Ask HN: What's a good low profile job where I can hack at the same time?

[streo]

I'm about to get laid off from a very nice job, but I have a couple of projects I'd like to focus on. Does anybody know of ANY job where I can sit at my desk and more or less hack away at what I really want to work on?

Jobs I've been looking at:

house sitting

night shift security

library desk

etc.

[jraines]

I sell lift tickets at a ski resort. Some of our ticket windows are not at the main resort & get about 5 customers on a slow day.

Last week I built this: www.feedstomper.com

I also get to ski for free at 3 of the top resorts in the U.S. Pretty awesome so far.

[fallentimes]

That's awesome. Have you ever been caught working on your side projects? What happened (if applicable)?

[jraines]

Actually they are cool with it. Me and one other guy request the slow windows, everyone else hates them. He does consulting for restaurants, working up business plans and processes.

[gravitycop]

Off-topic, but is there a reason they don't use ski-lift-ticket vending machines, at least at the slow windows where the per-ticket labor cost of manual vending must undoubtedly be rather high? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_Ski_Area#Recent_developmen...

Eventually, users will be able to track their vertical and lift ride data online and purchase Alta Cards using "ticket vending machines".

[jraines]

We do have them, but a lot of people either don't notice them or would prefer to buy from a person. We also sell lesson packages, redeem special discount vouchers, do will-call, and answer questions.

However, I do wonder sometimes if the offsite windows are economical.

[gravitycop]

Based on what you said in that first paragraph, I predict that in five years the average ski resort will have less than half as many employees as it does today. People may tend to prefer to deal with in-person people, but this competes against the value provided by automation and tele-help (e.g. questions can be routed to centralized, inexpensive call-centers).

[glenstein]

Your feedstomper service rules. I'm using it for Ask Metafilter, and I'll probably use it for a host of others.

[jraines]

Thanks man. I've been encouraged by the response so far, but also nervous. Let me know if you have any problems -- it's worked on all feeds I've tested except one: the friendfeed 'best-of-day' feed, which is both voluminous and heavy on html.

I'm going to make a few more tweaks tonight and try to get some more feedback from HN.

[glenstein]

Hey, me again.

After having used your service for a bit, I wanted to say that the single biggest pain is that title of a feed item looks identical to the description text of the feed above it, so it kind of looks like the description text just has a line break and some more text, not like a new item has started. So the items all seem to bleed into one another.

Perhaps get rid of the "Link" and make the title a link to the item itself? Or seperate each item with an <hr>?

One other thing. Is there a better way to store feeds than feedstomper.com/82.xml? I imagine that will be a ton of processing power and data necessary to store if a lot of people start using your service. And I'm not sure how you handle multiple requests for the same feed, or look to see if people stop subscribing to a certain feed.

Why not something more like feedstomper.com/?feed=http://www.reddit.com/.rss or something? But if you switch to that, will everyone who is already subscribed to 43.xml and 95.xml find that their feeds get broken?

Also, it means that I can just browse around and take a look at 32.xml or 15.xml and check out what everyone else is reading, which might be problematic if people are submitting personal feeds, from say, "friend's shared items" from google reader.

And what about a "when do you want this feed updated" option? Ideally I want it to update just before I (arbitrarily) decide to access it, so the feed is as current as possible despite having only updated once that day.

It's possible that I'm being pre-emptive and you have already thought of these things. You did specifically ask for problems, rather than feature requests.

But I like the service; the few alternatives I know of are not nearly as elegant.

[streblo]

voted up for building something i'll use and for having an awesome job

[myelin]

Or, you could pick up a part time job doing what you're good at (hacking), earn as much money as a full time "mostly idle" type job, and use your actual free time for your projects.

The jobs you mention can't pay much more than $1500/month, which is 30 hours at $50/hour (or much less if you bill higher). One freelance project per month will fund your hacker lifestyle, and will probably look much better on your resumé later on in life.

[omouse]

Where can you find a freelance gig that isn't a total rip though? I'm sure the parent doesn't want to get paid $14/hr hacking on a Windows clone for someone on ELance or Craigslist.

