I think this is the better advice here, and fits with some comments I left elsewhere in this thread about people I know working at MSFT and putting in only a handful of hours a week and still getting raises and promotions.

It's easy to do little when everyone expects everything to take forever because of how heavy the processes are in the organization.

It's not necessarily just processes.

There are also more experienced people who are just very good at certain types of tasks with the result that they can bang something out in a half day and everyone else assumes they must have spent a week on it. They're still generally available the rest of the time but they can produce what's considered high quality work in very little time. Of course, one needs to have that skillset and it helps to be mostly autonomous.

Working in govt is the way to achieve what OP wants. Especially in positions that are unionized. We call these people "lifers" or "gamers". They know how to game the union seniority system. Most of these people know how to phone in their work just enough to not get noticed and hop from one seniority-based position to the next before anyone catches on. By the time they've put in their 25 years, you've got a guy who majored in chemistry getting ready to retire from a senior software dev position. You can't fire them because they're union and it would take 6 months to a year to get all the documentation in order. And by that time, they've transferred to a different position.

Is THIS why Satya Nadella is so keen on getting everyone back in their cubicles. It makes everyone look like they're banging on their keyboards, nevermind that they're sending pictures on .... Teams? Can you do that on Teams? We use Slack. I was curious why he thought, "So much work gets done around the watercooler." I just thought he was a holdover from an earlier time. He's a smart dude, I'm not denying that. And I'm not young, but I'm not really working, usually, when I'm chatting in the snack room.

Maybe I'm too low level, though. That's a real possibility. I 100% admit that.

I think what he meant was that by being together and discussing problems we solve them a lot faster. This is absolutely true in my job. If I didn't know my team loved being remote so much, we would have been back in the office as soon as was safe.

Yes, we do solve problems faster if we're around the watercooler, but we're also miserable, and wondering how to escape. Be careful what you wish for.

pretty sure it's not safe yet. unless you're in israel/new zealand.

> Process is the toxin low-effort thrives on.

I'd argue it's even more sinister than that; too much process can very quickly cause engineers to burn out, and since they aren't reprimanded in any serious way for not doing much work, they can sit and feel depressed without anyone even addressing it.

You've just described my reality

I think it's a reality of most of the giant, brand-name companies. Near the end of my time at Apple, I was certainly underachieving (hence why I quit), largely because I became incredibly burnt out from the process.

> Big, rich, process-driven companies and institutions are the easiest to do the least work in for the longest time.

You kinda need to weasel in there first. When I worked at Intel (& to a lesser extent, Microsoft and IBM) there were literally hundreds of little 5-10 person b.s. boondoggles that did nothing of value but had management that could spin like Rumpelstiltskin, just took the company for a ride. Get several levels of that management going and no one has to really produce anything, they just need a manager to create paper-thin goals and hit those. Why? Because managers want to retire on the job and with enough nepotism it is entirely possible to scratch each other's backs. Problem is, they are very defensive about bringing in anyone that could upset the applecart. If you find one and burrow in, enjoy it!

Yes to university or government jobs as being good places to "disappear" and still earn a decent salary (with generally very good benefits). It's also very unlikely you will get fired once you've been around for a little while.

> An admin role at Google pays more and works much less than an engineering role at a dysfunctional company.

There's two issues here:

1) The op asked for a technical role, so comparing an admin role to a technical one isn't helpful.

2) You're presuming Google is not a dysfunctional company.

I think point (2) is actually the more important one; reading through your comment, the type of "big, rich, process-driven" company is you describe is exactly what I thought of when the gp said "dysfunctional".

The only extra qualifier I would add to the gp is to "look for uncool dysfunctional companies". There are companies (like Google) that have what I would describe as a "cult factor", where they're able to create enough mythos around the brand that "good", hard-working, attentive & talented people want to work there purely based on the "culture" associated with the brand (and also having that brand listed on one's resume). This creates a competitive environment where the scale & bureaucracy might not be sufficient to save you from scrutiny.

The ideal place is somewhere exactly as dysfunctional as Google, but without the same reputation attached to the brand.

At least as far as Google is concerned, this hasn't been my experience. I spent ~6.5 years there working an hour a day at the most (cue Office Space, meeting with the Bobs) and AFAIK didn't raise any alarms. In fact, when I left, my colleagues complimented me on my "work ethic".

It wasn't just me doing that either. Most ppl are too busy focusing on whatever life goals and illusions they've crafted for themselves to really scrutinize what others are doing and even if they realize what's happening, why would they care?

Good to know. I haven't worked in Google myself so I can't comment from first-hand experience, but I've heard from other Googlers I know that this is very much not the case for them. Could be office location/team dependent I'm sure.

I guess in any large enough org you're likely to be able to find this in some areas.

You're not wrong, but I also firmly believe that most if not all dysfunctional companies are extremely process heavy.

I think more dysfunctional companies are constantly working hard and sprinting... in circles.

They are making no real progress, but on the inside they’re all working hard at accomplishing nothing.

There's definitely lots of overlap in the venn diagram of "process heavy" and "dysfunctional", but there are plenty of each category that is not the other. Lots of industries require process, and lots of startup type places are dysfunctional without being process heavy.

Yes, they are either over-heavy on process or over-heavy on micromanagement

Each creates different kinds of misery, and could be exploitable by OP for his goals.

The over-process version is likely more durable (both the org not imploding soon, and the position lasting) and potentially less interpersonal misery.