cut costs.

Odd choice of location given that hailing from Poland and having lived in Italy I had an opportunity to compare costs of employment and generally they're not that different.

Perhaps Milan is exceptional - can anyone from that location tell me whether €60k annual costs of employment are considered a lot for a senior developer?

KptMarchewa 5 years ago | |

I was just going to comment on that.

Not sure how reliable is this info, but Glassdoor suggests that salary in Milan could be slightly lower than what I would expect from average software engineer in Poland.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/milan-software-engineer-s...

pzduniak 5 years ago | | |

I'd imagine that what you get for $25k/yr in Poland is way better than the ROI on $30k/yr in Italy. Depends on the stack though. Most corporate Java people earn peanuts here.

It's also likely that they replaced a well compensated engineering firm responsible for setting up the project with a cheap team handling maintenance.

fasteo 5 years ago |

No offense whatsoever, but after reading this I was expecting to see a true rockstar CV, but that's no the case.

You are brave, tough. And I mean if the most positive way.

slingnow 5 years ago |

Could you imagine a hiring a general contractor for your home renovation business with this sort of attitude? This person would be an instant liability. I can't imagine any instance where I would want them doing free work for me, bouncing from one half finished task to the next when it became boring for them.

Hell, I wouldn't even let them wander around my jobsite for free.

The entitlement in this profession is sometimes truly astounding.

bawolff 5 years ago |

If you want to do only what you find interesting with no pay, make an open source project.

If you want some pay, start your own business. Yes some parts are sucky, but you can freely choose between doing them or letting your business fail.

If you're working for someone else, why would they hire you to do just the interesting work? If it was all interesting they would just get free labour.

mettamage 5 years ago |

Request sent, I hope you find it fair since I don’t have money to spare.

fundamental 5 years ago |

Nice visually appealing CV. Is that using a public template as the base? I'm currently using the deedy XeLaTeX one as a base, but it doesn't seem to scale out to multiple pages well.

Best of luck with your goals by the way. Avoiding the full time grind in favor of lower time commitments with interesting projects is a great objective.

reggieband 5 years ago |

So many responses here are of the type: "My org couldn't hire someone like that for legitimate reasons". They then list a series of fears they might have with such an employee. This is typical engineering thought, a pessimism firmly rooted in avoidance of problems. Engineers tend to focus on what can go wrong so that they can avoid negative outcomes. One myopia of our discipline is we don't often consider "what would the world look like if this went better than expected?"

So my advice to the OP is to focus on opportunities and positions that do not require going through engineering gatekeeping. Other disciplines tend to have more optimistic viewpoints and tend to be more willing to accept risk when they feel there is potential for high returns. I would recommend finding small startups that are looking for part-time engineering folks.

actinium226 5 years ago | |

^This

My thought was that many responses are of the form "well good craftsmanship is boring and not 'interesting' - that's why we charge money for it" and I'm glad to have found lots of people that I DO NOT want to work with.

Good craftmanship - writing tests, documentation, making sure something works and actually ships and gets out the door - now that's interesting and rewarding. OP is trying to avoid those organizations that get caught in the trap of "we don't know exactly what we're building, so we're going to write some tests" or "well we could ship now, but we should probably add some more features just to be on the safe side." Places like that would be really boring.

MarblePillar 5 years ago | |

That isn't just "so many responses", that is every single response. Never try to sell an engineer anything, especially not "your self".

Fortunately, engineers don't dispense budget.

chad_strategic 5 years ago |

This is really funny.

I spent 20 years in the Marine Corps because they continued to challenge me and test my abilities. Some days the work wasn't interesting other days it was really interesting. But it was always challenging.

They always told me what I was going to get paid, but I think they owe a few hours for some overtime I did back in 2005.

doggodaddo78 5 years ago | |

Yep. Autonomy, purpose, and challenge are what people want to stay engaged and keep morale up.

codingdave 5 years ago |

I completely understand wanting a gig like this if you are a dev. But it seems to be missing a key truth of hiring - I already know a dozen brilliant engineers who would jump at such a gig. If my company supported setting this up, I would go with someone I already know and love, not risk it with a stranger.

pascalxus 5 years ago |

the point of work is to provide value to someone, in exchange they give you cash. That someone, can be anyone in the world or any people except for one person, and that's you (the worker). the point of work is providing value to someone else, not entertainment to yourself: that's called play.