[robertk]

Very nice jobs can be found on elance if you're willing to look a little bit. When I had no reputation, I would bid on the best-value projects (e.g., $500 for an hour's work) with something like:

"Since I have no elance reputation, I am willing to work for free and receive payment after the work is completed and satisfactory."

I never got ripped off, but even if I had, so what? Most elance jobs (the ones I've done) are fixed fee, and the buyer doesn't have to know how many hours (or minutes) I spend. ;-)

[SwellJoe]

When I was in college I worked the night shift at a television station in the tape room, and spent most of my time, four to five hours each eight hour shift, learning UNIX system administration, shell and Perl programming, or writing songs. However, last I heard, stations had started automating away most tape duties and merging the master control and tape operator jobs into one. Master control is not a "lot of downtime" kind of job--there are interruptions every few minutes, though I imagine it's seen some automation improvement since then.

System administration positions often have a lot of downtime, since if you're doing your job well, nothing is urgent and everything just hums along real pretty-like. Night watch in a hosting data center would probably be a great choice. If you're still in school, night shift in a university tech center would probably be a good choice, too (assuming it's open 24 hours...I think most large universities do have at least one center that is open all night).

Finally, have you considered contract work? This is a different model altogether. Instead of taking a job where you can half-ass it, and work on what you really want to most of the time, you take jobs every few weeks where you work your ass off, get paid a metric ass ton (like $100-$150 per hour), and finish the project in a week or two. Then you're free to hack for pleasure for a few weeks before taking on another paying gig. This has mostly been what I've done since leaving college and the television station. I usually billed $1000/day plus all expenses, if travel or whatever was involved, and often made more than my friends who worked full-time at regular jobs...it only takes a few projects for that math to work out.

[andyking]

Radio stations have also become increasingly automated over the past few years and mostly have no-one in the building overnight. (In days gone by, they'd sometimes employ a DJ to play music without talking through the night!)

However, there are still positions where you spend a lot of time sitting in the studio with not a lot to do. Many stations run "network" programming which is delivered via satellite or ISDN from a central hub and employ a "tech op", usually a wannabe DJ who's still in school, to oversee it and make sure the network feed and local ads or other inserts go out on air. It's a job with a lot of downtime and you're sitting in a room full of computers. What could be better?!

[davidw]

Incidentally, this is RMS' (Stallman, of course, not our own 'rms') suggestion for those who are unable to find a day job doing free software: do something unrelated to software (with the idea being the avoidance of contributing to proprietary software) that gives you free time. Hearing that in person from RMS was the beginning of the end of my interest in RMS style free software.

[johnrob]

The other way to look at that is the avoidance of IP conflicts. If your day job is not software related, then you won't have to worry about future IP lawsuits.

[bestes]

I'll be you use a lot of RMS-style free software, though! Just because you don't want to contribute, doesn't mean free software isn't a good thing.

[davidw]

I certainly do use GPL licensed software. The GPL makes sense in various situations, but that's a complicated and long topic.

By the way, I do contribute to free software, and enjoy doing so a great deal:

http://www.welton.it/freesoftware/

(Unfortunately the patches/ and files/ bits aren't working due to issues with mod_rails)

My issue is with the idea that I should under no circumstances work on proprietary software.

[jws]

Interruptions = Bugs

I wonder if you might be more productive by changing your habits. Get up and hack for two hours before going to a job that does not require creativity, then perhaps hack a bit more in the evening as life permits. The advantage here is that you will have plenty of thinking time between execution periods and it will support the quality of your work.

I know an author that does just this, his problem though is that he is too conscientious and competent and keeps getting promoted to positions that require too much creativity. At that point he has to change jobs.

[pg]

Trevor has always said that his dream job was to be a projectionist in a movie theater.

[rjprins]

I've been a projectionist for about 2 years. It's a nice job, but don't expect much time to do other things! Mounting a film only takes about 3 to 8 minutes (depends on if the film roll is already at the right projector or not)

But then you have to start it right on time, check if everything is sharp and framed well, then come back 5 minutes later to check again and preferable come back yet again after another 5 minutes. This is because sharpness, framing may vary or the automatic lens change between commercials and the movie may screw things up.

