Ask HN: Are there any low-stress computer jobs out there? - pmoriarty
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shaftway
Always have an exit plan. There's a lot less reason to be stressed about your
job if there are no meaningful consequences to being let go. Having an
alternate job lined up and in your hip-pocket (or at least knowing that you
can easily get an alternate) helps immensely.

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president
Your best bet would be to find a job position that you're over-qualified for.
You'd probably take a hit on salary but at least you could coast everyday.
Alternatively, find a government gig.

~~~
olooney
My experience on the "over-qualified" bit has been the opposite. More senior
roles are more flexible about hours, get more leeway to define their job
description, choose sane projects, and aren't treated as badly by middle
managers and over-zealous PMs.

Also, more money also reduces stress in other areas. It's fairly easy to spend
money to reduce stress in your life, if you have it; on the contrary, money
being tight is a major source of stress for most people, even if they don't
realize it.

If someone find their current job too stressful, it's probably the company and
the specific people you work with, not the level of the technical work. If so,
finding a similar or slightly higher level job at another company with a
better culture is probably the right move. (If I'm wrong and it really is the
technical side of things that are stressing you out, then obviously this
doesn't apply!)

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segmondy
You're as stressed as you allow yourself to be. You can work for a startup or
a video game company and not be stressed while everyone is losing their mind.
It comes down to your mindset. I ask myself, what's the worse that can happen?
After many funerals, job loss ain't so scary. ... and if we die, most of the
time the company carries on as if we never existed.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It can really depend on the culture of the company/team you are in. If your
boss is a psychopath, stress will come no matter what.

Otherwise you are correct, stress is more self controllable.

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zapperdapper
I suspect that stress is "baked into the corporate cake" \- in other words,
most corporations are quite toxic to mental and physical health by their very
nature. A lot of the stress is caused by things like changing requirements,
unrealistic deadlines and poor management - you know, the usual stuff.
Something like sys admin in a University might be less stressful, but it's
been a long time since I worked in academia and I left because things were
changing drastically (and not for the better). If you want really low stress
you might be better off outside of the software industry altogether...

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newdaynewuser
Deadline driven development is leading cause of 90% of my professional stress.
I would understand if deadline was due to some external factors like customer
demands or security vulnerability. But I hate when I ask why such a tight
deadline and the answer is well higher ups fault.

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stinknlinkn
Apply for a job at a place like MIT Lincoln Laboratory and try to get hired
into their ballistic missile defense division. Your primary responsibility
will be to shit-grin back in the face of military commanders from the Pentagon
while assuring them that the next round of multi-billion dollar contracts
headed Raytheon's way are going to keep America safe in the event WWIII breaks
out. One of my former colleagues claims it's the closest thing in corporate
america to "doing gay porno" on the job.

~~~
somatic
lol!

please go on I want to hear more

please

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sarcasmatwork
Stressful for you, may not be stressful for someone else. Also, in my exp your
manager, boss, lead has alot to do with the amount of stress. Also, try to not
let these things stress you out.

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pascalxus
This. It's all about what kind of boss or manager or lead you have.

When you start having phone interviews, make sure you ask the hiring manager
this question:

How many people do you manage? how many people have left your team (for any
reason whatsoever) in the last 12 months. This number is quite telling. Good
companies and good teams don't have attrition and don't have problems keeping
employees.

~~~
president
> Good companies and good teams don't have attrition and don't have problems
> keeping employees.

Not always true. My last team was atrocious but nobody ever left because they
were held all captive on their H1-B.

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natalyarostova
Alternative perspective worth entertaining: how do I personally become strong
enough to overpower work stress.

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drapervapor
Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, MA, is now posting advertisements for new
employees throughout the city's bus terminals since there appears to be no end
to the money that they can steal from taxpayers, regardless of how criminally
negligent they are in spending it. Draper has recently started to heavily
prioritize affirmative action over technical competence in its hiring
decisions and internal promotions. The advantage of this for someone seeking
an "easy job" is that the managers often cannot tell what is real from what is
complete bullshit, including how many hours it took to complete whatever
useless form of busywork that you were assigned for the week. As a case in
point, the kind of junk research that Draper recently asked a Northeastern
graduate student to undertake is described more fully here:
[https://news.northeastern.edu/2013/02/27/a-radar-for-
emotion...](https://news.northeastern.edu/2013/02/27/a-radar-for-emotion/)
That's American tax dollars hard at work folks!

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muzani
I'm in one now. It pays about 25% less than my expectations. I came from
freelancing before this, where I'd work about 4x faster to justify my rates.
Now I just work half my usual pace and it's still double the average
productivity.

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lacker
In my experience, if you are a better-than-average software engineer at Google
or Facebook, and you have an average or better manager, and you don’t have any
ambition to get into management, the job is pretty unstressful.

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scanny
Government, hands-down.

