29 Lucky Souls Who Make Good Money At Verrrry Easy Jobs Shared What They Do, And I'm Rethinking My Entire Career
It is a truth universally acknowledged that nothing will burn you out quicker than a high-stress, low-paying job. So when u/coco-beanz asked the people of Reddit who are blessed with easy jobs and high pay to share what they do, I clicked on that thread faster than I've ever clicked on anything before. Here's what people had to say:
1."UX [User Experience] work on software, apps, and websites (no coding). One to three hours a day. From home. In my underwear. Six figures."
2."I don't want to give too many details, but this story is about one of my best friends. He was the art director for a major financial institution. His only job was to ensure branding guidelines were being followed across all the many different groups. They would send him the materials or present to him on a call, and he would provide detailed feedback. That's it. He worked about two hours a day, and his base salary was $200K. He did this job for 18 months before quitting because he felt his brain dying from playing video games all day."
3."Night-shift superintendent for a Department of Defense contractor. Basically I’m here in case shit hits the fan, which is about once every few months or so. Other than that, I sit in my office, listen to podcasts, and watch YouTube. Job pays $100K+. Work four 10-hour shifts and no weekends or holidays."
4."I work for an answering service. I'm one of two night guys, and I work from home. Given how slow nights are, I pretty much sit around watching TV, reading books, etc."
5."Government. $95K a year. Usually Monday and Tuesday can be hectic, but Wednesday to Friday I’m usually just sitting at my desk watching the History Channel and surfing Reddit. On Fridays, most people aren’t here after noon. I’ve even been told to slow down on my work because what usually takes me a half day to do takes some of my peers like three days."
6."Security for government facilities. I make 55 bucks an hour to sit on my ass and watch DVDs, assuming the TV and DVD player aren’t broken. That’s with no college education, and really anyone with any customer service experience can get into security easily. I hate my job though."
"No cellphones, no internet access. Dude on day shift broke our TV a while back; we went like four months with nothing but staring at the wall to do. You can’t get up and walk around, you don’t have regular TV channels, there isn’t any radios, and as I said, nothing with Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/microphones or cameras are allowed in. So you just sat, for 12 hours.
It sounds nice, but after hour three, you want to puke."
7."It’s not really a lazy job, but it’s a fairly easy job. I’m a botanist for a plant nutrient company. Basically my work proceeds at the speed of plants growing. I make $65K a year as salary. Not a huge sum like those tech jobs that pay like $200K for 10 hours of work, but I basically just chill in a garden all day and look at plants."
8."Senior Data Engineer. Go to a lot of meetings. Look at data models. Build and run reports to find inefficiencies. Build and run reports to analyze data quality. Think about expansion. Teach younger hackers how to get good. I work from home two days a week. I usually nap an hour or two on those days. $118K/year plus bonuses. $10K base bonus but it's usually a lot more. The downside is that I have to become passionate about boring shit, which makes me a boring person."
9."Backend developer here, $110K, work from home for four out of five days a week. Pretty chill if you can find yourself a big company because everything just takes longer, more bureaucracy, more meetings, more planning, more analyzing. So deadlines are (in my experience) pretty chill. For instance, it's currently 10:45 a.m. here, and I've done pretty much all I had set out to do today. I can't start on the next thing yet because it's still being analyzed by our functional analysts. If you want stress, go with a startup where every deadline is perpetually yesterday."
10."The beginning of my career was spent in broadcast master control rooms. There are folks sitting there, day and night, ensuring what you watch on TV is still there. More than 95% of the time I was watching TV, waiting for something to go wrong. They only really needed me for the rare occasions when it went wrong, and otherwise I was keeping a chair warm. Watched a lot of MTV and films on some long nights, and I only worked four in eight days, plus if I took four days off, I got 12 days out. You need a cool head under pressure and technical awareness. Training as a broadcast engineer differs worldwide — some companies do it on the job; others require specific qualifications."
11."Copywriter/editor. It wouldn't be easy for most people because you need to be able to shit out 1,000 words on short notice, but I can, and I've been at the job long enough that with the brain muscle memory and processes in place, I truly do, like, two hours of work a day. Super flexible hours and work from home for most of the week as well. It's a constant source of imposter syndrome, and I live with the looming dread that the gravy train will end and I'll have to get a real job."
12."Work-from-home, in-house lawyer. Most stuff is easy, just emails and meetings here and there to bounce ideas. Any hard stuff, I ask outside counsel (law firms). 95% of the time I’m working on my yard or doing chores."
13."I work in a casino overseeing a team of hosts. Their job is mainly to print membership cards, sign people up as members, and handle general enquiries. I motivate them, handle promotions and responsible gambling, as well as talk shit with my team all day and just generally chill. Four days on/three days off, five weeks annual leave a year. ~$90K."
14."I am an electrician. I get paid $40 for every light switch I install. I install about 20 a day, every day. You do the math."