I worked in a small theater with only 4 screens, but it was hectic none the less. Sure you have some time between films, but usually management finds more jobs for to do. I also often helped behind the snacks counter or had to clean the seats and alleys after a screening.

[pxlpshr]

That seems a little outdated, aren't most theaters using digital HD projectors now? They should be IMO... I've got one in my bedroom and it's why I don't go to the movie theaters anymore. :)

[pmjordan]

They're slow to switch. Mostly because consumer HD pales in comparison to 35mm film, quality wise, when you blow it up to a diagonal of 6-8 metres or so. As far as I know, digital cinema projectors have a "4K" resolution (4000 x ~2000) and are fed the film from a stack of terabyte hard disks. The projectors are SERIOUS money.

[coryrc]

Not really; until recently there were still more new film installations than digital.

The cost of film is on the distributors and studios, but the cost of moving to digital is twice a film projector and falls on the theatre owner (who already has working film equipment). So the distributors (who aren't technically needed in the digital era) are trying to find a way to stay relevant and the studios have been subsidizing the cost of digital installations, so it has been very slow going.

[unalone]

I worked at a movie theater last year. They began firing projectionists. Even then, things go wrong. Films get off-focus, the sound messes up, the display corrupts. Even if they don't people will complain, and then you have to go up and fiddle with it so they stop coming. It's rarely relaxing.

[thomasswift]

For some reason, I always lookout for the cigarette burn to see how cleanly the transition is between the reels.

[0x44]

I wish there was a better way of transitioning the reels, every time the cigarette burns flash I get jerked out of the movie.

[arockwell]

I never even knew those damn things existed until fight club. Now I seem them every time.

[tptacek]

Probably not anymore. They've been squeezed by technology, but more importantly they've been forced to go mobile as a cost-cutting measure by chains, which want fewer staff serving more locations. It might be a really crappy job now.

[antiismist]

What does it mean to be mobile? Do projectionists hop into a car and drive from theatre to theatre kicking off movies?

[SwellJoe]

I suspect he just means that one projectionist runs all the movies in the house. So, a lot of walking around, and not a lot of just sitting beside one projector. A friend of mine from high school wound up in this job, and it sounded pretty awful when he was describing it to me. He seems to enjoy it, though, and apparently does get to watch most of the movies eventually (but, then again, his is a smallish theatre with only a handful of screens).

Since my friend dropped out of college, and his prior experience was working in a toy store and a couple of video rental stores, I would think anyone with a pulse could obtain such a job (he's pretty charming, though, so maybe he did have to interview well to end up running the machines rather than running the register at the concession or cleaning the aisles).

[tptacek]

Yes, that's what I mean.

[icey]

That actually kind of surprises me. I saw Trevor at CES and he looked like a proud parent over his robot.

Building robots seriously seems like it's incredibly fun and interesting.

[pg]

He meant it more in the sense of a dream short term job to make money on the side in college. Building robots is definitely what he's always wanted to do, given the opportunity.

[hugs]

That's my dream - robot building. I look forward to the day that "robot startups" are as trendy and commonplace as "web startups". :-/

[pg]

I've been encouraging Trevor to make this happen, by making his new QA into an Apple II of robots that people can bolt their own stuff onto. So far it's not happening though: the thing only has one hole in its exterior case, for the charger to plug into.

[orionlogic]

a movie he might like Nuovo cinema Paradiso http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095765/

[fallentimes]

I worked at the University library and it was a dream. In a given 4 hour period I probably did 20 minutes of work.

[callmeed]

Front desk at a small hotel.

My wife had this job when we first got married. When she was pregnant, the hotel actually let me cover some shifts for her. It was awesome. I'd bring my laptop and once the check-in rush was over (6pm-ish), it was real quiet and I could hack away.

[timr]

I worked the desk at a mid-sized hotel (50-ish rooms), and it was the worst job I've ever had. The checkin/checkout rushes were bad, but then we had to reconcile the accounts, set wake-up calls, answer the phones, etc. There definitely wasn't any time to relax.

