[codegeek]

"Somewhere where I can put the minimum effort and still impress"

Get a Corporate job in a big old school industry/traditional company (e.g manufacturing) where you are just a number. Trick is to find a team where work is minimal. FAANG and startups are out

2nd best bet is to find a Mid sized small business where they don't have much IT but just about enough where you could become a key IC doing 9-5 with minimal pressure. Tech is not their main business.

[extr]

This is great advice. Check out the insurance industry.

- Notorious for it's slow-moving timelines and bog-standard technology needs. Tech is usually "behind the curve", but that's okay! You don't need to be an expert in the latest frameworks here.

- Usually the tech is built around a few core business apps, knowing the gotchas and quirks of these is half the job.

- WLB is great, the industry is full of professionals who "just want to get the job done".

- Great job security. Many types of insurance products are legally required by the government and the industry is fairly recession resilient. Mass layoffs are pretty rare.

- You won't get FAANG level comp, but the major carriers can have competitive pay at upper levels.

- The industry is close knit and domain knowledge is easily transferable. You can find a new job pretty quickly in my experience, often by leveraging your network rather than cold-applyling.

People say it's boring, but I actually find the industry quite dynamic and fun. There are so many types of insurance, it's such an essential and pro-social financial product (risk hedging feels a lot more ethical than lending imo).

[igetspam]

This. I remember being part of an SAP acquisition where they regaled us with tales of decades long tenure, during the pre onboarding meetings. When we finally got our usernames, they were a couple letters and some numbers. We were no longer people. We were numbers in a sea of over a hundred thousand other numbers. The address book felt infinite. Getting changes through took weeks. You could die there without almost anyone noticing because you only needed to put in the most minimal amount of effort. It was truly amazing to see how much of a slow moving human assembly line the place was.

This is your target, if you want to do the minimum and wow people but the "wow" is equally lackluster.

[grecy]

Yep, work for a telco. It can be soul-crushing, but you'll easily fall through the cracks for months at a time.