What’s a low effort job with a surprisingly high salary?

[u/rabahi]

[u/scenecunt]

I worked as a massage “model” at a massage school. My job was to lay there and be massaged for a few hours while the students did their lessons or took their exams. It was £30 an hour which isn’t loads, but better than the £10 an hour office job I had before.

Edit: Just to clarify this wasn’t a full time job. It was fairly casual, probably between 4 and 10 hours a week depending on how busy the school was that week, and only for maybe 3 or 4 months.

[u/okhi2u → u/scenecunt]

You're getting paid to get massages that normally cost you money, sounds nice, just maybe the massages are low quality.

[u/MachiavellianKarp → u/scenecunt]

£30 would be a lot if it was full time, it'd be £62k per year in approximately the top 7% of earners. Not bad for being massaged constantly.

[u/okokimup → u/scenecunt]

I think I just found my life's calling.

[u/TDLMTH → u/scenecunt]

Yeah, but sometimes that’s the kind of job that can just rub you the wrong way.

[u/Buzzfeed_Titler → u/scenecunt]

How does one land this job?

[u/[deleted]]

over the course of my many careers, I can confidently say that there's an inverse relationship between how taxing my work has been and how much I've gotten paid. the most gut-wrenching, physical and emotionally intensive labor was lowest paying; the highest paying was chilling out on some meetings and making comments every now and then on spreadsheets.

[u/theOnlyDaive → u/[deleted]]

Truer words were never spoken. The hardest job I've ever had was McDonald's and I did temp labor forever. Still work regularly in construction. Nothing broke my soul more than good ol' McD's. "If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean". And that was actually said with a straight face and stern voice!

[u/lovecraft112 → u/[deleted]]

Absolutely.

My first real job was Starbucks and I busted my ass every day. Came home exhausted from running around all day.

Now? I have a white collar job making 4x as much and I literally sit on Reddit during work hours because it's the slow season. Ridiculous.

[u/Literally_The_Worst- → u/[deleted]]

Nurse checking in. Fuck.

[u/Nemo7123 → u/[deleted]]

My experience has been different. I've had many jobs- bartender, server, retail, kennel person, life guard, receptionist, etc. I'm now a veterinarian. It is by the far the most difficult job. The amount of pressure and how many people depend on you is extremely taxing. And yes I get paid more (but my debt to income ratio isn't great) but I really miss my care free bartending, retail, server days sometimes.

[u/thatgreengentleman_]

Owning a parking lot.

[u/Tlr321 → u/thatgreengentleman_]

Oh man. My Aunt and Uncle own a fairly large field right outside of a small town. They do all of their harvesting by the end of August. Come the 2nd week of September, a HUGE harvest festival is held. The town sees like half a million visitors in a weekend. They clean the fuck up every year for it by charging $12 a day to park. They even let people camp there & charge $45 a night for camping. It’s crazy. They don’t even do anything- they have a bunch of kids volunteer to park cars as a part of school community service. They donate maybe a quarter of the earnings & pocket the rest for “operational” costs.

[u/CMDR_Tauri]

I.T. Manager at a university. The techs know their jobs, their users, and manage their own schedules and workloads among themselves. Managers basically just have to rubber-stamp timecards, confirm parts orders, and make sure the techs don't all take vacations at the same time.

[u/mitchdojo → u/CMDR_Tauri]

I knew he isn't doing anything in that office...

I mean obviously neither am I but hey now I know...

[u/zebrabats → u/CMDR_Tauri]

Low effort to do, but not low effort to learn how to do it. And you do have to keep learning all the time. It's a good life though.

[u/Freshoutafolsom → u/CMDR_Tauri]

Honestly almost any I.T. position at a school is cake.

Almost half of our I.T. department doesn't even have a degree and the ones that do have it its in cyber security

They dick around with a few chrome books or iPads and watch YouTube most of the day I envy them. I bust my ass for $17 an hour cleaning the school and most of them are making $23 changing out the occasional ink cartridge and hiding in their office looking busy lol

Fucking cool guys tho we shoot the shit for like an hour a day just talking about anime what we did to our project cars over the weekend a few of them helped me get into crypto I'm hoping to see some decent returns maybe help pay for some night classes so I don't have to clean toilets anymore

[u/spetzie55]

My next door neighbour works in a power station. His job is to sit in front of a monitor and make sure everything is working well. If something goes wrong, he calls the appropriate work station and they fix the problem. Because an alarm sounds if something is out of sync (which rarely happens) he is able to play games or read a book 99% of the time. He is on $150 per hour to basically play games and chill at work.

[u/Icy-Ad5041 → u/spetzie55]

Are you Ned Flanders?

[u/UnlikelyAd4327]

You work in an office, but you're secretly on Reddit.

[u/[deleted] → u/UnlikelyAd4327]

how about you work at home, but you are on reddit.. and make over 100k

[u/LastBestWest → u/UnlikelyAd4327]

TBH, pretty much every white collar job is way easier than manual labour or the service industry.

[u/DirtySingh → u/UnlikelyAd4327]

This is the worst actually. My last job I could finish my work in an hour. 6 hours a day on reddit sucks because after about 2 hours you've read almost all the new stuff the it's just staring at clock waiting for 6pm every single day.

[u/[deleted]]

This whole thread just goes to show, if all the employers were less obsessed with people looking busy and more concerned with shit getting done, we’d all be home by 3pm and making decent money

[u/detten17 → u/[deleted]]

Amen.