[nirmal]

My parents own a motel and from my experience you're right. I watched the place for them during the holiday so they could take a vacation. I got plenty of hacking done and even created a new blogging system that fit closer to my style of writing.

[enomar]

In college, I worked 2nd and 3rd shift doing tier 2 tech support at an ISP. I spent most of my time doing my CS homework. The guys working 1st shift didn't have that luxury.

Not sure you'd find the same thing...just another data point.

[aminuit]

This is a pretty good idea. You could probably even get a night or weekend shift in a NOC for a small to midsize ISP if you have the networking chops. It usually goes something like this: wait for alarm from monitoring, run a few circuit tests, call upstream provider so they can tell you that they are working on it, inform customer, repeat. On an uneventful night, you can end up with quite a bit of free time.

[hbien]

As a student, I worked as technical support at our libraries to help other students with computer stuff.

For every 4 hour shift, there was maybe 30 minutes of work.

During "work" was when I discovered/experimented with Ruby on Rails, got interested in start ups, read a lot of PG essays, starting hacking on side projects, etc...

Actually, that job is probably why I'm not working for a BigCo.

[cdibona]

Nothing food service related! Think your keyboard is dirty now? Wait until your laptop has been on the salad station for a night or two. Seriously though: The forest service has some -lonely- jobs watching for fires in the national forests. Lighthouse keeper? Night watchman? Lots of night shift jobs should be conducive to hacking.

Seriously consider also jobs that won't be conducive to hack but would be for knowledge acquisition. Get a job at MIT that comes with course audit benefits. A job that requires the hands, but allows you to consume audio lectures on your ipod. Long haul trucker that listens to mit courseware?

[cdibona]

Some of my best times hacking have been on planes. A pal of mine used to fly around the world, selling off upgrades and miles online to cover it. He spent a lot of time reading, the slack...he could have been coding!

[johnrob]

Finding a job that pays the bills while allowing you to hack is an interesting way to become 'ramen profitable'. That might be the ultimate way to hack the funding process...

[pclark]

why not a sys admin? its fairly easy work 95% of the time ...

[lallysingh]

Really? All the sysadmins I've met worked their asses off all the time. Firefighting with too much on the plate & too little time & resources to make it all happen.

The worst is usually the same people get the calls about the primary app server being down as someone's windows box having too many popups.

[pclark]

given the up votes, I thought I'd elaborate.

I spend 3 days a week as a sys admin, and 2 days a week freelance/working on startup. (was freelance mostly, now mostly startup)

sys admin is good work - i'm particularly lucky - my company is very flexible, and Mac OS X.

[staunch]

Totally depends on the company. Some admin jobs are basically NOC and some are more non-stop engineering. Make sure you know which one you're signing up for.

[gaius]

I think sitting in the NOC watching screens and responding to the odd alert might be, but 2nd and 3rd line SAs (and DBAs) are working at at least as hard as the programmers (in fact to borrow an old IBM-ism are "systems programmers").

[c1sc0]

Well if you're in Europe, what about: 'unemployed'? 80% of your current paycheck for the first 6 months, then you really should start looking for something that resembles a job. I know people who travelled the world on 'unemployment'. If you're looking for quiet time, why don't you just skip the social obligation of 'having a job'?

[andyking]

Here's something else from (this part of) Europe: 'bollocks'. For a start, each country has its own rules on unemployment benefits and I've no idea where they pay 80% of your current pay.

Then, at least in Britain, they send you on pretty patronising courses about how to read job adverts, how to go to interviews and so on along with making you go in once a week and give proof that you've been "jobseeking". The job centre'll put you forward for any work going, regardless of whether it's a good match for your skills. If you refuse, no benefits. And for all this, you get the princely sum of £60 a week. Not enough to feed, heat and house yourself, let alone travel the globe.

It's not a free ride by any means, and if you've been through it through no fault of your own it's a pretty demoralising and humiliating system.

[zupatol]

It depends a lot on the country you're in.