15."I'm in a company that transforms books into audio for blind people. So volunteers come to my studio and read those books or magazines all day long. It's like i'm listening to podcasts, and I can learn a lot if I'm interested in the book itself. Some readers I have can do a lot by themself, like navigating when they misread something. When one book is finished, I do some post-production, and that's it."
16."I was a behaviorist and I worked with ravens, wolves, coyotes, and some other animals. I made a lot of money and lived simply. I'm semi-retired at 44, but I now help people address behavioral issues in dogs. I don't kill myself and book clients back to back though. I just do it when I want to and take my time with each one. It's nice. I've gotten paid well to make a bunch of animal friends. I still think about them all the time."
17."I work for a university part time. My job is an e-learning assistant. Basically if someone is too stupid to start a Zoom meeting, they call me, and I tell them how to do it. Haven’t had a call in 18 months. Still get paid."
18."I make just shy of $120K plus an annual bonus of 8%–12% doing business insights. I’m basically a data analyst. I produce recurring and custom reports and dashboards using SQL, Alteryx, Tableau, and some geospatial software. I have no education relevant to this job, only a GED and Associate of Business Administration. I got the job pretty much by being curious, stubborn, and handy with Excel macros."
19."I make spreadsheets that the whole company uses. I find it fun, and it's insanely easy to do my day-to-day stuff. I have programmed it to do all the hard stuff, so I just click buttons and go from there. Best part is, when someone covers me, they struggle to keep up, so it makes me look even better. I honestly probably do like three hours of work a day and take home over $120K a year. Don't get me wrong though — I worked my ass off with no qualifications to get where I am today; it's only in the past year that it's really started working in my favor."
20."A friend of mine is an actuary for a big bank. Does virtually nothing all day long. Has long lunches with coworkers, is always available to leave work whenever, and seems to spend most of his time playing video games all day while his computer runs risk simulations. Makes $170K."
21."Inventory/supply chain management for a large international company in the automotive/trucking industry. Occasional Teams call or flight out to another city/province to help train someone, research min/max once a month, and do a couple inventory counts also once a month. Otherwise, I'll shoot the shit with coworkers or surf the internet after solving an issue once in a while. Pretty easy gig for the money I make."
22."Relationship manager for a large financial institution. It’s really easy, basically glorified customer service to vendors we partner with. $150K/year + annual bonus."
23."Work-from-home marketing manager for a large consulting firm. Average work in a day is four or five hours, and I make six figures. The corporate world is ridiculous."
24."I teach an internationally recognized trade: IRATA (rope access). I have worked an average of 23 weeks a year for the pst 12–13 years, and my average annual income is $125,000. I spend four days a week teaching and one day a week as rescue standby as students are assessed for competency. Not something I actively pursued, it just kinda fell in my lap."
25."Mate on a tug boat. Like a lot of jobs posted here, it wasn’t easy for years leading up to this. I was a commercial fisherman for years and worked as a deckhand on relatively hardworking tugs for years, but now I’ve found a boat that never sees big weather and only goes to a few places on a really easy run. I do two watches a day of six hours each and mostly just sit in the wheelhouse to listen to the radios when we’re at the dock, or drive mostly on auto-pilot when we’re underway. I have minimal responsibility, as everything is ultimately on the captain if anything goes wrong. I get paid $600 USD per day."
"It’s not too much money as I only work half the year on a two-week-on/two-week-off schedule, but I consider that one of the perks. Even though I’m away from home for two weeks at a time, then I get two weeks at home to hang out with my wife and kid, do projects and whatever the hell else I please with no concern for work at all."
26."Project manager at a small manufacturing company. It's a degreed position that pays in the low six figures, but since they barely have any design work to do, and because upper management compulsively micromanages everyone's projects, most of what I do is paper pushing and low-level data entry. Super easy, but mind-numbingly boring."
27."I sell real estate. It’s like working part-time hours for full-time pay. I could work harder and make $300K, but right now I have a pretty chill work schedule and gross $150K."
28."I do home health. At one place, I literally just read a book out loud the whole time and we chat, along with medication and bathing reminders and maybe one hour devoted to meal prep depending on what type of potatoes she wants that day. At another we watch game shows and chat, aside from once a week baking her sweets for the week and showering every time I can convince her to do so, and a shopping trip for groceries. Only at one place I visit do I actually do work that feels like work. The rest is stuff I would do for free."
"I feel guilty. I get kudos for being a great caregiver and advocate, but it feels like I'm doing nothing. I'm also burnt out of working in hospitals and ICU, though, after dealing with COVID, and suffer from PTSD from dealing with COVID, so I'm used to pushing my body to the limits. Not enjoying myself."
29."In telecom sales, I was generating about $200 in commission an hour. So I really only worked two to three hours a day a couple days a week."
Do you know of an easy job that pays really, really well? Tell me about it in the comments!
Note: Responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