I think it's great that we have a balance between work and play or maybe even have a life of just play and work on whatever fun stuff you want. You don't need an employer for that. Just know the difference. If you're going to have fun programming and entertain yourself, just do it on your own.

Employers need people to do boring work: maintaining existing legacy systems, fixing bugs, doing the last 20% (which takes 80% of the effort), to get things working perfectly for as many customers as possible.

UncleOxidant 5 years ago |

I'm in the same situation Francesco is in. Other than a short gig in the Fall (for some people who knew my capabilities, hence no interview required) I haven't worked for pay in over a year. Fortunately I'm in a position to be able to not work as my spouse has a job with health insurance and we've got a decent amount of retirement savings.

> Work takes up such a big part of your life that what you do is terribly important. I’ve been contacted by many companies and recruiters during this time, but the idea of going back to full-time work doing something I don’t care about or is not technically interesting just scares me.

Yeah, scares is a good word here - I feel the same. I get contacted by recruiters and they describe the job and I get that dread in the pit of my stomach. I've been in tech for 30+ years, I've seen all kinds of companies, situations, bosses, coworkers. It's all a roll of the dice and from my experience the odds aren't on your side.

> 1. You will give me interesting or meaningful work

I tend to think that there's just not a lot of funding out there for the most interesting and meaningful. I had a job doing software development for an alternative energy company. They never got to stable funding and folded. That was interesting, meaningful work, but they couldn't get money to keep it going.

> 3. No technical interviews or coding challenges

I have reached this point as well. I'm tired of the interview game. Just done. Can't do it anymore. The thought of interviewing makes me physically ill. I like to say that I'm retired form interviewing not software development.

> 4. You pay what you want, per hour

I'd work for $50K/year if the work was interesting and the people were nice. Heck, maybe even less than that in the right situation.

In the meantime I'll be over here working on stuff that I find interesting in languages that I like (and aren't necessarily in demand). And gardening. And baking bread.

jedberg 5 years ago |

> You pay what you want, per hour

Just a technicality, but if he sets the number of hours a week, then he is still somewhat in control of his own paycheck. If I were the employer, I'd want to set the hourly rate as well as a fixed number of hours per week, or at least a max.

minblaster 5 years ago |

I think the author is getting stuck in tactics, not strategy.

Problem: OP does not have the freedom to pursue what he finds interesting.

Tactic: Given existing work arrangements, attempt to negotiate a setup where he can just work on what he wants. If the employer changes its mind, OP gets to restart the cycle.

Strategy: Avoid having this problem in the first place.

Pursuing the strategy means taking a high-paying job, saving a large fraction (https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...) and having the financial freedom to never worry about this problem again.

Tade0 5 years ago | |

A sound tactic but there's one issue: high-paying jobs, in time, often turn into a sort of "golden cage", which makes you unemployable and vulnerable to lay-offs.

Anecdata:

A friend of mine worked in banking where the pay was amazing, but the tech used mostly outdated(think Java 6 in 2018). At some point he got fed up with all that and tried to switch roles, but to no avail, because no one would hire him.

He's still there but should a recession come he'll be in a very tough situation.

Scene_Cast2 5 years ago |

Open Source volunteer contributions are like this taken to the extreme - where the two main motivations are interesting work, and making a change in something you (want to) use.

I'm curious if the lessons learned from OSS projects would apply to work output from this person.

xwolfi 5 years ago |

The CV is fine (I wouldn't put DuoLinguo as a proof of English fluency however, this is borderline) but the attitude is difficult.

I'd prefer a guy who has fun solving hard problems, like say, "how do I convince people more senior than me to follow my advice", rather than someone saying "find me a cheap job where I don't have to deal with snobbish seniors".

