These Are the Jobs With the Most Pay for the Least Effort, According to Reddit

Let’s face it, no matter how much you enjoy your job, it would always be nice to get more pay for less work. Jobs in medicine and mining are rewarded with plenty of cash, but the hours, training and effort required in these professions are equally high. So, in reality, are there many jobs that are well-paid but don’t take too much of a toll on your personal life?

A Reddit thread in r/AusFinance discusses precisely that, with folks sharing their experiences of jobs that offer a decent ratio of hours worked to salary. Note that these comments are just individual folks sharing their experiences (over the past year or so), so these careers might not be the same at all companies or in all countries. But it’s still interesting to see what trends pop up, regardless.

Jobs with the highest pay for the least amount of work

Field Application Specialist

One of the most popular answers in the Reddit thread comes from user ‘lightskinkanye’ who said their job as a Field Application Specialist at a biotech company earns them $120,ooo a year. Woah!

So what does a field application specialist do exactly?

“Basically, my job is to do customer training and troubleshooting. The training is very rare, we don’t sell new instruments very often from my portfolio. The troubleshooting usually boils down to ‘run it again, you fucked up, let me send it to global support’.

I spend most of my day WFH playing WoW on my PC with my work laptop next to me and just answer emails/calls when they pop up. Some weeks I work a lot. Most weeks I do not.”

Tech support for a big company

One post in the thread pointed to the high salary of employees at big tech companies, particularly for those in tech support. A few Reddit users came out to support this comment.

“I get paid $160k for ‘working’ a couple hours a day in tech support for an international tech company. The ‘working’ time is when I’m on the phone or remote session with customers who call our support line, maybe 5-15 mins a call, 5-10 calls a day. Most of the time it’s just waiting by the phone.” – ‘U/squat_bench_press’

“I sit somewhere between engineering & product, some days require a full 8 hours but a lot of days half of that is enough to get the work done. It’s interesting too! >170k” – ‘QueasyAllday’

Security guard

Security guards often have to deal with some of the roughest parts of the community, but at other times it’s a pretty cruisy job.

Redditor ‘MushyTushy7’ shared their experience of the role, commenting:

“I’m 19, and I live in Australia. I’m a security guard and I work night shifts while studying, I’m earning 2.5g a fortnight after tax for 40 hour weeks. I go on a 5min walk (internal and external patrol) every hour and a half, and at the end of my shift I write a report that takes 2 minutes. The rest of my shift is spent either studying, having lunch, or watching Netflix on the couch. It’s decent pay considering the fact that I don’t have any qualifications, and work experience other than McDonald’s and a HSC.”

We can all dream of making that much money in our teenage years.

IT contracting and sales

Our lives have shifted to primarily become digital, so it should come as no surprise that IT jobs seem to be where it’s at.

“IT contracting. Move from one big company to the next. Do a solid enough job to build a decent reputation — but not outstanding or you’ll be put on the high pressure and high visibility projects with more responsibility. Not too much of a stretch to bring in 220-250k after a few years experience. Keep in mind that you’ll need to clock 40 hours a week, but if you find the right balance you might only be genuinely busy for a third of that time.” – ‘Astro86868’

“Tech sales for the win. 200-300k a year. 2/3 hours per day. Free lunch, drinks, travel, health insurance, booze. Good fun people. If you can handle having a target, it’s a great role.” – ‘ELL_J’

Another user, ‘Bisah1342’, said a role in tech sales could earn $200-400k for under 38 hours of work, but it was unclear in which international market this was applicable.

A third user, TraditionalAddress8, shared in r/Jobs that their gig in IT gets them loads of money for little effort.

“Currently in Senior IT level. My day consists of watching for alerts, delegating my thoughts to engineers on site and generally browsing reddit all day long.

“It pays exceptionally well and I often wonder how long I can keep this jig up before they cotton on.”

Electrician

A few Redditors put their hand up to say being an electrician is one of the best trades to have.

“Heavy diesel electrician is probably the cushiest sub category I’ve seen. 150 an hour as a subbie, full time employees will keep half that” – ‘DankMemelord25’

“Sparky, 40 hour week, easy to find 100k jobs now, doing something as simple as project construction works. Running cables. You get fit too.” – ‘ticklesmebickles’

These are just some of the professions listed in the insightful Reddit thread, but there are plenty of other careers that can earn you big pay with an equal life balance if you’re willing to put the work in. Additionally, if you’d like to learn about the Aussie jobs that get the highest salaries on average, you can find that information here.

Do you work a job that you consider has a good pay-to-hours-worked ratio? Let us know in the comments.

This article has been updated since its original publish date.