The Five Best Careers For Aspiring Evildoers

If you’re looking to do evil for the long term, it’s time to start looking at a career. While bank robberies and kidnapping are great on a freelance level, you can’t start a family with that type of lifestyle. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the best careers for evildoers who are looking to really settle in and master their craft.

figuring out where you’ll fit in best. Of course, evildoers have trouble fitting in everywhere, so finding a workplace that’s really a solid fit for you, your personality and your educational background can be really difficult. Fortunately, it’s not impossible.

(Mad) Scientist

The mad scientist might be the most common stereotype amongst the evil community, but that’s because it’s one of the easiest ways to be both prolific and maintain a reasonable cover identity.

Why would you want to be a scientist? Well, your main job is research, for starters. That means you can be the one laying down false evidence so you don’t have to worry about whether information out there is even true. Likewise, you get to do all kinds of work that people inherently believe because you’re a scientist. That means debunking myths or telling people how to live their lives. That’s a pretty big responsibility and in the hands of an evildoer you can do a lot of nefarious things.

We as a people inherently trust science and that means we believe scientists. If you really want to do evil, your best bet is to look like someone we all trust. You’ll have us eating out of your hands in no time.

Locksmith

Locksmiths are not supposed to be the evil type. After all, they’re trusted with the ability to open any lock in existence. From your home to your car and all the safes in between, a locksmith can get to you and your personal information in a heartbeat.

Locksmiths are typically reputable people, but the potential for evil is pretty great. What’s better is that you don’t even really need to become a locksmith to know how to pick a lock, you can learn in your spare time. Heck, we’ve even shown you how to crack locks. Once you’re in, you’ll have access to people’s belongings everywhere. It’s pretty evil, but you’ll get on the job training to becoming a master villain in no time.

Programmer (or Hacker)

OK, so hacker isn’t exactly a career, but with hacking skills you can pursue all kinds of legitimate jobs in programming. Or, if you’re particularly evil, you can just stick to scamming people with phishing or whatever malware is popular this week.

You can start by cracking Wi-Fi passwords, but from there you can do all sorts of things like breaking into a computer, invade people’s privacy, get people’s passwords, or whatever other evil plots you might have. Really, the best part about being an evil hacker is that what you can do is entirely up to your imagination. You can be as evil (or good) as you want. When you’re not being evil, you can find work making apps, programs, or whatever you want to do. Plus, getting started is as easy as practicing a lot. With no formal education whatsoever you can learn Java, Python or anything else in a short amount of time.

Used Car Salesman

A used car salesman is kind of the classic manipulator, and while the stigma is probably a little overwrought, it’s still a great job for any evil people looking to practice their persuasion chops on a daily basis.

The good news is that if you’re interested in being a used car salesman, you’re not going to need too much training. You’ll need some practice to get good at it, but you won’t need to pay any money. We’ve shown you simple tricks to get what you want, guided you through how the best influencers out there get everything and plenty of other tips.

Basically, with just a little work and research, you’ll be well on your way to being the best used car salesman out there. Plus, you’ll probably be able to manipulate your way into lots of other crazy situations.

Investor

Investment bankers and traders are some of the most powerful people in the world. That’s partially because they tend to have a lot of money, but more importantly they control the flow of money. For better or worse, this gives them a lot of power.

For evildoers, this is a pretty big carrot at the end of the stick of an MBA program. But you don’t necessarily even have to go that far. There are a lot of ways you can get started investing on your own. That could mean learning from millionaires. Once you start your career as a regular old investor, you’ll have plenty of time and money to switch over to more evil plans. We assume that means buying up stock in the Acme Corporation or Death Rays.

This post is part of our Evil Week series at Lifehacker, where we look at the dark side of getting things done. Knowing evil means knowing how to beat it, so you can use your sinister powers for good. Want more? Check out our evil week tag page.