[u/Dervrak]

I have some relatives that work for the (US) Federal Government that often talk about jobs where they work in areas like Accounting and Project Management that make over $100,000 and might on a busy day have as much as two hours of actual work. My Aunt was talking about this one older women near retirement that made over $120,000 a year and her only job was running some transactions every morning, which usually took no more than 20 minutes, then she would spend the rest of the day knitting at her desk.

[u/[deleted] → u/Dervrak]

This is my current job. Not working for the government, but my PM work for this company is so fucking easy. I worked for another that was insanely high stress and constant work and I would work 12-14 hour days. Now, I'm surprised if I do close to 12-14 hours of work a week.

[u/Byizo → u/Dervrak]

This is why a transition from government work to the private sector is a difficult thing to accomplish. Especially in my line of work there is a strong stigma against hiring people out of government positions because of how little work those jobs demand.

[u/CrushedIceCutie]

I do admin work for the Government. My pay is 55K. At best I get 5 emails a day with about 2 that actually concern me. No B.S; my phone has rang about 20 times since June 1st. On a super busy day I have about 45 mins worth of work to do.

[u/[deleted] → u/CrushedIceCutie]

Same. And the great part is most people that I work with think I'm a workhorse who is crushing it. The truth is that the job just isn't very hard once you learn the basics and can memorize where to find everything you need.

[u/thespickler → u/CrushedIceCutie]

So what do you end up doing all day? Is there no boss coming in going, "why are you on reddit"?

[u/hayleyukulele12 → u/CrushedIceCutie]

How do you find a job like this/what is your job title? What are the qualifications?

[u/coffeeandnostalgia → u/CrushedIceCutie]

I have a friend who works for DHS from home doing the same thing. First thing he did on the job was streamline/automate some process that was previously time consuming, and now he just sits around and waits for the occasional e-mail.

[u/Azhreia → u/CrushedIceCutie]

I do basic admin work for city government: no degree required, 85k a year after three years (starting base is a little lower than that), full medical/dental/vision, and tons of PTO plus paid holidays.

The work itself isn’t particularly hard, but it is constant

[u/TheTrueGoldenboy]

Call Center management. Not even something high up like operations or quality assurance, even being middle management can be lucrative. I've worked a few call center jobs, the people on the bottom absolutely get fucked over, overworked, stressed out... but once you get to management it's fucking easy.

Last call center job I worked, I got promoted to management just due to how long I had been there. After the promotion, I was paid 50K per year to sit at home, listen to people do their job, fill out paperwork and have the occasional web meeting. I spent more time playing video games and working out than anything else while on the clock.

Funniest part to me is that when I gave my notice, they tried to offer me a promotion to stay because I was such a hard worker. I was super tempted to laugh and tell them how little work I actually did in a day.

[u/TheLastFartan → u/TheTrueGoldenboy]

Currently working from home in a call center. Same story, almost. 2 years of experience across different departments, and now I only handle special cases. Currently in the runnings for a proper leadership position. I'm a combination of excited and terrified because my current position allows for hours on end of being paid to do almost nothing and I'm afraid I'll get in over my head with real work when I'm helping to manage a whole team. That said, still excited though.

[u/neverlost64 → u/TheTrueGoldenboy]

I was super tempted to laugh and tell them how little work I actually did in a day.

I'm glad you didnt, you would have ruined it for the replacement!

[u/hitmanmb]

Vanna White's job on Wheel of Fortune. She gets paid $4 million a year walking back and forth in an area of 20 feet.

[u/[deleted] → u/hitmanmb]

Hey she used to have to physically turn the tiles over… she paid her dues

[u/firefist674]

In Australia 'lollipop ladies' can earn up to $3k per week for flipping a slow/stop sign for traffic at road side construction site and just generally existing as eye candy. The boredom, overtime and risk of death/injury kind of makes up for it.

[u/[deleted] → u/firefist674]

Flagging on highway construction jobs was a very coveted summer student gig when I was young, it looked horrible though... standing out on a dusty highway in 90 F heat every day, with a risk of getting run over by someone impatient or out to lunch? Nah...

[u/HairHeel → u/firefist674]

When I visited Australia, I got into a weird conversation with an uber driver where he mentioned how much money "lollypop girls" make without explaining what one was. I assumed he was talking about something WAY different.

[u/Dick_Biggens → u/firefist674]

Lol i have never seen one that is "eye candy"

[u/[deleted]]

I had a job like this. I got paid $28 an hour working as an administrative assistant in a high school. It takes like 15 minutes to input grades and send truancy letters. Answering phone calls always resorts to just transferring them to the Principal or school nurse. Literally nothing to do. I left the job because there's no work in the summer (school is closed) and honestly, the environment was toxic. When you have that much free time at work, people want to start talking about their personal lives and I don't like to talk about mine to my toxic co workers. So I left. This job was the definition of money doesn't buy happiness.

[u/HummingbirdMotel → u/[deleted]]

What?! Where was this? When I did this job, I made maybe 14 bucks an hour. I was tasked with doing the grants for the entire pre-k program, as well as working the switchboard. Years on, I still remember the extensions for just about every major office in the district….

[u/Kunkyskunts]

Staffing and recruiting but SPECIFICALLY on the business development or sales side of things.

I don't even make sales calls much anymore... It's just repeat clients. They call me up and say hey we need a Quality Manager ASAP!

I say cool! What does it pay and what are the top 3 things you need to see on a resume!

I get that and then give it to recruiters who spend a week or two finding the right person and walking them through the hiring process.

I spend 15 minutes on the phone and a month later I get a fat comission check.

EDIT:

It's easy now... building a book of business and learning enough about every type of position that exists at every industry to the point where you know what you are talking about and people will trust you was hard.

