
Ask HN: Would You Stay at a Boring, Well Paying Job? - MartianSquirrel
Context:
I&#x27;m currently working as a software architect at a very boring, slow moving software company, I spend most of my days having to wait for other people&#x2F;companies or procrastinating which drives me crazy.<p>The thing is: I make between 2 and 3 times the salary I would have somewhere else, I have to travel to very cool places around the world to meet with clients.<p>This allows me to fund my projects and startup (and retirement), but at a cost: My sense of purpose is slowly but surely going away as I spend my days doing things that could be done so much more efficiently but that no one wants to improve. I have not had a real challenge at work for quite a long time now.<p>Questions:
Have you ever been in such a situation?
Have you stayed, why?
How did you weigh the ups and downs?<p>Thanks for the answers
======
i_dont_know_
I had a situation like that years ago. I stuck around long enough to build a
very comfortable cushion, quit, and then spent the better part of a year
afterwards being _very_ picky about jobs and eventually landing the most
rewarding, most purpose-filled job I ever had.

Honestly, it's a luxury very few people ever get in their lifetime: having
enough experience and enough of a financial cushion to _really_ connect with
their sense of purpose without worrying about daily expenses. If this job
gives you that, I'd highly recommend taking advantage of it if you can.

On the other end of the spectrum, staying at a job like that will eventually
whittle away at your sense of purpose as you mentioned, and what's the point
of having all that cash if you spend most of your waking hours feeling
useless? Not to mention how quickly your skillset will become stale if you
lose your desire to improve. At least that's how I looked at it :)

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altairiumblue
Without knowing too much about your situation (and being a bit envious of it),
my initial thoughts are:

\- The company's inefficiency is an opportunity for you - you clearly have
ideas on how things can be improved. Develop those into actionable items,
navigate work politics if necessary, take more responsibility to improve the
company. Your sense of meaning and potentially your salary (if your employer
cares) will improve. If it's really a place where you can't make a difference,
there's too much bureaucracy, incompetence, bad actors, ideas aren't judged on
their merit etc. only then consider checking out mentally or physically. Which
leads me to...

\- All of the down time you have at work is an opportunity to work on other
projects (work related or your own) or to learn new skills.

\- If the ideas above don't work and you have an available opportunity for
engaging work, only then you should consider leaving.

~~~
MartianSquirrel
I do try to fight as much as I can, and do end up rising and changing stuff,
but the company being very bureaucratic and budgets managed by some directors
8500km away makes it a very long and demanding process. At times I mostly feel
like the ones above the ladder fear for their job when we discuss changes and
improvements.

Peter Principle maybe...
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)

~~~
cableshaft
Just learn and work on your own things for a year or two, and then take those
skills elsewhere. In my experience fighting bureaucracy will just drive you
mad and you won't accomplish anywhere near as much as you hope you will.

If this job isn't a field you're deeply passionate about, it's not a fight
worth fighting.

And if it is something you're deeply passionate about, try to learn everything
you can about the industry while you're in that job, try to identify an
opportunity, and then leave and try to start your own business filling that
need, where you can sell your solution to that same bureaucracy (amongst
others). It can be a lot easier to sell them a solution from outside than
within.