In Switzerland, the last time I was unemployed, I got about 80% of my salary, and they would have paid it for two years. You have to 'prove' you are looking for a job, but not getting hired when you have interviews is probably not that difficult. Someone showed me applications from people who obviously didn't want to get hired, they were very colourful and with lots of drawings.

In Belgium I heard you don't even have to prove you're looking, and there's no time limit for staying unemployed.

In France there is the rmi, revenu minimum d'insertion, that gives you money, apparently not even expecting you to find a job. That policy is not as stupid as it sounds, there are serious economists defending it, they call it the negative income tax. It's really not very much money, but I've met plenty of people living from it.

The people who do this are usually not very proud of it and get out of it when they can.

All those systems are being slowly scrapped or made less attractive everywhere. They are leftovers from better times.

[c1sc0]

UK != socialist Europe, I suggest you relocate first, I can only talk about Belgium and I'm fairly sure you can game the system. Many countries do not require these monthly/weekly/whatever checks. 60% - 80% of current pay is pretty standard, but yes: every country has their own rules & after X months you really need to get a job again.

If you're looking for a moral justification, what about this: the baby-boomers set up a social security system that 'conveniently' collapses after they are long dead. The younger generations will not reap the benefits of this system, they will only carry the burden.

So why don't you take some of your tax money back and get a little retirement right now? Or better yet: do something productive outside of the system.

[andyking]

"Socialist Europe"? What on earth are you babbling about? It sounds like a fringe newspaper sold by scruffy types on street corners. Whatever your views, Europe is a capitalist society.

The UK's just as much a part of Europe as Belgium or any other European Union state--in fact, we're one of the few net contributors to the EU. I'm happy here and I'm not planning on going and, erm, sponging off the Belgian welfare state, so I'll respectfully ignore your request that I relocate (!)

I was never taught that going on benefits was a particularly socially acceptable thing to do. I'm glad the system is there for people who are genuinely down on their luck and can't find work, but personally I'd rather take a low-ranking supermarket job than go on jobseekers'. Having something to get up for in the morning makes all the difference, even if it's a rubbish job.

[pmjordan]

Well, you generally are obliged to apply for any job for which they put you forward. Deliberately under-sell yourself and get caught and you can wave the money goodbye. I suspect it's quite a hassle if you're qualified and people are trying to hire you left right and centre.

[bloch]

Well, how about: Not being a leech?

[tlrobinson]

Whatever it is, make sure it doesn't require an IP agreement. The ones you mentioned obviously wouldn't.

[RobGR]

I'm surprised no one threw out some crap about the Four Hour Work Week.

I have at various times applied for work at movie theaters, Kinko's, video rental places, etc. I have not yet ended up working a side job, but I have done contracting work (programming and sys admin) that I ordinarily would not take (windows stuff) when desparate. My impression is that these types of side jobs are harder to get than you think, because employers like someone whose main focus is this job, who is likely to stick around, and who cares enough about the job to try hard not to get fired.

As a result, at one time I thought hard for a while about how to make jobs that were more suited to my needs. Rather than be able to work on my stuff at work, which I suspected would not work, I tried to think of a way I could make rent plus ramen money working one long 12 hour day per week.

The useful result of that exercise is that I thought long and hard about how much money I really, really needed to survive, and cut down my expenses considerably.

The more entertaining result was that I came up with a number of crazy "part-time business" ideas. The one which I partly did and made money on was finding old books at garage sales to sell online. (Very little money.) The one which people like to talk about is my "human powered lawn care" idea: Every Saturday, I and 4 or more one-day-a-weekers would meet up, ride on bikes to our rich green-freak hippy clients, and mow their lawn in a "carbon neutral" fasion, with reel push mowers and other hand-powered implements. I had this pretty well figured out, from the hauling of implements with bike trailers to having one bike with generator you put the back wheel on, to power a single weed-wacker (weed-wackers being indispensible tools of modern lawn care). People like to talk about that idea, but no one wanted to do it with me.