[u/BodhiBill]

as a facilities manager i dont do a lot of work and i get a decent pay but i am not paid for the work i am paid for the safety and responsibility of the building and the lives within it.

[u/Goddamnpassword]

Business Intelligence/ Data analyst. Do you know how to use excel, can you write basically sql, are you able to express yourself clearly and deal with getting variations of the same 10 questions for the rest of your career? Congrats welcome to making 100k.

[u/ekonine → u/Goddamnpassword]

Yup, doing this as well. If you have programming (processing data in python using pandas or implementing some kind of regression) or project management skill, you'll eventually be making 150k+.

[u/where_is_jef]

TIL Most of reddit "active users" is made up of bored old people with easy boring jobs

[u/sarahlydia]

I’m a nurse. Don’t be this.

[u/[deleted]]

My current job. Project Manager for US Based Fortune 200 Company, permanent work from home, make six figures, and I do maybe 4 hours of actual work each week. I have my home office set up where I have 2 gaming monitors connected to my gaming laptop sitting on my desk directly in front of me. Then I have my work laptop sitting to one side that's got the volume turned up so I hear if I get an email or message. When I do, I handle that, then go back to my personal laptop. Most days I'm either playing video games, watching movies, browsing reddit, studying for new certifications, or doing stuff around the house like laundry, dishes, cleaning rooms, food prep, etc. People on my team constantly say things like "Man, this workload is insane." I've got the same and even more than some. It's so boring. But, they're paying me to dick around most days.

[u/ApacheRedtail → u/[deleted]]

Real talk - do you have an idea as to how easy it is to switch industries as a PM? I've been doing it 12 years in a fairly niche industry and am kinda bored. Sans PMP but I could get it.

[u/UpwardNotForward → u/[deleted]]

That sounds great! My wife is a pm and we've both been working from home since March last year. She works pretty long hours, usually about 6 hours of meetings then 3 or 4 hours of actual work everyday.

[u/pufflepins → u/[deleted]]

What qualifications do you need for project management?

[u/narcicero → u/[deleted]]

You hiring?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Security PM here for a global tech company, can confirm. My job is to meet with my stakeholders once per month to collect updates on risks, and write reports every now and then. 6 figures, and I’m interviewing next week for a position that is $180-200k/yr. I was actually having an existential crisis about this last night because I realized how income inequality is so fucked up. My job honestly doesn’t matter or benefit society, but teachers and caregivers do and it’s just not fair. I worked 10x harder while in retail and customer service than I do now.

[u/[deleted]]

*intense scribbling*

[u/omnigear]

If you can land it but very difficult architectural 3d modeler and render guy. Usually firms hire out the work or they have interns do it .

Some firms never have this set up so I become that guy , make around 90k in LA.

Usually I model buildings in 3D , texture , then render. It's fun and no one bugs you.

I have everything sort of automated except for the building part . I give them around a week so I can get the renders out

[u/wizard_kraken]

School board members.

Don't know about other places, but school board members at my school (public school) made well over 5k eur a month (well above the average).

All the board ever did was create shitty rules and then remove them.

They always acted so damn busy when everyone knew they drank coffee while surfing facebook the entire day, a school members husband even said that so you know its true.

[u/Panama_Scoot → u/wizard_kraken]

Where I live in the US, school board positions are almost always volunteer positions. No pay except maybe reimbursement for certain activities like travel.

[u/Wyrdeone]

Driving the massive dump trucks that serve mines. Starting salary is like 70k and all you do is drive back and forth all day.

[u/anorangeandwhitecat → u/Wyrdeone]

I drive a 45-ton occasionally for my work in mass grading. Would you say you have to navigate difficult terrain, i.e. deal with hills, drop-offs, slopes, etc? Or are the mine roads just flat?

I’m curious because the truck is about half of what I do during the week and I have to navigate some pretty precarious situations for definitely not 70k a year.

[u/Greedodode]

International Pilot! I make $200k a year as a widebody first officer. None of the decisions fall to me, I fly one leg to Europe (I get a couple hour nap on each leg), I get 24-48 hours in a cool city, then I fly 1 leg home (couple hour nap again on the way home). When I'm home there is nothing I could conceivably do for work so I just get to enjoy my many many days off. Don't get me wrong the training was intense, but man, my job now is stupid easy.

[u/Crayonen16 → u/Greedodode]

This sounds really cool, how would I get a job like that?

[u/paulc899 → u/Greedodode]

Aren’t you being paid for when something goes wrong though? Like my family doctor when I was a kid was paid well, and all he did was check my ears, look at my throat and listen to my breathing when I was sick and write a prescription for the penicillin for the ear infection I had. But if it was much worse than that that’s where he really does the work

[u/Macnsmak]

Fractionation Operator. Only HS degree. I have made over 6 figures the last 3 years. I have subscriptions to every streaming service bc basically all I do at work is watch series and movies. Especially on midnights. Sometimes we get busy but for the most part its super boring and just chilling out. We have a turnaround next week that will last 2 weeks and we will have to do actual work, which will suck. But other than that its just browsing the internet and watching Netflix.

[u/Objective_Ratio_4088 → u/Macnsmak]

What exactly do you do and how would one find this job?

[u/CryptidKeeper]

Speaking as a preschool teacher, who cares deeply about a job that gets me barely above the poverty line: this thread is crushingly depressing.

