As I get older and a little lazier, sometimes I think I might want to find a way to get a completely pointless job that gives me a paycheck where all I have to do is write documents that nobody ever reads.
Then I look at something like this Gaia-X "milestones" list and think "Meh, this is probably not the job for me..."
I was involved in an EU funded software research project related to air quality [1] around ~2008. The bureaucracy was very real, we had to produce a boatload of paperwork (including a literal, on paper, printout of the source code, for some reason?). But aside from the weird paperwork overhead, we were fairly free in how we approached the project, and we got a lot of shit done. This was software R&D in the true sense. I don't know what happened to the project after I left, but I suspect the universities involved benefited from the research and some of it was probably spun off.
That is to say: it's not all just paperwork and paychecks, it can be greatly rewarding work.
[1] Strangely enough I was just talking about another aspect of air quality in another HN thread. Never noticed this was a theme in my life before.
Any suggestions on how to land such a role? I've had the last 48 hours off work, which I think is the longest stretch in the last month, but I'll be working this evening, and tomorrow, and tomorrow evening, and Tuesday, and Tuesday evening, and...
Look for companies that are funded as part of long, multi-year projects. I have been funded by institutions like the NSF, NIH, and a bunch of smaller philanthropic foundations. After leaving SaaS-world, I just went to LinkedIn and looked for a non-profit doing work I can stand behind.
The thing that makes it so chill is that we work on very long time scales, based on the length of whatever NIH (or similar) grant we're on. If you're used to building things in the private sector, the comparison I make is that what took us 3 months at my previous YC startup would take us 3 years at the non-profit where I work now. A lot of that is because there are many moving pieces to coordinate, and because you have to be careful when dealing with sensitive data and research ethics. Blah blah blah, at least part of it is also because the breakneck pace of VC-funded software hasn't got its fingers into this pie, at least not yet.
Downside: pay cut. I make $18k less than I did 4 years ago, despite having gotten promoted in this new spot. Also, it can be frustrating trying to actually produce software at a company with no culture for it. You find out that software delivery practices are something people have to learn, and at places that aren't software-oriented, they don't know about them.
Then I look at something like this Gaia-X "milestones" list and think "Meh, this is probably not the job for me..."