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I think it's probably fairly random. I.e. you're just as likely to have a "do nothing" job in a FAANG as in some other random corps. But I don't think you can s

I think it's probably fairly random. I.e. you're just as likely to have a "do nothing" job in a FAANG as in some other random corps. But I don't think you can start doing nothing right after being hired - usually people are hired because there's more work in a team that the existing headcount can handle. So, you have to work for some time and then count on "falling into the cracks" - landing in a place where there's less work than people capable of doing it. BTW I recommend against startups (pre big funding). In startups, the owners watch costs like hawks and there's zero chance of slacking off. BTW2: if you're good with people, I recommend a Scrum master role. From my observations over the years, these folks have almost zero workload and absolutely zero responsibility for anything. It's slacker's paradise - you just have to be comfortable with babbling on meetings/calls for the majority of the day.

tupac_speedrap 5y ago
I agree with the Scrum Master suggestion, my Scrum Master pretty much just creates meeting invites for 40 hours a week. We have a lot of contracts where we have Scrum Masters just because we do Agile, usually the non-technical types do it. The irony is that Scrum Masters are supposed to not make the team reliant on them but by having a dedicated role for it of course the dev team will make the Scrum Master do menial tasks, if you don't might dealing with the Agile bullshit full time it's a doss.
- killtimeatwork 5y ago
  > I agree with the Scrum Master suggestion, my Scrum Master pretty much just creates meeting invites for 40 hours a week. Same here! Scrum masters are secretaries on managers' salaries. They're the true winners of the corporate game.
  - cik 5y ago
    I think they get a bad rap. Good scrum masters are worth their weight in gold at scale. The solve all inter-team comms, the bat away distractions, and they generally find the answers, or the people with the answers and get them solved and batted out. Bad scrum masters take up space with reporting meetings that aren't reporting - but who are we kidding. I've been privileged to work with both.
    - pdimitar 5y ago
      For 19 years of career I've never met this unicorn scrum master you are describing. Not a counter-argument, just sharing an anecdote.
      - cik 5y ago
        That's the problem with anecdotes. Over my (longer, not that it matters) career I've had both. I've only had 2 of the unicorns however.
      - rootusrootus 5y ago
        Anecdote -- in the last 15 years I've had exactly one unicorn. They do exist, but they are very rare. And worth their weight in gold, I was really sad to lose ours in a layoff. Scrum masters, project managers, and marketing folks all seemed to be first out the door when money got tight
        xtracto 5y ago
        I thought the same of Project Managers, until I had the pleasure with work with the MissionCloud people in a project that included a Project Manager (in their side). I was amazed at her project management skills, and I really wished I could have her in my team.
    - jablan 5y ago
      They are project managers then, really.
    - NortySpock 5y ago
      If the scrum master has enough rank or credibility + technical experience, they can get tickets routed and convince team leads that "yes this ticket is your problem until you prove otherwise". This probably falls under your "solves all inter-team communication problems" catch-all.
- GordonS 5y ago
  Another vote for Scrum Master here. It's only in the past 5 years or so that I've personally seen it as a job in itself - previously, I'd seen Scrum Master as part of the role of one of the developers or similar. But now in large corps, Scrum Master exists as a distinct job, which appears to require doing very, very little - chairing most of the regular scrum-related meetings (daily standup, planning, demo, and the much loathed retrospective), sending out meeting invites, occasionally futiley butting heads with the Project Manager, and... actually, I think that's it?! I've worked with some good people in the Scrum Master role, but beyond being good people to work with, they are glorified secretaries, and really don't have anything to do all day.
  - pbronez 5y ago
    Why on earth would you have a Scrum Master AND a Project Manager? Makes sense to have a dedicated less-technical person to manage schedules, coordinate with clients and keep people honest on commitments... but dear god why would you ever start splitting that role up into multiple people
    - dannyw 5y ago
      Because sometimes projects are complicated and require lots of business knowledge, and the project manager may be managing multiple projects. The idea of a "secretary" is not a bad one for high performing teams.
      - GordonS 5y ago
        I've been tech lead on projects with as many as 30 team members, and still the full-time Scrum Master had very little to do.
  - kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 5y ago
    Scrum Masters are basically secretaries with more steps
- dustinmoris 5y ago
