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Thanks for sharing, I think everyone gets this same idea once you realize office jobs are ~80% wasted time but to most it seems too outlandish to actually try a

Thanks for sharing, I think everyone gets this same idea once you realize office jobs are ~80% wasted time but to most it seems too outlandish to actually try and do it. Similar idea: you could get a remote job and only actually work for something like 2h/day. Would you say that is equally feasible? How did you pick jobs? As in, what criteria did you set and how did you check them?

rsamp 6y ago
Yes I agree its feasible. Thats pretty much the situation I was in before I started taking on more. I was selective in what jobs I took, aside from technical criteria, 1. had to be 100% remote 2. small teams 3. when interviewing, I tried to make sure that the company valued results over anything else. which a lot of remote office companies already are. I remember when interviewing for a job I didn't take they wanted me to install a program that takes constant screenshots of my system. That obviously was a deal breaker.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  Thanks for answering. > Thats pretty much the situation I was in before I started taking on more. During that time, if you didn't work, would it have been possible to pursue a completely different activity such as going hiking for example? Or did you have to be "on standby" at home? Why are you looking for small teams in particular? And how did you make sure that there aren't too many meetings in particular? Sorry to bother you with so many questions.
  - rsamp 6y ago
    I've found distributed teams with members in different timezones already try to minimize meetings and are really good at organizing themselves through email,slack,scrum boards, etc. This may sound like I got lucky finding companies that work this way, but I dont think it is, all remote companies usually have employees and even founders who want some liberty to organize their schedule and only care if work gets done at the end of the week. During what are agreed to be my regular work hours I am expected to answer chats, so hiking would not be an option. When I only had one job I was wasting a lot of time playing bridge online. I was looking for small teams because I was afraid large companies would have more measures in place to avoid situations like mine.
- raincom 6y ago
  Interesting to hear this. An acquaintance worked for a big Telco, and one day his director walked up to him, and asked him "why he was idle yesterday". That's how he found out that every one is being monitored. This was not a remote job.
ryandrake 6y ago
I've had low expectations tech jobs in the past where I could get the results my boss expected with ~10 hours of work a week. The rest was just sitting in the office. And I've had jobs that legit took 40 hours of head-down working (with no horsing around slack time) to barely keep my performance acceptable. I can tell you the "needs 40 hours" jobs did not pay 4x the "needs 10 hours" jobs. It would be tempting to take multiple low expectations jobs if it were allowed by all the jobs' employment agreements.
- rsamp 6y ago
  I completely agree with this.

rsamp 6y ago

Yes I agree its feasible. Thats pretty much the situation I was in before I started taking on more. I was selective in what jobs I took, aside from technical criteria, 1. had to be 100% remote 2. small teams 3. when interviewing, I tried to make sure that the company valued results over anything else. which a lot of remote office companies already are. I remember when interviewing for a job I didn't take they wanted me to install a program that takes constant screenshots of my system. That obviously was a deal breaker.

read_if_gay_ 6y ago
Thanks for answering. > Thats pretty much the situation I was in before I started taking on more. During that time, if you didn't work, would it have been possible to pursue a completely different activity such as going hiking for example? Or did you have to be "on standby" at home? Why are you looking for small teams in particular? And how did you make sure that there aren't too many meetings in particular? Sorry to bother you with so many questions.
- rsamp 6y ago
  I've found distributed teams with members in different timezones already try to minimize meetings and are really good at organizing themselves through email,slack,scrum boards, etc. This may sound like I got lucky finding companies that work this way, but I dont think it is, all remote companies usually have employees and even founders who want some liberty to organize their schedule and only care if work gets done at the end of the week. During what are agreed to be my regular work hours I am expected to answer chats, so hiking would not be an option. When I only had one job I was wasting a lot of time playing bridge online. I was looking for small teams because I was afraid large companies would have more measures in place to avoid situations like mine.
raincom 6y ago
Interesting to hear this. An acquaintance worked for a big Telco, and one day his director walked up to him, and asked him "why he was idle yesterday". That's how he found out that every one is being monitored. This was not a remote job.

ryandrake 6y ago

I've had low expectations tech jobs in the past where I could get the results my boss expected with ~10 hours of work a week. The rest was just sitting in the office. And I've had jobs that legit took 40 hours of head-down working (with no horsing around slack time) to barely keep my performance acceptable. I can tell you the "needs 40 hours" jobs did not pay 4x the "needs 10 hours" jobs. It would be tempting to take multiple low expectations jobs if it were allowed by all the jobs' employment agreements.

rsamp 6y ago
I completely agree with this.