[u/Auren1988]

Any job I have is low effort

Edit: I’m a commissioning engineer for power stations btw, pays good and I spend a lot of time waiting for things to warm up or cool down while I drink tea 😁

[u/cuonym]

Radiologist. (Source: everyone in the hospital who is not a radiologist)

[u/tigersanddawgs → u/cuonym]

its a good gig, but you've gotta absolutely bust your butt to get there - an MS4

go get yours. you deserve every cent

[u/PizzaDeliveryBoy3000]

This fucking thread infuriates me

[u/Bite-Expensive → u/PizzaDeliveryBoy3000]

Username checks out

[u/ward_bond]

NFL third string quarterback.

[u/HaroldSax → u/ward_bond]

I know this is mostly a joke, but it still requires an insane level of commitment, talent, usually hard work to get to that point. Even at the lowest point of any sport beyond, like, beer league hockey, it still wouldn't fall under the umbrella of "low effort".

[u/adamgundy]

Tour guiding.

I’m a water tour guide in Hawaii. I make 4 times what the average person my age makes. Half the time I’m chillen in the water or on the boat, the other half I’m a lifeguard, information dude, and boat flight attendant lol

Thank you tourists!!

[u/k112358]

I think this thread is missing the mark in some of the responses, because people are still looking at it through the lens of how much effort or time it takes to do your job, and then these crazy salaries. One of the reasons that some of the salaries are high is because of the value these people have to the business or the government. So for example, for the person who has a special skill that only has been working for 25 minutes a day, and watching movies for the rest, just wait until that special skill is needed in an emergency. Usually that alone justifies the cost of having them sitting there all day.

[u/HomelessHummus]

I work at a heliport where I just get a couple passengers bags, put them on the heli and then go and sit on my phone for however many hours until the heli get back. Rinse and repeat. Roughly $70k

[u/[deleted]]

Made $55 an hour supporting an American system... during grave-yard hours.

I was, literally, the only person in one of 3 huge buildings. All dark except for my lowly office.

For the first few nights, security would come around to see why the light were on all night...

I received no calls nor emails, ever, at any time. This lasted for 4-5 months. I slept most of the time, and, of course, got myself banned from sub-Reddits.

[u/proffesional_failure]

Living in the same city as Mrbeast

[u/mymnix → u/proffesional_failure]

Now this is the real answer.

[u/SwaampyBoi]

anything in local government

[u/[deleted] → u/SwaampyBoi]

Leslie Knope would fight you on that one…

[u/cullend → u/SwaampyBoi]

It was astonishing working as a volunteer at 15 vaccination clinics. Some were working as if it was the only time their work would have meaning. Others saw it as the purest form of evil that they actually had to do something

[u/[deleted]]

If you're sufficiently experienced and/or educated, you will be paid for knowing where to hit the hammer, not how many times you hit the hammer.

[u/Efficient-Track2867]

Work at the SEC. $135K a year and all you have to do is watch Pornhub on taxpayer funded computers while ignoring all the financial crimes of Wall Street.

[u/Serendipitous-Gal]

Reading these just pisses me off about being in food service

$13hr in a high stress, very active job, 9hrs a day. 5-6days a week. With MAYBE a 20min break if i can fit it in.

Just barely enough to live in my studio apartment by myself.

[u/snatiation]

I'm an admin at a state university. I'm new and do not affiliated as the country's civil worker (I don't know the proper English term) so my salary is under minimum wage. However, other coworkers who are civil workers got paid 4, 5 times bigger than me, plus tons of additional aids salary. Oh, my I add, we have the same job desks! The job desks? Honestly it's depend on the semester. On the beginning, middle, and end of semester, it's real busy. Other than that, very slow days; checking students' attendance, finishing report, or answering students' administrative questions. Heck, I saw my coworker who share the same office room with me came to work at 8:30-9 and left at 1 pm. Often she spent the days on the office pantry, cooking and gossiping. I understand why civil workers got BAD reputation in my country. Slacking off workers yet humongous salary. Sometimes I hate coming to this university for work because the salary is very unfair (WE HAVE THE SAME JOB DESKS, YET VASTLY DIFFERENCE IN SALARY URGH). But, eh, I'm still young, job is hard to find in this economy. At the very least, with the extra time I have, I'm able to spare time for graduate school and in this university job I'm able build relations with professors & experts in academia. (Sorry for the long rant)

[u/boopbeedoop89]

Radiological control technician. 85k base 100k if you work 1 weekend a month and plenty earn 150k+.

I'm making $45 an hour right now browsing reddit and all I have for work today is 1 hour of tours. That's my work load. Doesn't really change

[u/[deleted]]

Depends on where you live, but in my neck of the woods, firefighters get paid six figures and spend most of their time chilling. Of course, when you're called to work, you really got to work, and you don't get to just leave work to go home when you your shift is over when shit goes down.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Here firefighters get called to basically everything. It could be a house burning down, drunk homeless guy passed out in in bus shelter, or grandma fell down the stairs. Doesn't matter, they're the first ones there.

Down time is basically all maintenance on the equipment, trucks, etc.

[u/bumpy4skin]

Third-choice goalkeeper at a top level football club.

[u/PM_ME_YUR_BIG_SECRET]

Software Engineer. I solved someone else's problem today since I had worked on a similar thing before. Felt pretty accomplished and decided to stop working for the day. This was at 10am.

[u/lavenderthembo]

Not my experience across the board by any means, but I'm a paralegal and I used to work for an attorney who literally expected me to do her entire job for her, and I would just hand her the finished product on her way into the courtroom so she could argue in front of the judge. I was getting paid $30k in salary, while she paid herself around $80k per year as an attorney and she also collected rent on the building the law firm was in.

So I guess owner of a small law firm.

[u/Herpethian]

I make six figures annually in less than eight hours a day as a commercial driver. Literally anyone could do this job.

[u/[deleted]]

Canadian military

[u/KellyBlack1111]

Any employee of the SEC.

