<story><title>Ask HN: Which types of tech jobs are best for people that can&apos;t handle stress?</title></story><parent_chain><item><author>ioddly</author><text>&amp;gt; have something to do on evenings. Something for yourself, something not related to your job&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m curious what everyone does for this. I&amp;#x27;ve attempted to find a few things but nothing has strongly clicked with me. Most of my interests right now are on the computer, which makes it hard to disengage, and I definitely need to do more to get a handle on it.</text></item><item><author>gordaco</author><text>If what you want is a low stress environment, you&amp;#x27;re like me. Some pieces of advice:&lt;p&gt;1) This goes without saying, but avoid startups. The more established the company, the better. Big corps are much more likely to respect a 9-to-5 workday and much less likely to call you at 2 am.&lt;p&gt;2) Try to work in a BTB product, not a BTC. BTB means way fewer customers, and fewer customers means fewer eyes looking for bugs, which in turn means a lower probability of finding an unexpected bug that needs to be solved yesterday.  This sounds a bit cynical, but really isn&amp;#x27;t because of my next point:&lt;p&gt;3) There is an even better way to avoid bugs in production: have a very good and thorough testing system. When interviewing, ask about the testing process and how likely are they to detect bugs before a client runs the code. If you are looking for a job as a tester, instead ask the following: how automated are the tests and the build system? The more, the better.&lt;p&gt;4) This might sound bad, but it&amp;#x27;s my best piece of advice about jobs: look for a workplace that has lots of women (yes, they exist. For certain charitable definition of &amp;quot;lots&amp;quot;, at least). Especially older women. Bonus points if you see pregnant women. Double bonus points if people are allowed to work less hours in order to take care of their kids, and you know a few people taking advantage of this situation (IDK how frequent is this in the US. Here in Spain it&amp;#x27;s common and regulated by law). Triple bonus points if there are many women in managerial positions. I realize that all of this sounds sexist, but whether we like it or not, the weight of childcare and housekeeping still falls mostly on the shoulders of women. So, if you find a company with lots of women, it usually means that the company offers very good work-life balance. As a bonus, you avoid one common source of stress: the competitiveness that pervades certain brogrammer companies.&lt;p&gt;There are also some points to consider that apply to every job: learn to forget about work the moment you exit the office (have something to do on evenings. Something for yourself, something not related to your job); try to make commute pleasurable (walk to your job, use public transport so you can read, etc); avoid romantic relationships with colleagues, especially people you work closely with; etc.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: typo.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>domepro</author><text>I was always a gamer and therefore a lot of my time at home is spent at my computer.&lt;p&gt;I have a neat trick that I started doing during my university time (ymmv as not everyone will be able to use it). I started with using exclusively linux for any programming and&amp;#x2F;or homework assignments. When I&amp;#x27;m at my personal desktop - it&amp;#x27;s always windows, at work I&amp;#x27;ll use linux or OS X, depending on what my options are.&lt;p&gt;It works pretty well for me, as it&amp;#x27;s a context switch for my brain - native terminal = work, windows = fun.&lt;p&gt;As an additional bonus, a dog which I can&amp;#x27;t reasonably leave home for extended periods of time (bringing her to work would never be an option, even if my workplace is dog-friendly) and have to walk so that gets rid of anyone (including myself) trying to squeeze OT out of me, and gets me out of the house for regular walks.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Which types of tech jobs are best for people that can&apos;t handle stress?</title></story><parent_chain><item><author>ioddly</author><text>&amp;gt; have something to do on evenings. Something for yourself, something not related to your job&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m curious what everyone does for this. I&amp;#x27;ve attempted to find a few things but nothing has strongly clicked with me. Most of my interests right now are on the computer, which makes it hard to disengage, and I definitely need to do more to get a handle on it.</text></item><item><author>gordaco</author><text>If what you want is a low stress environment, you&amp;#x27;re like me. Some pieces of advice:&lt;p&gt;1) This goes without saying, but avoid startups. The more established the company, the better. Big corps are much more likely to respect a 9-to-5 workday and much less likely to call you at 2 am.&lt;p&gt;2) Try to work in a BTB product, not a BTC. BTB means way fewer customers, and fewer customers means fewer eyes looking for bugs, which in turn means a lower probability of finding an unexpected bug that needs to be solved yesterday.  This sounds a bit cynical, but really isn&amp;#x27;t because of my next point:&lt;p&gt;3) There is an even better way to avoid bugs in production: have a very good and thorough testing system. When interviewing, ask about the testing process and how likely are they to detect bugs before a client runs the code. If you are looking for a job as a tester, instead ask the following: how automated are the tests and the build system? The more, the better.&lt;p&gt;4) This might sound bad, but it&amp;#x27;s my best piece of advice about jobs: look for a workplace that has lots of women (yes, they exist. For certain charitable definition of &amp;quot;lots&amp;quot;, at least). Especially older women. Bonus points if you see pregnant women. Double bonus points if people are allowed to work less hours in order to take care of their kids, and you know a few people taking advantage of this situation (IDK how frequent is this in the US. Here in Spain it&amp;#x27;s common and regulated by law). Triple bonus points if there are many women in managerial positions. I realize that all of this sounds sexist, but whether we like it or not, the weight of childcare and housekeeping still falls mostly on the shoulders of women. So, if you find a company with lots of women, it usually means that the company offers very good work-life balance. As a bonus, you avoid one common source of stress: the competitiveness that pervades certain brogrammer companies.&lt;p&gt;There are also some points to consider that apply to every job: learn to forget about work the moment you exit the office (have something to do on evenings. Something for yourself, something not related to your job); try to make commute pleasurable (walk to your job, use public transport so you can read, etc); avoid romantic relationships with colleagues, especially people you work closely with; etc.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: typo.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tluyben2</author><text>There are many things; family, friends (go somewhere to meet up, less chance ending up sitting behind a computer if your friends are like mine anyway), read books, sports, electronics (soldering things and testing takes forever and it&amp;#x27;s fun), cooking, ...&lt;p&gt;Even computer stuff can force you to disengage; like gaming (especially on a console; it doesn&amp;#x27;t do mail or anything else productive :). But also, I like, as a hobby to work on small programming languages, type systems, proofs etc. Those things will never make it to production and will never make money, which is the point. I find them a lot of fun and during those it is very hard to get me to do anything work related as they all suck me in and keep me there until I sleep.</text></comment>