Find a way to build an inner child, something that makes you happy to learn in any condition even conflict. I can be insulted by a colleague and still find the experience an interesting challenge: how to make this moron either like me or do what I need him to do. I wouldn't quit, I wouldn't ask the company to fire him.

orliesaurus 5 years ago |

At this point why not do some research across HN, for example do lookup Show HN or on indiehackers and team up with other solo-devs on project they started for a minimum hourly rate and then just grow with them and eventually make higher returns

SkipperCat 5 years ago |

You'll never find a job that meets these requirements, but you may find a job with good co-workers, a boss who is decent and a healthy work environment. To me, that is nirvana. Just like in a marriage, there's going to be good and bad times. It's the people that make those rough patches bearable.

Sounds to me like you just want flexibility and the opportunity to work on things you find engaging. Don't expect 100% of that all the time but I do think if you look hard enough, you'll find what you seek.

bryanrasmussen 5 years ago |

part of my company's long term onboarding of this prospective employee will include an intensive course in Buddhism, with the purpose of slowly teaching him to find something interesting in everything he works on. I believe that within 6 months to a year we can have the perfect highly competent employee, willing to work for very little and doing whatever asked of them because every task, no matter how mundane, is filled with interest.

nobodyandproud 5 years ago |

If you’re doing what you love, you’ll put up with the other necessary crap.

Eventually you can share some the unfun crap to other team members.

Instead, what you may want to do is get into consulting.

dj_mc_merlin 5 years ago |

If you learn how to find what's interesting about the dullest of topics or tasks, you will never be bored a day in your life. I enjoy taking on tedious tasks that few people want sometimes. Being able to do something and do it well despite my brain yelling at me that it doesn't like it brings me satisfaction. Also, after a while my brain quiets down and starts enjoying itself. Perhaps the author should try this more often.

erdos4d 5 years ago |

I've asked dev shops to feed me work with no standup or meetings, just send the spec and answer my questions. Nobody will take the offer, even if I am willing to do 2 guys work for half a guy's pay. I have no way to explain this, but it seems like standup meetings are more important than anything to most employers. Best of luck, please post your results if you actually get work that wants output and not hangout time.

BrianOnHN 5 years ago |

Work for yourself, first on finding why it is you want to work.

If the motivation is there, and you're cause is meaningful, then all of the problems will become interesting.

daemonk 5 years ago |

Hiring is a lot of the times more about finding someone that'll fit in your current team than about an individual with a lot of skill/enthusiasm. You don't sound very reliable and that would be my main concern. Even if you were working for nothing, it would still be a waste of the time invested if you are just going to leave in a month or two.

You should go into academia. I think that model is more what you are looking for.

lthornberry 5 years ago | |

I'm an academic, and I do not think it's what he's looking for. Most Ph.D. and postdoc-level research involves much less flexibility and much more tedium than it sounds like he's looking for. The overall project should be very interesting, yes, but the day-to-day work usually still requires plenty of boring bits. And while I'm sure there are some labs that would allow remote work on a flexible schedule, it's not the general culture in the places I have experience. CS might be different--it's not my field. But I'm skeptical.

daemonk 5 years ago | | |

I have a phd and have postdoc'ed at a couple of places also. I am now in industry.

Sure, there are boring bits. But I think what he is more looking for is being able to explore the space and more open-endedness to projects, which I do think academia affords. It might also mean he'll never really produce anything and keep going down rabbit-holes. But that can be enjoyable.

vesche 5 years ago |

Pie in the sky. Any realistic employer reading this plea should be turned off fairly quickly. Typically, it's a red flag when an employee gives an employer ultimatums while already in their employ (e.g., give me a raise of x amount or I will quit). This post is an example of a potential employee giving ultimatums to a future employer before they have even been given a job.

distributedsean 5 years ago | |

Thats a strange way of thinking about things. Why shouldn't the employee have power in the relationship. Employers are always giving ultimatums, no-remote, remote-only, 40 hours a week, $X/hr. But the employee/employer relationship is really only an agreement to do X much work for Y money. Everything else is secondary. Why shouldn't an employee's secondary concerns be just as important as the employer's secondary concerns ?

corpMaverick 5 years ago |

I understand.