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zerr
Sounds like a dream job. I mean, no matter the company, eventually it sucks to
work for others. So you say you have a lot of free time there, along with some
nice perks - use that time to do whatever you enjoy, fund your side projects,
learn music theory, etc...

~~~
zapperdapper
> Sounds like a dream job.

Yeah, I thought that too. :)

I would ride it out for as long as you can, saving as much as you can. The
Cash Cushion you'd get would then give you a lot of options...

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blastbeat
I'm in a similar situation, except making average salary only. Switched from
academia to a software company recently. Right now I'm supposed to grok a 25+
years old project consisting of about half a million source lines of well-hung
legacy "C with classes" code. Of course it is mission critical code, of course
there is no documentation. This is on the one hand challenging and
overwhelming. On the other hand, there isn't much range for creativity, fun or
purpose. One has to rescue that code and keep it alive and running for the
next 10+ years. I know that once (if!) I grokked the stuff, I'm the only one
at my company who can deal with it, meaning I'm stuck with it for an
indefinite time. I try to stay positive and to be patient, because I heard
that such situations are the normal. But my motivation suffers a lot.

The good thing is, the people and labor conditions at the company are super
nice. For me that is the main reason to stay, and probably I will stay at
least until reaching "Senior Dev" status. But I can imagine to switch anytime,
even back to research, and as soon there is some good opportunity (2 times the
money would certainly do it). So I keep looking, applying, and try to
persevere in the meantime.

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rajacombinator
If you’re really making 2-3x and there’s really nothing to do you should just
stay and milk it. Work on your own stuff or job hunt during the day.

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AnimalMuppet
If the money's good, and the management is sane, and you like your co-workers,
I'd think twice before I left. If the money's good, but the management is
bonkers, and the co-workers are toxic, it's probably time to get out.

Boredom is a factor, but it's probably less important than the other factors I
mentioned. I could leave a good place because of boredom (in fact, I may do so
before too long), but I'd leave a lot sooner because of bad pay, bad
management, or bad co-workers.

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mooreds
I remember working at a contract years ago where I was completely superfluous.
I think I'd been brought on to use up budget. I remember cornering co-workers
and pleading for work. The pay was good, but I could feel my brain rotting. I
stayed for a few months but left as soon as I could.

I think you should map out a departure plan, unless you can launch your
startup on the side. In my experience, if you have a certain amount of money,
then a sense of purpose becomes very valuable for personal satisfaction
(whereas if you don't have much money, getting money can provide that sense).

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dv_dt
If you're spending a lot of time waiting, don't hold back from using it to
learn new things, especially those with any sort of link or potential future
use to the current company. Don't worry if it's tenuous. There is direct work
asked of you to contribute, prioritize that, but there is general knowledge
that you and the company can benefit from - even if they don't know how to use
it in the moment.

Another skill is navigating politics of companies and getting to a point where
you can make efficiency changes or being able to influence the path when the
opening comes to make a change.

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sloaken
It is called the 'Golden Handcuffs'

So gold is so good you will not leave. At one company I worked for, the gold
was pretty good, not great. When the layoffs came, about a third of the people
said 'Oh thank GOD! I have always hated this'. For what its worth, that was
not me, I loved the work, hated some politics.

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0xBE5A
Have you thought about going part-time, if that's a possibility at all? You
might be able to do the exact same amount of work you do now, in less time,
with the same pay you'd have working full-time somewhere else.

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phakding
I had such a job. I was getting paid more than 75% over the previous job. I
was so bored in that job that I quit after three weeks, took a huge pay cut
and moved to more interesting work.

I still regret it sometimes. YMMV.

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apohn
I've had a job like this. IMO it's okay to stay in this type of job as long as
you are able to use the spare time and energy for your personal life, side
projects, personal or career growth, etc. If you are forced to sit in an
office and look busy, find another job.

It's also important to leave before you turn into that person who does barely
anything for 10 years and are then unemployable. Unless you are okay with
that. But you are asking on HN, so I'm guessing you are not okay with it.

>My sense of purpose is slowly but surely going away as I spend my days doing
things that could be done so much more efficiently but that no one wants to
improve. I have not had a real challenge at work for quite a long time now.

To paraphrase something posted on HN "Find a way to wind your own gears." I
had a job like yours and I grew increasingly frustrated with the lack of
control and the number of people who actually made things worse in their
effort to control things. This job came soon after a challenging/interesting
but really bad job (crazy work hours, toxic boss).

I was ready to quit the new job, but I had some stuff going on in my personal
life so I ended up finding a career coach to explore where I was, how I got
there, and where I wanted to go. It helped me find ways to wind my own gears.
Part of that was realizing how much of my own growth had some from my own
initiative and learning, not only from my job. I had to find ways to be true
to my values despite being in a job where I felt my values were violated in a
regular basis.

For example, we had a project where we had to process a large quantity of
data. What followed was 6+ months of meetings and nonsense as people chased
after building a big data stack and trying to build something that could solve
all the companies data problems (hint: After more than a year nothing useful
was delivered, but the PowerPoints were amazing)

Partly though the project I thought about how the solution might run on my
laptop and spent two weeks building it in Python. I never told anybody what I
did. But I learned a lot(!!) more about handling large quantities of data that
I ever would have trying to influence that nonsense big data project.

>I spend most of my days having to wait for other people/companies or
procrastinating which drives me crazy.

I think the important thing is to find a way to not let it drive you crazy.
Channel that frustration into something useful for yourself. Lots of people
will say "You have an opportunity to improve things and show them how it's
done." But sometimes doing that is useless and not worth the energy. It can be
like trying to use logic to convince a toddler to change their mind - the
stupid person in that situation is not the toddler!

Also, realize that the vast majority of jobs are dealing with politics,
waiting for other people, etc. It's important to find a way to deal with that
without driving yourself crazy.

~~~
MartianSquirrel
>I had a job like yours and I grew increasingly frustrated with the lack of
control and the number of people who actually made things worse in their
effort to control things. This job came soon after a challenging/interesting
but really bad job (crazy work hours, toxic boss).

I can relate so much, my last job was really fun and challenging, but the
salary just wasn't enough (being realistic, not greedy), landed this current
opportunity and I couldn't refuse at the time.

I'll probably surf until I have a nice cushion then switch full time to
my/another startup.

At least I can spend a lot of time doing certifications and online classes and
keep up to date.

Thanks for sharing with us

~~~
apohn
>I'll probably surf until I have a nice cushion then switch full time to
my/another startup. At least I can spend a lot of time doing certifications
and online classes and keep up to date.

When I was really struggling with my frustrations, one helpful piece of advice
was "Remember, careers are long. And they go up, down, and sideways." Taking a
longer view can help make the current situation more tolerable.

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Foober223
Milk the cow!!!

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jf22
Have you spoken to your supervisor or manager about having to sit around all
day?

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vkaku
No. If the pay is good, use your free time wisely.