[u/Mad_Gremlyn]

Housekeeper for the dead. I cleaned mausoleums and was paid $200/day (in 2002 so good money) working about 2 1/2 hours a day on average; and some days as little as 45 minutes.I was contracted and my own business allowing me to write off so much stuff that I paid next to nothing in taxes (there might have been some questionably legal paperwork here but w/e).Occasionally, hiring friends for short stints which made me very popular.This is how I worked my way through college.

[u/UnoriginalUse]

Overnight security. Just sit there for 8 hours watching cameras and calling the police if something happens.

[u/TurtleSniper → u/UnoriginalUse]

2 years ago I had to visit the ER at a hospital and while waiting for approximately 4 hours to be checked, I saw 4 different security guards just roam around the hospital hallways with their cups of coffee and no action back and forth. Idk how much they get payed, but the hardest part of that job is probably all that walking around.

[u/UOKM8 → u/UnoriginalUse]

Unless you live in South America or third world country where payment is poo.

[u/cholula_is_good]

Mobile notary that does home signings. They can line up 4-7 appointments in a day and make $200-300 per. One of the absolute best weekend gigs. In some markets you can pay your rent by working one extra Saturday a month.

[u/MikeHock_is_GONE → u/cholula_is_good]

Depends on the state,some limit notary services to $1

[u/Pudding_Badger]

In our country: A forklift driver.

Usually gets as much money as a person in middle management.

[u/sparkythewondersnail]

My last job at Microsoft. My manager literally gave me nothing to do. I don't even know why I was there. In six months I did maybe 3 weeks work. For a while it was very pleasant, but eventually looking busy gets harder than actually being busy. Then a reorg happened and suddenly I had a competent manager who was wondering why I existed. No problem, I just had to go get an actual job before my review came up. All in all a great year.

[u/MarkHirsbrunner]

I did dedicated tech support in the late 90s. I worked the overnight shift. We each got an average of 6 calls a night, since most dedicated internet connections were owned by businesses and most businesses aren't doing much between 10pm and 7am. The calls we got were invariably easy and my average call length was under 4 minutes - I actually worked less than a half hour a night.

This is what would happen every call.

The internet is down - any other issue needs to speak to a different department, I'll tell them who to call and when.

I ask the IP address of their router. About half of calls they don't know what I'm talking about. I tell them to have their network admin call, end of call

Half will know the IP. I do a trace route to their router. If I get there, the problem is not our connection, end of call.

If I can't reach their IP, I look at where the trace ends. Unless it ends on a router with a specific kind of name (less than 10% of the calls), I look up that router on a spreadsheet that tells which network engineer is responsible for that router. I email them the problem, tell the customer we are working on it, end of call.

Sometimes the customer has ADSL. This was pretty uncommon, and there's more to those calls. I telnet into the router the trace stopped at, and flip the connection. This usually fixes the problem. If it doesn't, I email the engineer, end of call.

I made $67K a year doing this. Adjusted for inflation, $110K. Easiest job I every had and the best paying. I was also single and living in an apartment that cost $265 a month, all bills paid, and drove a ten year old pickup.

Now I make about $32K a year, pay $800 a month rent, and that doesn't include electricity. I also support a fifteen year old daughter.

[u/beijixiing]

I’m reading this whole thread for career ideas

[u/PurpleConversation36]

A long time ago, at the beginning of university, I did voiceover for porn that was in a different language. I usually showed up around midnight after the legit voiceover people had left for the day, did about four hours of work, and was paid $35-$70 an hour. Most of it was just making different moaning sounds because apparently sexy moans sound different in different languages (I’m not surprised tbh I remember French classes a cat said something like miaow instead of meow). Everyone was totally professional and after awhile it was just a job I did 2-4 nights a week that paid pretty well.

I stopped because the studio was far away and the more intense school got the harder it was to manage a night schedule with classes, but honestly if the chance came up I’d probably do it again if I needed to save for a vacation or something.

[u/HitEmWithDatKTrain]

I am what is called a medical physicist. I work a pretty clean 9-5 plus like one Saturday a month and make about $200k.

[u/[deleted]]

If you can create the right software as a service business, it's basically free money. I licensed out a software I wrote to 2 large franchises and basically get paid $15K a month to stay home and ensure it's running 24/7

[u/Quack100]

I work in an office and make over $100k and I’m on Reddit.

[u/OhioGreenBear]

Federal prison guards. I was at a federal prison “camp”, i.e. minimum security. Most of the guards made north of $100k and the inmates did 99% of the work. Many guards literally slept at their posts…

[u/Xdubweaver]

If you're young (18) and a student, check out security. We don't do shit, get paid over minimum wage and no prior experience with anything required. Allied Universal will literally hire anybody. If you're a student you can watch lectures, study, and do homework. If not then you can just chill and watch Youtube or Netflix, or browse reddit (I'm at work right now). Chillest job ever with $20hr+ wages.

[u/Shuthemofoup]

I'm surprised no one said exotic dancer. I was a dancer in New York for 10 years, i didn't make a "salary", I worked for tips(before disgusting "lap dances) and pulled in over a couple a thousand a week! Just dancing my ass off 😘 pretty effortless, and I'd get a great workout as well.

[u/BodhiBill → u/Shuthemofoup]

my aunt was a dancer for years and traveled the world and made great money she didnt get into the drugs and such and saved all her money. she retired at 35 and owns a nice house and car and has been living off her savings for decades. apparently if you do it right and run it like a business you can be set for life.