  100% Scrum Masters! If you are actually a good developer and you get a pure Scrum Master role then it's almost impossible to not get endlessly promoted and praised and possibly paid better than a developer role itself whilst actually still doing fuck all work. Imagine, you do a standup, ask in the end if anyone has any blockers, some developer or QA will say something stupid about the CI/CD pipeline or merging a PR and you'll schedule a meeting with the people who need to follow this up and you could actually throw in some suggestions which only a great developer would normally do and the team will look at you as if you're some bloody hero for DeNiro and praise you as "the best Scrum Master they ever had who actually helps the team and lives up to their role". LOL. Then you know you can go to sleep for the rest of the day and nobody will even notice. The only other thing I can come up with which could be easier than Scrum Master is to apply for a manual QA role. I don't think I have to say more, but essentially, you will look like you've worked around the clock when really you just click a button at the beginning of the day and then go to sleep again.
  - pedrig 5y ago
    > The only other thing I can come up with which could be easier than Scrum Master is to apply for a manual QA role. I don't think I have to say more, but essentially, you will look like you've worked around the clock when really you just click a button at the beginning of the day and then go to sleep again. Laughed out loud at this hahaha. There is one dedicated manual QA guy in my team that perfectly fits this description. And he probably earns more than I do.
fergie 5y ago
+1 for scrum master. Their mere existence is a strong signal that you are in an environment with a high tolerance for bureaucracy and low expectations for delivery.
- SeriousM 5y ago
  This is the best description I've read!
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  Your cynicism is speaking directly to my soul.
gherkinnn 5y ago
Anything *agile related bullshit job will do, really. Scrum master, agile coach, what have you. SM certs are easy to get with minimal investment. A meeting here, some buzzwords there and compile the results regularly in lengthy confluence pages nobody will ever read. Automate much of it and maybe generate a graph or two to present during reviews. OP will have to organise retros, groomings, etc. Invent ever changing formats. Remind everybody to stick to the rulez, but don't do much else. Keeps people on their toes. At minimal effort. Have regular catch-ups with various people. They're essentially coffee breaks, but you pretend to be productive and maybe generate a protocol. Plus you get to suck up to all the important people. Bonus points for regularly posting obnoxious agile methodology articles on your companies intranet or Linkedin.
- allendoerfer 5y ago
  > Bonus points for regularly posting obnoxious agile methodology articles on your companies intranet or Linkedin. To truely leave a legacy, it would be great, if you could also miss what the original intentions and benefits of agile are and go on to raise a few teamleads and middle managers to use your buzzwords in the wrong context. A true master craftsman in this area makes the right people feel more, but the whole organization be less agile. Your work is not completed, until developers visit threads like this to step into your footsteps.
  - exikyut 5y ago
    I am twitching reading this. This is cartoon punching fight cloud meets head-inside-church-bell. This is like the social equivalent of How To Write Unmaintainable Programs ._.
  - 314 5y ago
    Truly this fulfills the destiny of a Thought Leader.
  - tomaskafka 5y ago
    Definitely - in a last job, I wast told to not make waves (about how we could cooperate in a better way) and follow the agile process. I resisted sending that scrum master a first sentence of agile manifesto and left promptly.
busymom0 5y ago
OP does state "I do not want to manage people" which might go against the "you just have to be comfortable with babbling on meetings/calls for the majority of the day". And being in meetings/calls can be a very taxing job. Talking is exhausting from my experience at a call centre.
- hippo77 5y ago
  Listening to other people talk is even more exhausting.
dalbasal 5y ago
Random may not be the right word for it, but I think you're right. Do nothing jobs tend to be snowflake jobs, each one different. A lot also depends of what you consider "work" or "slack." Is low attention meetings work? One good strategy might be the 1/10X programmer. Find a team that sucks, be 10X better than average. Work 1/10 as hard. Spend 2 days on 2 hr tasks, etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
redisman 5y ago
As many of the stories here show, it’s usually easier to grow into a do nothing job. Build rapport for a few years and take on responsibilities that can be automated but don’t tell you automated them. And slip into the legacy projects no one knows or cares about to look at but that need a little maintenance here and there. They tend to build up where you can easily own multiple products that still have to run but don't really need more than a few hours of work per month at most. Just don't document anything about them or refactor them to be easier to look at lol Agreed on scrum masters. I’d rather go hungry than be on calls all day though