Another strategy would be to seek out a job that is by it's nature part-time, and thus maybe undesireable to the people who would normally do it -- such as assisting in managing a farmer's market stand, which would limited to one day a week. If you severly limit your expenses, you can survive and then invest the rest of your time in your startup idea.

[brl]

Night security at some office building sounds like a dream job to me. I would do it for free and maybe I would even pay to do it since I would get more (computer) work done there than working out of my apartment.

[JabavuAdams]

It sounds neat, but don't underestimate the long-term dangers of sleep-deprivation. You really would need to sleep during the day. Before trying something like this, spend some time at home during work hours to make sure that you haven't been missing out on annoying neighbours and noises while you're away.

I lived in a condo once, next to a construction site. The noise started at 8 am and finished at 4pm. I ran into a woman in the elevator, crying because she couldn't sleep and she worked a night shift.

[mynameishere]

I've done night work and found it easy to sleep during the day. People who have problems almost always make the same mistake: Reverting to a night-sleep schedule on the weekend.

[ralph]

In the U.K. we don't have air-con. It can be hard to sleep during the summer days.

[litewulf]

Its pretty hellish on your social life though...

[sachinag]

This is what Bill James did when he wrote his Baseball Abstracts way back when. I wouldn't generally recommend it as a lifestyle choice, but there's 1) a desk and 2) a general lack of interruptions.

[robertk]

My dad retired but is a night-time security guard in a calm midwestern town. He basically reads all night without interruption. Payment for doing what you'd be doing leisurely anyway. :)

[hotpockets]

I've sometimes thought about how I could get paid 2x, 3x, or more. As a graduate student RA it wouldn't be that hard to get 2x. Just do my computer research at a nightshift security job. But how about: RA+security+baby sitting+baking in my portable easy bake oven!

[markessien]

Take care of paralysed people. They need round the clock watching, so you can sit there nights, drink coffee and code. I used to do that, it made me a good amount of money (from the code I produced during that time).

[wicknicks]

I used to work in a video store. Not many people used to turn up, so had a lot of time to myself. You might want to just jump into the store next door. Would be a good bet.

[sokoloff]

You mean the Quick Stop?

[joshuarr]

Dog-sitter?

[ramchip]

I sold tickets on the phone for a small-medium ticket company. Some nights were busy, but usually I had plenty of free time.

[jwilliams]

Behind the desk at an Internet Cafe?

[zackola]

Librarian +1

[carbon8]

Maybe in a small town public library, but you will be dealing with kids all the time. Otherwise, you won't have time. I spent years working in academic libraries and you are always expected to be doing something. If you aren't working a desk job, then it's basically like any other office job. Even if you have some boring desk job you'll be expected to be filing or labeling something or working on some part of a project assigned to you. Plus, you'll be constantly interrupted. Remember, librarians take their jobs excessively seriously and expect all library staff to do the same.

Also, the title "Librarian" requires an MLS.

[sabat]

Actually I've had that situation several times in technology jobs. It's not so much the job itself as it is the company. I had a great gig at a company in Marin County (read: north of the Golden Gate, laid-back, hippies) where I was able to learn Perl, the WWW, and Unix. Find a non-critical role in a company that isn't audited heavily (non-public company, smaller division of a large company) and hack away.

One option to stay under the radar: use virtual machine to do your coding in. It's not that you have to hide what you're doing, but you might not want to keep answering questions or might otherwise just rather stay underground.

[donw]

In this case, though, you need to be careful if you decide that you want to turn around and sell your 'hacking' as a product. Because you used company resources (at-work time and equipment) to produce it, there is a strong legal precedent allowing your employer to claim ownership of your creation.

I'm in the position of working full-time and starting a company part-time, and am very careful to keep my two worlds separate, even though I'm 99.999% sure that my employer has no interest in attempting to take ownership the product I'm building.

[myelin]

Too true; be careful. You're probably safe using company time to learn (as mentioned in the parent^2), which the company might not actually mind if you put your skills to use for them as well, but if you use it to create your own product, you're on thin ice.

[captainobvious]

Seems like theft that isn't illegal. No thanks.