I want to be able to have more autonomy on how to do my work. Take a piece of code (large or small) and relentlessness make it better. I don't want to have to explain my self for every little change. I want to be able to deploy my changes every day. I have a grand vision on my head and I want to make it happen. Second guessing my self of what others think, drains my energy.

tyrex2017 5 years ago |

I dont understand the OP and others who feel it is soul crushing to do stupid tasks.

For one, whats the big deal? I can put in the difficult hours and continue. Secondly, often, what is considered inefficient and stupid is not, or just cant be done better because organizations are not perfect.

Having said that, OP, I have lots of respect for your strength to go for what you want.

citizenpaul 5 years ago |

Cool! 1$ per year and I want you to solve generalized AI voice recognition customer service and all the IP will belong to me.

andrewfromx 5 years ago |

now here we go, I had this exact same feeling after doing a contract job recently. I'm going to place this url (https://truzzi.me/hire-me-pay-what-you-want-interesting-work...) into a db and start a site and also add my own profile and... wait, how will this different from linkedin? its like at some point, I need a MOTIVATED programmer that will give me that 24/7 move mountains full effort. Like there is famous James Cameron quote while he was filming 1997 Titanic movie, something about his top professionals needed to play like it was the superbowl. So like how does a company hire that vs. its all on them to make US interested in the project? I'm just playing devils advocate. I think there is a happy medium somewhere.

cryptonector 5 years ago |

If I could make this work for myself, I would. But "interesting work" often arises out of interactions with others and it's not like there's always a pile of interesting work just waiting for someone who wants it. I'm afraid that it's just not this simple most of the time.

notjustanymike 5 years ago |

> No PHP, Java or maintenance work.

Sooner or later, everyone does maintenance work or fixes bugs. It comes with the job.

dnndev 5 years ago |

Be your own boss. Start consulting. It’s interesting everyday. You get to pick the work you accept.

paxys 5 years ago |

Wanting to do interesting work and not caring about money is the perfect environment to start your own project/service/company. If you want to work for others (especially on a contract basis), don't expect groundbreaking work to fall in your lap.

Rochus 5 years ago |

If such a well-qualified person wants to work for any wage, it will distort the market in the first place (i.e. clients will be even less willing to pay decent rates if people with his qualifications work for any amount). Why doesn't he work for open source projects on his own initiative and at his own discretion and try to finance himself via Patreon or similar? Or he could solve interesting problems for companies at his own risk, let the company check the suitability of the solution (initially as closed source), and then sell it for a fixed price "as is" (including source code). This way the company can save the specification effort, is more willing to outsource the project and the consultant can demonstrate its qualification directly with the solution and the speed with which it develops it. This has worked for me for many years, and I don't have to convince my customers with cheap rates.

rafael_benatti 5 years ago |

I don't have any work for you but congratulations for your cv, is very good :)

wonderwonder 5 years ago |

I very much appreciate the poster being upfront and taking his shot. From the point of view of a hiring manager though, why would he not think that the second OP stops finding the work interesting that he will just ghost?

lhovon 5 years ago |

You might find some of these to your liking https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/opportunities

raspasov 5 years ago |

If the work is truly meaningful, it is not boring. Even if it's doing docs, or support, or refactoring, or responding to emails.

If a member of a team says that what they do is boring that's often a sign of poor leadership.

bena 5 years ago |

I want enough money to have shelter, transportation, food, and fun without having to sacrifice one for the other.

