What could possibly be better than getting paid to do NOTHING?

Well, actually it sounds kind of boring, but I’m sure some folks would love it!

That’s what this fella ended up doing after some people at his job just wouldn’t listen to him.

Take a look at what he had to say in the story below.

Disregard my three decades of expertise? Fine, I get paid the same.

“For just about the last three decades, I (58,m) have been designing software.

I’ve gotten pretty decent at it, too.

There are of course challenges, like insane business requirements, or ridiculous deliverable timelines, or micromanaging product owners, or the ever-popular design-by-committee; but the worst, and I mean WORST, is that everybody who uses software thinks they know how to design it.

(Spoiler alert: they do not.)

This guy knows what he’s talking about.

There are design rules.

There are best practices.

There are laws.

There are nuances to accessibility and localization.

There are technical constraints.

Try to explain that to a stakeholder who can barely spell HTML and thinks they’re a wizard with MS Paint, and savor the empty stare and vacant eyes.

But hey – they’ve worked there for years, so they know best!

Well, a few years ago, I took a gig at a small software company with a complex and well-established, if antiquated, niche software product.

They wanted to modernize it and bring it to the web.

Excellent – just what I specialize in.

I settled in for a few months of learning the software, the customers and their needs, and the industry it served.

All was hunky-dory while I was off on Research Island, but the time came to start putting actual proposals together and doing some testing.

This is where the real fun started.

This didn’t sound good…

The team leader I was assigned to was a mediocre dev who’d failed upward into management, and argued with everything I said or proposed.

No, Bert, the buttons should NOT all be scattered randomly on the page.

Yes, Bert, colors do actually need to be consistent and mean something.

No, Bert, you shouldn’t create a new custom widget to replace a well-established HTML control because you didn’t like the thickness of a line.

And so on.

And because dealing with this yutz wasn’t enough of a challenge, the business dev guy they threw at the team demanded that we create all specs and design artifacts during daily 5-hour workshop meetings, where everybody could have a say about everything.

In Elmo’s view, nobody would be above anyone else with their annoying “skills” or “knowledge” about anything.

No, we would all talk it out, and hey, remember kids, there are no wrong answers!

As a bonus we’ll hold a vote on every decision, because yeah, your uninformed opinion is just as valid as my three decades of experience.

Design patterns which would normally take me about an hour of wireframing took five people a full week, and the “design” they settled on sucked wet farts out of deceased pigeons.

Ugh…

Trying to tell the team that I could generate some examples they could then take and adjust went over about as you’d expect: not at all.

The cherry on this **** sundae was the dev they brought in to prototype the thing.

In a final attempt to help move things forward, I slapped together a very quick wireframe mockup in HTML, which sent Ernie the dev into paroxysms of fury.

How dare I invade his domain and create any code?

That was HIS job.

He demanded that he was the expert, and I should let him take care of everything.

For reference: he’d found Google’s Material Design site and did a copypasta of their generic framework.

Zero customization, zero color, zero personality.

It was like selling a house with drywall installed, but no finish.

As expected, his work was bad, and any feedback or suggestions, no matter how politely framed, were met with not only scorn and derision, but anger at my temerity to question his skills, meager as they were.

By now, not only was I a trouble-making elitist who thought I could do a better job than the team (gasp – I could), but now I was a complainer.

Middle manager Bert went and whined to his boss, who called me on the carpet for 15 minutes just as I was on my way out the door one Friday.

I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but apparently I wasn’t a “team player.”

I was instructed to only provide input when asked. Period.

Malicious compliance incoming.

Just sit there and take it all in…

I sat in meetings for hours, watching the clown show and counting down to lunchtime.

Nobody asked my opinion, so nobody received my opinion.

Questions to me were few and far between, and my replies were as neutral and generic as I could make them.

At the end of the week, I started getting uninvited to the workshop meetings.

Since that was my only deliverable, I sat at my desk with nothing else to do.

At all.

After all, I wasn’t supposed to do anything without being asked.

After about two weeks of this, I figured I’d cover my *** a little, and asked Bert’s boss if there were any changes in his instructions.

There were not – apparently I was doing exactly what they wanted.

Just twiddling their thumbs…

So, back to my desk and more hours of waiting to go home.

I didn’t think this would go on forever… after all, the executive team who hired me into this role knew for a fact they needed my expertise, their customers informed them almost daily of how outdated the software was.

So I sat and did online training and read professional journals and surfed Reddit on my phone, all while watching the frantic pace of ready-for-the-dumpster software being developed all around me.

And sat. And waited.

For three months.

These idiots actually paid me to sit on my hands for more than three months.

Now, although these clowns were utterly incompetent, the people who ran the company weren’t.

At some point, they were going to discover what a garbage pile their minions were carefully putting together, and somebody was going to be blamed.

Pretty obvious that the guy who hadn’t participated for a quarter year would be the designated scapegoat, so I found another position and bailed before they managed to pull their head out of their ***** long enough to find somebody to fire.

As I was strolling out the door, they were planning on a big release to introduce their “All new updated wonderful product!” to be launched after “all the bugs were ironed out.”

Sounds about right…

It’s been three years since I left.

The product never launched.

To those who say, “I’d love a job where I don’t have to do anything!” I’m sure for some people that would be heaven.

But for me, having no purpose was a waste of life.

If I’m going to spend my time on something, it’s going to be something where I can make a difference.

Anything else is a waste. Plus, the days draaaaaaaagged.”

Here’s what folks had to say on Reddit.

This reader had a story to tell.

Another person chimed in.

This Reddit user shared their thoughts.

Another reader shared a story.

And this person spoke up.

He just kicked back and collected a paycheck.

He knew that couldn’t last forever.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.