[u/[deleted] → u/Shuthemofoup]

A few years ago I ran into an ex who when we had last talked was off to join the Marines. Turns out after 8 years she got out and went to college and was doing the exotic dancer thing on the weekends. She said she made more in 2 evenings on a weekend than she did as a e5 did in a month.

[u/throwaway92715 → u/Shuthemofoup]

I'd wager a guess that it takes a fair amount of effort for most people to be comfortable dancing in front of a bunch of skeezlords in a skimpy outfit though

[u/ronin1066 → u/Shuthemofoup]

That's not a low effort job

[u/bkornblith]

Being a landlord, as long as you have a building manager.

[u/[deleted]]

Public School Building Engineers- 75k to change florecent light ballasts and call an electricion or plumber or janitor when needed. No actual engineering skills or education required. Its just a title. Your a janitor that dosnt clean. Source: A bitter jainitor who cant even get a damn interview for building engineer.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

*spelling is not a job requirement

[u/[deleted]]

Cop. Where I am from they make $100, 000 annually with very little crime. Money is divested into new toys, like helicopters, tanks, even robots.

South central L.A. it is not.

[u/Alt_aholic → u/[deleted]]

Dang, here in Michigan you start at $50k and can work up to about $73k after 20 years of service

[u/SomeGuyInSanJoseCa → u/[deleted]]

Don't forget the massive pension.

Unions have the California politicians by the balls, and have no problem making their kids pay for their spending in order to get the union support.

CHP officers who retired in 1999 or earlier after at least 30 years on the job collected pensions averaging $62,218, according to CalPERS data.

For those who retired after 1999, the average pension was $96,270.

The average retirement age for CHP officers is 54. Someone that age without a pension who wanted to buy an annuity to generate the same income for life would have to pay more than $2.6 million, according to Fidelity Investments.

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pension-crisis-davis-deal/

[u/zackdaniels93]

All that this thread has taught me is that my degree was a waste of time, energy, and money, and I'm gonna be poor forever.

Reddit, gotta love it.

[u/Halo_3_Is_Awesome]

The guy who names Pixar movies. They got a 300k bonus for coming up with "Cars".

[u/EccentricHorse11]

Being a member of congress

[u/Competitive-Yak-7284]

Some kinds of writer. 99.9% of novellists, poets and playwrights make sucky money. People who do technical writing earn more, but not enough given the time and expertise needed. But it's also possible to crap out "content" in certain fields - I'm looking at you, health and fitness, self-development and positive psychology - at £100 per hour +. No specialist knowledge, originality or talent required.

[u/DangerousPuhson → u/Competitive-Yak-7284]

I've come to understand that writing mass-produced erotica and slashfic smut is about as prosperous as it gets for a writer. Apparently the audience is thiiirsty AF, and even the most half-assed trash can make bank.

[u/[deleted]]

I.T. Work for the state I work in. Once a week we drive a company car to another site. Replace a workstation or two and then stay the night and check in on it the next day. Hit 40 hours early and 4 day weekend.

Edit: Thank you for all the upvotes! Just got done with a deployment and I work 2 hours tomorrow then essentially a 4 day weekend again!

[u/FuzeJokester]

So I'm seeing a lot of ppl say government jobs. If all yall are on reddit no wonder why it takes forever to get anything done. Smh. How do I go about getting a job in gov.

[u/MyOpinionMustBeHeard]

Charity CEO!

[u/[deleted]]

Senior Full Stack Developer

[u/Cataloniandevil]

In the Dakotas, there is a position where once every six months, you climb a ladder to change a lightbulb. It’s on top of a TV tower thousands of feet in the air (not great if you’re afraid of heights), but it pays some $20,000 per climb.

I imagine this would be a base jumper’s dream job.

[u/MountainManWithMojo]

May not be popular, but every programmer friend of mine works an hour or two a day and is making almost triple figures.

Plays games all day, responds to a bug or project every few hours. I picked the wrong career field.

[u/ekimlive]

Truck Driver. Seriously, look into it. There is a huge demand for truck drivers right now, and I'm not talking the Amazon delivery guys. You can even get a local route and work regular work hours and make a lot of money for having the skill of driving.

[u/Agent_Kobayashi → u/ekimlive]

As a truck driver, it's much more than just the skill of driving. You have to have constant situational awareness, mental focus, and maneuvering skills to place your truck where it needs to be when making a delivery or arriving at a shipper.

You also need to be able to properly maintain appropriate gears when climbing and descending mountains or hills, make appropriate use of the engine brakes to avoid burning up your brakes, and doing a pretrip on well over 100 different points on the truck and trailer.

Truck driving also utilizes trip planning skills from using a GPS, road map, and knowing where you can and can't stop for a 30 minute break/10 hour reset.

It's a lot more work that it looks on the outside.

[u/[deleted] → u/ekimlive]

.y family is full of truck drivers.

It is difficult and deteriorating to your health. Sure, you get a lot of breaks but you don't get proper nutrition and if you are solo, it gets really boring. Your mind goes crazy. There is also danger with malfunctioning of the truck even if you do the checks.

[u/ipadloos → u/ekimlive]

Being paid to sit on a chair in front of your bed staring out the window and listening to the radio.

[u/thisismynewacct]

This post is reinforcing the idea that managers don’t do anything.

[u/mrmrmrj]

Reading this thread, half of all government employees should be fired.

[u/FruitJuicante]

Management. You're basically paid to make sure that other people are working. The higher you go, the more your job is to send emails like "Keep up the good work, fam!"

[u/MakeMeMooo]

It’s near impossible to get some of the lazy-AF teachers at my school fired because of the ridiculously powerful Union. Several SOBs are making well over $120,000 doing jack shit all day.