As for the job itself, let me concern myself with the how and let me have enough leeway to do some wool-gathering.

axguscbklp 5 years ago |

It is interesting how many of the responses to this here say some version of "our industry is mostly boring". That has been my experience of the industry as well, unfortunately.

d0100 5 years ago |

In a similar venue, I'd really like to get some 4-6h work done per week as freelance projects, but it is very hard to find the kind of work that fit short, weekly hours like this

LeicaLatte 5 years ago |

For double the pay, you can document my code. Triple for unit tests.

lpapez 5 years ago |

The author of the blog graduated high school in 2014. I would really like to see his blog again in a few years to see if he still feels the same way about work. :)

marcodiego 5 years ago |

In a post-scarcity world that is how work should be. People should for pleasure, comfort or luxury, not for survival or dignity.

wreath 5 years ago | |

That's certainly not a world I want to be part of. Seeking pleasure 100% of the time is quite depressing the same way trying to survive 100% of the time is.

guillem_lefait 5 years ago |

This is an interesting experiment and I suspect this could be a very nice way to find co-founders or first employees. Good luck

csours 5 years ago |

What does 'developer experience' entail to you, and how does your company express this for prospective and new hires?

antipaul 5 years ago |

The world is, I think, big enough for such an experiment to bear fruit.

I predict you’ll get some decent offers, so cheers mate and have fun!

collyw 5 years ago |

People who want to only do the interesting work are usually the worst ones to work with in my experience.

ada1981 5 years ago |

I like your attitude on this. I'd have a convo with you and we can see about something to work on.

Kreotiko 5 years ago |

Pay me what you want but possibly in cryptocurrency so I can commit tax evasion should be the title

ronyfadel 5 years ago | |

Haha, I thought of the same thing. Otherwise OP could get paid in fiat and exchange for cryptocurrencies himself.

Kreotiko 5 years ago | | |

Exactly and it would be much easier than finding a company willing to pay you that way. Also considering that currency exchange rates are pretty low these days too.

jrockway 5 years ago | |

You can pay people in cryptocurrency and still report their income to the IRS. I certainly would.

Kreotiko 5 years ago | | |

It isn’t that easy in Italy

avipars 5 years ago |

So true, as long as I'm being paid a living wage I'd rather build skills than wealth

slt2021 5 years ago |

if you do interesting, fascinating, groundbreakng stuff, then presumably this is something of great value and you should own equity.

thats why I think a lot of people become founders.

so if you work for a startup you will literally get paid whatecer and work on cool stuff, haha

mcguire 5 years ago |

One question:

Who are you and why should we care?

martin_a 5 years ago |

Good luck finding a company which will pay you in some obscure cryptocurrency.

amelius 5 years ago |

If more people do this, then this will put a negative pressure on my salary.

kyawzazaw 5 years ago |

Are there software development that pays on issues similar to HackerOne?

brunojppb 5 years ago |

Sounds like Gumroad would be a good match for what you are looking for.

wdb 5 years ago |

I wouldn't know how I can pay someone in cryptocurrency.

xyst 5 years ago |

“Pay what you want” sounds like it’s ripe for abuse.

aronid 5 years ago |

Damn, I would love to have such job, too :)

unobatbayar 5 years ago |

Why no technical interview?

amne 5 years ago |

This guy built bixby. I think that says everything.

rad_gruchalski 5 years ago |

There is something in the second paragraph that made me read it four times, I think, until I was able to read the rest of the post. The author somehow manages to turn around the fact of being laid off into freeing themselves from the "golden handcuffs finally". No matter how I read that paragraph, I can't help the feeling that the author misses the point:

the author did not make that decision, the author had no choice

But what's not landing with me: when the author had the choice, because let's face it, nobody cuffed the author to the desk, nobody forced anybody to do the boring tedious work - the author did not make the decision but rather was prolonging in that, what is portrayed, uncomfortable situation.

The rest of the post paints a portrait of a person who doesn't know what they want. No commitments, no responsibilities, one side wants without being explicit what they can give back.

I think that the key to this post is the paragraph starting with "Accepting a job offer is a bit like getting engaged or married:". But it should be rewritten like this:

> I know (I) will have to make compromises to make it work, but I should not go for it unless I am 100% sure and obviously I should not marry someone I don’t know. If I do, chances are I will end up being unhappy for a long time or staying with them for longer than I want, because I will get used to the day-to-day and the “rewards” while still getting to know them. When I begin to have an understanding of who this person really is, I will already be invested and leaving will be hard. Many never leave(, I never left and I was hurt because I was laid off while unprepared). For a company however, it is much easier to stay with someone who is unhappy in their relationship [with the company itself], because it’s a one-to-many relationship. They have many other employees they can rely on, and an underperforming or unhappy employee can be easily shadowed by better or happier ones without the company suffering. Is it starting to feel dysfunctional?

