HACKER Q&A
📣 jansan

Do any of you have a completely unrelated second job?


From time to time I become frustrated with the non-tangible nature of the products I work on. Then I start thinking of starting a second, completely unrelated job or business. Something like refurbishing garden furniture, simple gardening, or even working as a janitor has come to my mind.

I read about an entrepreneur who always had the dream of becoming a bus driver. When he had a successful (non bus-driving related) business, he made his driver's licens for buses and started working as a bus driver on weekends.

Do any of you have a completely unrelated side job, that you don't do for monetary reasons? Do you enjoy it? Would you recommend it?

  👤 throwaway0asd Accepted Answer ✓
Primary job is senior software developer. Secondary job (part time) is an IT director in an industry allergic to software at a super large employer.

There are times I hate the immaturity and entitlement that comes with developing knowingly shitty corporate software. I do so enjoy the whining, bro culture, and entitlement in software. In the past when I could feel burn out approaching I would temporarily turn the part time job into the primary employer.

Now I am strongly considering abandoning the secondary job. It’s a career destroyer. The challenge there is that anything technical or complicated is a mystery black box for most people in senior management. Although my job is clearly defined in a manual senior management is required to read ignorance prevails nonetheless. That means I am liable to their ignorance and their assumptions built upon that ignorance despite knowing my job according to the manual. That is a career destroyer.

So, my plan is to disband my department. I will elevate my two subordinate senior managers to positions of higher responsibility with extremely narrowly defined scopes. One will own networks and infrastructure and the other will own application support, products, and knowledge sharing.

I will direct those managers to carry transfer requests on their persons at all time. If senior leadership asks them to do something stupid they are empowered knowing, in advance, they can work in a different segment of the business. Then I will leave.