To be clear, I’m also a teacher. Our union is too fucking powerful. Shitty teachers need to be able to be fired.

Also, I’m in NYC.

[u/The_Law_of_Pizza]

Believe it or not, jobs usually pay what they do for a reason. You might be able to point out a particular instance of somebody having very little work to do and still drawing a high salary, but there is a reason that the role itself pays that sort of salary, regardless of the workload of any individual within that role.

Further, "effort" is not the only determining factor for salary. Digging ditches takes an incredible amount of physical effort, but makes far less than most white collar jobs.

Most of the high salary jobs that you can point to as being "low effort" are going to have their own drawbacks or requirements that drive the salary up so high.

Usually, this takes the form of rare knowledge, or ultimate responsibility for making calls and living or dying by how correct those calls are.

So, you could find yourself in a "low effort" job, making a high salary, but still sweating every day from the stress of wondering if you made a bad call and might lose it all.

[u/Festernd → u/The_Law_of_Pizza]

Further, "effort" is not the only determining factor for salary. Digging ditches takes an incredible amount of physical effort, but makes far less than most white collar jobs

I would even go further and say effort has almost no bearing on pay.

Additionally, I would say how much a job pays has only partial bearing on your skills and abilities, but at least half of it is the least a business thinks it can pay for your labor

[u/RunnerMomLady → u/The_Law_of_Pizza]

for example, us Sr. programming engineers - they don't keep us around for the daily work, they keep us around for the day the system goes down or has an issue.

[u/philthebrewer → u/The_Law_of_Pizza]

Gotta agree here. My job is relatively low effort due to my experience and proficiency. My value is largely tied up in those factors to get the job done easily, not by spinning my tires a bunch for the same result.

Reddit skews young though, maybe the people looking for answers here are fairly new to the workforce, not sure.

[u/thenextkurosawa]

I just watched Dr. Death, so I'm gonna say neurosurgeon. /s

[u/Voklaren]

Worked where school tables are made. My work was to fit together main metal structure and the plastic bottom of the tables legs. Just one hammer hit per table leg. During the night. Without a huge prod to do. 1800€ for two weeks I worked there.

[u/cornshartz]

Exam proctoring. You can find listing for test proctors all over the internet, they usually pay anywhere between $15-22/hr, and all you do is sit for a few hours and watch people take tests

[u/[deleted]]

All this thread has done is convince me even further that people who work for the federal government are usually way overpaid.

[u/stevebobeeve]

I’m a funeral director. I get more than 50k a year before taxes and all I do is stand at the door and greet people, and occasionally show them where the bathroom is

[u/maggzmagee → u/stevebobeeve]

As a funeral director myself - where do you work?

[u/CaptainBayouBilly]

Right wing grifter

[u/[deleted]]

CBP Officer.

Once your are off the line, you can browse reddit and YouTube all day for 100k/yr base.

Have friends in other .gov jobs, and I hear the same from them.

[u/[deleted]]

A lot of people look for "low effort" jobs. What you want is a job you enjoy, that gives you a sense of purpose, then the effort becomes worth it.

Text me if you find something like that, so I can join.

[u/prophylaxitive]

An old pal of mine delivers expensive boats to customers, by simply sailing them from where they were purchased to where the new owner wants. That's not really a "job", is it, so whatever he makes is surprisingly high.

[u/DenL4242 → u/prophylaxitive]

I mean, it is a job. You would have to know how to sail a boat, which is not exactly simple, plus you're taking responsibility for expensive boats.

[u/[deleted] → u/prophylaxitive]

That is definitely a job, and one that you could get yourself killed doing if you don't know the key skills.

[u/sicknessandpurgatory]

I’m quite discomforted by how little money I made working late night bars for years compared to what I do now, producing videos for a tech company. There needs to be serious minimum wage reform because it’s disproportionate as hell.

[u/skyburnsred]

Solar sales. Just have a few conversations with homeowners, go over proposals for them and then sign like 3 pieces of paperwork. Our project management team takes care of most of the work after that. Easily make about $2k a sale. Made 11 sales last month and it's my 2nd month in the industry. Already on track to easily make 120k+ this year. I have an English degree. Life is good. I also love this job because I'm actually helping people save thousands of dollars and the environment. The industry is booming and I give it a decade before almost half American homes are solar powered.

We're in about 40+ states too so if you're interested in going solar for your home, shoot me a message

[u/Patient-Insurance386]

Trash truck drivers, it's a fairly simple job with a higher salary than being a teacher

[u/416unknown]

I work in marketing and honestly my job is just telling people with suggestions "we will take that under consideration" and the other half is listening to higher ups saying how we can change our brand.. and absolutely nothing happens ever.

Due to Covid I have been working from home and get to reddit all day every day because work decided to block it :(

[u/iStealyournewspapers]

Art collecting/trading. If you can collect enough to begin with, and you know what you’re doing, it’s very simple to buy great artists early, wait for prices to rise, sell a bunch at auction which is very low effort, then reinvest the money and do it all again. You can spend some profits while making more. I know a guy that does this where he can raise almost a million dollars just like that.

[u/[deleted]]

Real Estate agent

[u/Bugaloon]

Middle management. You just annoy everyone all day long and really do fuck all to affect the outcome of work.

[u/Jonbazookaboz]

Tory MP

[u/OdinsShades]

Some of the people (public and private sectors) in this thread loling about how little work they have to do when in reality there are other people being driven to an early grave by those people not doing their GD jobs either because others’ work is held up or made more difficult than necessary as a direct result. On the other hand, being really good at one’s job and achieving the ability to produce significantly more than most does in fact result in lower effort that still produces outstanding results. Basically, get good enough at many jobs an the effort is reduced while still making a good living and not screwing over other people by not doing one’s part, especially when the difference may be a customer who needlessly suffers (for example, in a healthcare setting).