In that context, the last question could be the writing on the wall. I'm sorry if I come across as condescending, this is my interpretation: this portrays a person who openly admits is not able to make a commitment and is uncertain of their qualities.

The rest of the post suggests the person is looking for a quick fix instead of long term solution. Today they may like this, tomorrow that, today they do something for someone who pays $1/h, tomorrow maybe something better comes through so screw that $1/h. "Didn't like it anyway and you knew the rules so it's your fault".

I like author's rules. Assuming they stick to them. It might work for some companies so good luck.

As a side note: I was hoping to find the info if the person can raise invoices. Obviously, paying invoices in cryptocurrency might not land well with local tax authorities.

mekal 5 years ago | |

"But what's not landing with me: when the author had the choice....nobody cuffed the author to the desk".

Golden handcuffs: a phrase first recorded in 1976, refers to financial allurements and benefits that have the objective to encourage highly compensated employees to remain within a company or organization instead of moving from company to company (or organization to organization) (opposite of a golden parachute).

Surely you can relate to someone taking a job they might not love because it pays more right? I think the main point he's trying to make is think twice before doing a job you hate, just because it pays more. Life is short, your job takes up a lot of your time, so consider doing something you enjoy...even if it pays less. That part at least is good advice I think.

rad_gruchalski 5 years ago | | |

> Surely you can relate to someone taking a job they might not love because it pays more right? I think the main point he's trying to make is think twice before doing a job you hate, just because it pays more. Life is short, your job takes up a lot of your time, so consider doing something you enjoy...even if it pays less. That part at least is good advice I think.

That's correct. I can relate to someone. I repeat from the sibling comment: Maybe the post leaves too much in the unclear. It's not obvious if this is the author reflecting on the past and making up with their inner self or if it is simply taking out on the world. The post doesn't answer any of that.

Because of that, it's not possible to make a judgement why the author did not consider their own advice while at that previous job. If life's too short, why sticking up for until being laid off?

Tycho 5 years ago | |

Golden handcuffs means to leave would mean giving up too much money. I think it’s understandable behaviour. It would be financially irresponsible to quit a job that pays very well, especially if you’re not sure of landing another one. Being laid off, however, takes you out of the dilemma, so feels like a relief.

rad_gruchalski 5 years ago | | |

That's right. Thank you, I know what the phrase means. Don't get attached to me simply using their words to make my point.

The point is: instead of making a change, they waited until laid off. So in the end, it's somebody else's fault, like this: "I don’t want to talk too much about it, but let’s say my boss didn’t care about doing good work and didn’t know what good work looked like."

Maybe the post leaves too much in the unclear. It's not obvious if this is the author reflecting on the past and making up with their inner self or if it is simply taking out on the world. The post doesn't answer any of that.

slackfan 5 years ago |

No.

steindavidb 5 years ago |

tl:dr; "I want to be a postdoc"

Rochus 5 years ago | |

Rarely met a postdoc doing interesting work; it's more about "earning your way" (i.e. to be abused for all kinds of tasks) with various professors in hopes of having your own academic career.

0x7374657665 5 years ago |

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the intersection of "interesting" work and "valuable" work is pretty small.

Rochus 5 years ago | |

Welcome to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

tediousdemise 5 years ago |

How about: Hire me, pay me what I'm worth, and give me interesting work.

Why should we make any compromises on the activity that we'll spend the majority of our lives doing?

ramraj07 5 years ago | |

Because no one owes you a job you like? It's great if what you're good at is what others are looking for. But outside of tech and math that's often a rare proposition.

tediousdemise 5 years ago | | |

Conversely, we don't owe anyone labor for uninteresting work.

I suppose that's the beauty of having the freedom of choice.

corobo 5 years ago | |

It's on you to get the job to be fair. If it's not interesting work then you goofed by accepting the job

Interesting is subjective, you can't make every job interesting to every person.