tupac_speedrap 5y ago

I agree with the Scrum Master suggestion, my Scrum Master pretty much just creates meeting invites for 40 hours a week. We have a lot of contracts where we have Scrum Masters just because we do Agile, usually the non-technical types do it. The irony is that Scrum Masters are supposed to not make the team reliant on them but by having a dedicated role for it of course the dev team will make the Scrum Master do menial tasks, if you don't might dealing with the Agile bullshit full time it's a doss.

killtimeatwork 5y ago
> I agree with the Scrum Master suggestion, my Scrum Master pretty much just creates meeting invites for 40 hours a week. Same here! Scrum masters are secretaries on managers' salaries. They're the true winners of the corporate game.
- cik 5y ago
  I think they get a bad rap. Good scrum masters are worth their weight in gold at scale. The solve all inter-team comms, the bat away distractions, and they generally find the answers, or the people with the answers and get them solved and batted out. Bad scrum masters take up space with reporting meetings that aren't reporting - but who are we kidding. I've been privileged to work with both.
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    For 19 years of career I've never met this unicorn scrum master you are describing. Not a counter-argument, just sharing an anecdote.
    - cik 5y ago
      That's the problem with anecdotes. Over my (longer, not that it matters) career I've had both. I've only had 2 of the unicorns however.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      Anecdote -- in the last 15 years I've had exactly one unicorn. They do exist, but they are very rare. And worth their weight in gold, I was really sad to lose ours in a layoff. Scrum masters, project managers, and marketing folks all seemed to be first out the door when money got tight
      - xtracto 5y ago
        I thought the same of Project Managers, until I had the pleasure with work with the MissionCloud people in a project that included a Project Manager (in their side). I was amazed at her project management skills, and I really wished I could have her in my team.
  - jablan 5y ago
    They are project managers then, really.
  - NortySpock 5y ago
    If the scrum master has enough rank or credibility + technical experience, they can get tickets routed and convince team leads that "yes this ticket is your problem until you prove otherwise". This probably falls under your "solves all inter-team communication problems" catch-all.
GordonS 5y ago
Another vote for Scrum Master here. It's only in the past 5 years or so that I've personally seen it as a job in itself - previously, I'd seen Scrum Master as part of the role of one of the developers or similar. But now in large corps, Scrum Master exists as a distinct job, which appears to require doing very, very little - chairing most of the regular scrum-related meetings (daily standup, planning, demo, and the much loathed retrospective), sending out meeting invites, occasionally futiley butting heads with the Project Manager, and... actually, I think that's it?! I've worked with some good people in the Scrum Master role, but beyond being good people to work with, they are glorified secretaries, and really don't have anything to do all day.
- pbronez 5y ago
  Why on earth would you have a Scrum Master AND a Project Manager? Makes sense to have a dedicated less-technical person to manage schedules, coordinate with clients and keep people honest on commitments... but dear god why would you ever start splitting that role up into multiple people
  - dannyw 5y ago
    Because sometimes projects are complicated and require lots of business knowledge, and the project manager may be managing multiple projects. The idea of a "secretary" is not a bad one for high performing teams.
    - GordonS 5y ago
      I've been tech lead on projects with as many as 30 team members, and still the full-time Scrum Master had very little to do.
- kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 5y ago
  Scrum Masters are basically secretaries with more steps
dustinmoris 5y ago
100% Scrum Masters! If you are actually a good developer and you get a pure Scrum Master role then it's almost impossible to not get endlessly promoted and praised and possibly paid better than a developer role itself whilst actually still doing fuck all work. Imagine, you do a standup, ask in the end if anyone has any blockers, some developer or QA will say something stupid about the CI/CD pipeline or merging a PR and you'll schedule a meeting with the people who need to follow this up and you could actually throw in some suggestions which only a great developer would normally do and the team will look at you as if you're some bloody hero for DeNiro and praise you as "the best Scrum Master they ever had who actually helps the team and lives up to their role". LOL. Then you know you can go to sleep for the rest of the day and nobody will even notice. The only other thing I can come up with which could be easier than Scrum Master is to apply for a manual QA role. I don't think I have to say more, but essentially, you will look like you've worked around the clock when really you just click a button at the beginning of the day and then go to sleep again.
- pedrig 5y ago
  > The only other thing I can come up with which could be easier than Scrum Master is to apply for a manual QA role. I don't think I have to say more, but essentially, you will look like you've worked around the clock when really you just click a button at the beginning of the day and then go to sleep again. Laughed out loud at this hahaha. There is one dedicated manual QA guy in my team that perfectly fits this description. And he probably earns more than I do.