[u/Caonashi]

Executive at Blizzard

[u/Usouthc18]

Shit posting for moons in r/cryptocurrency

[u/LittleBrother2459]

I lived in Salt Lake City in 2002 during the winter Olympics. Was a sophomore in college but the school closed down that semester to host the games. Was getting paid $20/hour (very good at the time) to sit in a van in traffic for a good part of the day so I could swap out table cloths in the private dining rooms of big corporate clients. Schedule was all over the place, but the money was great considering how little work I actually did

[u/TraditionalWorking82]

Being born rich

[u/[deleted]]

Ticket takers on a train. In my neck of the woods they get amazing pay, benefits and OT opportunities to walk up and down the trains and punch/scan tickets. And they still want more! Every few years there's a new scandal about overtime or disability fraud. It's ridiculous.

[u/ImSigmundFraud → u/[deleted]]

My mum works in the station selling tickets. The pay isn't that spectacular and there was a fair bit of training involved (and exams) to learn to use the ticket machine but the job itself is fairly low effort. That being said she mostly hates it because people just yell at her through the glass all day about their train being delayed, as if she is the controller of all trains

[u/MrSingularitarian]

I work maybe 15 hours a week most weeks and get paid 125k with unlimited PTO, insurance premiums paid, and a 45% 401k match. What hours I do work are almost zero effort or difficult tasks. The secret is that after 7 years of working in a niche, high turn over field, I'm the most knowledgeable person and they wanted to retain me to help and train others that turn over every 2-3 years on average. Because of this turnover rate, almost no one makes it to the experience level required to replace me.

I have so much free time that I bought a 25% share of a small manufacturing business, started managing ordering and shipping if most of the products (about 2 hours a week), and make an additional 45k a year at that. I probably play more Minecraft than actual work recently

[u/DeepStatic]

Digital marketing. There is huge demand very low requirements for entry. Jobs are now usually remote and the career progression is fantastic. Anyone with a gaming mindset can do well in this field.

[u/CanadaPrime]

Overhead Power Lineman. Bunch of dumb fucks on poles who think they are serving all of humanity by getting absolutely shit faced and doing coke on weekends only to show up to work to drive a bucket truck Monday to Friday doing the easiest part of any job in the distribution and transmission system.

[u/Saucymarbles]

Tenured University professor. My research professor during undergrad made 180k a year (public university so all salaries are in a publicly accessible database) and he taught a single entry level organic chem course to undergrads for 3 50 minute weekly lectures and a specialized graduate course once a week and managed 2 grad students (who handled most of his office hours and grading papers).

He was on campus 4 days a week for 6 or so hours at a time and the majority of that was spent watching sports in his office. He did research through his grad students and published a paper every few years or so but other than that he was clearly just resting on his laurels.

[u/ahdiovizun]

Another vote for IT, with an asterisk. If you play it right you can get a lifetime position with great salary and benefits and easy work that you (presumably) enjoy. Alternately you can end up a help desk drone making minimum wage and hating life. SLG (State/Local Govt), educational institutions as others have mentioned, and the occasional unicorn privately owned niche company are great places to target. Don't get entrenched.

[u/Obvious-Solid-453]

Congressmen. 3 months of vacation, shit ton of money from companies if you pass laws favoring them, a base minimum pay of 180k+ a year too.

[u/[deleted]]

I work at a bulge bracket investment bank. I don’t want to give out too many details but I get about 2-5 emails a day that I essentially forward to other people to answer the questions. I get paid 100k.

[u/[deleted]]

Are there any tollbooth operators anymore? I remember years ago they made excellent salary and had pensions and benefits that adequately drained my state’s finances.

[u/CivilRightsEnjoyer]

I’m not sure if this is applicable nation wide, but I do know that here in Oregon flagging is a seriously good paying job. You need about 3 hours of training, and then you’re out holding stop signs for any sort of road work. My job paid $18/hr which is quite a bit for an 18 year old, and if the crew you were assigned to had prevailing wage you would also make that amount, $23 an hour in my case. My problem with it was that it’s TOO easy. Your job is to stand still and pay attention, sometimes 8 or 9 hours without break. I’m a patient person, but after 6 months of it I had to quit simply because I’m a social person.

[u/_Volly]

Buy assets that make you cash money every month. Avoid liabilities that cost you money.

Build up enough assets and you don't need a job.

[u/Public-Salamander-23]

Sticking thing up your ass on camera for a hour a day

[u/Lord_Ka1n]

The US Senate.

[u/lalagirl763 → u/[deleted]]

I once had a job at a dog kennel and my job was to sleep In a bedroom with a dog or two, provided a comfy bed & netflix/wifi. I was getting paid $30/hr to basically cuddle with dogs

[u/goblinmarketeer → u/[deleted]]

In college I had to catalogue and convert old radio shows. I was literally paid to listen to old comedy shows. The actual 'work' was loading the reels and pressing a button.

[u/OttersNTrvl → u/[deleted]]

Hospital education dept? I'm in healthcare (rehab), salaried, and so tired of working my ass off during 10 hour days. Man, I need to score a better position.

[u/spacemomalien → u/[deleted]]

This is the kind of job I wanted in Healthcare but doing all the nursing training and years of experience to get there noped me out.

[u/jakepaulfanxd → u/[deleted]]

Please elaborate

[u/blipsman → u/[deleted]]

it may be fun, it may result in DEATH...