<story><title>Unicorn Jobs</title><url>http://www.pgbovine.net/unicorn-jobs.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>was_hellbanned</author><text>The rather unethical alternative is to find a job in a fairly incompetent group at a company that&amp;#x27;s not extremely tech focused, then spend most of your time working on whatever you want to.  I&amp;#x27;ve had jobs (and spoken to many people with similar jobs) where I could accomplish all my tasks within a couple hours of actual, focused effort, leaving the rest of the work week for personal projects, side business, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dangero</author><text>The problem that I&amp;#x27;ve found with those environments is that the 60% of downtime you have is usually when people are socializing instead of working. That means it&amp;#x27;s not actually that easy to focus on your own project. Also the office laziness rubs off and you tend to be less disciplined to work on that personal project than you think you will be. Perhaps somebody out there can consistently pull it off, but I&amp;#x27;ve never seen it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Unicorn Jobs</title><url>http://www.pgbovine.net/unicorn-jobs.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>was_hellbanned</author><text>The rather unethical alternative is to find a job in a fairly incompetent group at a company that&amp;#x27;s not extremely tech focused, then spend most of your time working on whatever you want to.  I&amp;#x27;ve had jobs (and spoken to many people with similar jobs) where I could accomplish all my tasks within a couple hours of actual, focused effort, leaving the rest of the work week for personal projects, side business, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>PaulHoule</author><text>The weirdest thing is that I&amp;#x27;ve worked at places where I couldn&amp;#x27;t get other people to move fast enough to stay busy.&lt;p&gt;That is,  if I tried to work at 80% utilization I&amp;#x27;d always be arguing with people to get them to pick up the pace.&lt;p&gt;Once I decided to work at 40% utilization I found I got along better with people.  My boss bitched me out once for &amp;quot;not being fully committed&amp;quot; but he quit the next month,  so things went on for another year when my new (absentee) boss told me that we ought to let the guy who has temper tantrums all the time get his way because I&amp;#x27;m more flexible than him...  A recruiter called me the next business day and I was outa there..</text></comment>