fergie 5y ago

+1 for scrum master. Their mere existence is a strong signal that you are in an environment with a high tolerance for bureaucracy and low expectations for delivery.

SeriousM 5y ago
This is the best description I've read!
seattle_spring 5y ago
Your cynicism is speaking directly to my soul.

gherkinnn 5y ago

Anything *agile related bullshit job will do, really. Scrum master, agile coach, what have you. SM certs are easy to get with minimal investment. A meeting here, some buzzwords there and compile the results regularly in lengthy confluence pages nobody will ever read. Automate much of it and maybe generate a graph or two to present during reviews. OP will have to organise retros, groomings, etc. Invent ever changing formats. Remind everybody to stick to the rulez, but don't do much else. Keeps people on their toes. At minimal effort. Have regular catch-ups with various people. They're essentially coffee breaks, but you pretend to be productive and maybe generate a protocol. Plus you get to suck up to all the important people. Bonus points for regularly posting obnoxious agile methodology articles on your companies intranet or Linkedin.

allendoerfer 5y ago
> Bonus points for regularly posting obnoxious agile methodology articles on your companies intranet or Linkedin. To truely leave a legacy, it would be great, if you could also miss what the original intentions and benefits of agile are and go on to raise a few teamleads and middle managers to use your buzzwords in the wrong context. A true master craftsman in this area makes the right people feel more, but the whole organization be less agile. Your work is not completed, until developers visit threads like this to step into your footsteps.
- exikyut 5y ago
  I am twitching reading this. This is cartoon punching fight cloud meets head-inside-church-bell. This is like the social equivalent of How To Write Unmaintainable Programs ._.
- 314 5y ago
  Truly this fulfills the destiny of a Thought Leader.
- tomaskafka 5y ago
  Definitely - in a last job, I wast told to not make waves (about how we could cooperate in a better way) and follow the agile process. I resisted sending that scrum master a first sentence of agile manifesto and left promptly.

busymom0 5y ago

OP does state "I do not want to manage people" which might go against the "you just have to be comfortable with babbling on meetings/calls for the majority of the day". And being in meetings/calls can be a very taxing job. Talking is exhausting from my experience at a call centre.

hippo77 5y ago
Listening to other people talk is even more exhausting.

dalbasal 5y ago

Random may not be the right word for it, but I think you're right. Do nothing jobs tend to be snowflake jobs, each one different. A lot also depends of what you consider "work" or "slack." Is low attention meetings work? One good strategy might be the 1/10X programmer. Find a team that sucks, be 10X better than average. Work 1/10 as hard. Spend 2 days on 2 hr tasks, etc.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

redisman 5y ago

As many of the stories here show, it’s usually easier to grow into a do nothing job. Build rapport for a few years and take on responsibilities that can be automated but don’t tell you automated them. And slip into the legacy projects no one knows or cares about to look at but that need a little maintenance here and there. They tend to build up where you can easily own multiple products that still have to run but don't really need more than a few hours of work per month at most. Just don't document anything about them or refactor them to be easier to look at lol Agreed on scrum masters. I’d rather go hungry than be on calls all day though