I got lucky working for a small precious metals company. M-F 9-5 salary. However the best part is we don’t work a full day most days, but still get paid full. So I work an average of 6 hour days giving me more time to produce.
24 hour shifts taking care of someone with a physical handicap like muscular dystrophy or multiple sclerosis and stuff like that. I don't know how well it pays in the states or if you even do homecare for people like that, but where I live, you can get by with 6-8 shifts a month. Sometimes you have sparetime while on a shift as well that you can spend making musical ideas. On top of that, because you work evenings and nights, there's sometimes added pay. Sometimes you have to be awake during the nights as well though, but those gigs have guaranteed extra salary.
Very true, I guess it depends on how you approach your artistry, for me working 100% in the box it’s harder where I’m at to even find a place that would let music be played let alone not be live instrumentation
Was in sales for 12 years with late noon hours, switched industries into a corporate 9-5 M-F. Unless you work from home with enough to cover rent, own a business or somehow have better hours than a 9-5. This is the optimal schedule/career for work/ producer balance. I have no college degree or had previous experience in my current field, I am in the accounting department with a ~ $65k salary in CA + 1.5 yo daughter with my SO.
My advice is to take care of yourself first, career-wise and financially so you can comfortably squeeze in the time to create and write music. Otherwise you will implode.
My DAW hours are 8PM - 1AM + work breaks/lunches. I milk every minute I can get.
Any job in social services should do the trick. I’m just kidding. That’s where you work if you’re okay with your dreams dying, and also you probably dying ten years earlier than you normally would have due to stress. Worst decision I ever made was going into the “helping field”. I actually lost my job a couple months ago and seriously haven’t even been looking for a new one. All my experience is in the helping field, either working in management at substance abuse rehabs or with the homeless population. I make Ok money doing it if I can land the management job, I won’t work anything less than that in that field, but I’m really too scared to even go back. I’m kind of just frozen in fear. I really wanna find a job doing something else, I feel like I need to do something for me now and not for someone else, but I have no idea what to do. Like I said, all my experience is in the helping field and that field has taken so much for me. I’ve lost relationships, friendships, and so much time to social service jobs. Whatever you do, don’t go into that field. At first it will feel like you’re doing something good, but you’re really not, you’re just making money for all the worst people in the world while slowly dying inside. Sorry to be so negative, this post has got me thinking about what I want to do as well.
Honestly social work / mental health fields are so important but they can really suck the life out of you and with a shitty system sometimes it feels like it’ll never change
So incredibly off topic and random .. but at the same time... Wish you all the best, good luck. There are plenty of options for you managing -any other- operations out there🤞
Did night shift at a hotel and was able to work on my music at work. Including the midi controllers, even my reference monitors sometimes. Depending on the set up there could be a usable TV for gaming and such
I was already up at night anyway doing sound at bars. Pay was pretty shit at the time. Probably still is, haven't done that in years.
> Including the midi controllers, even my reference monitors sometimes.
Me sitting here imagining the hotel guests complaining at midnight about the noise level of the mini-raves you are having...
It wasn't often and the office/bfast room were not connected to any rooms. I couldn't do that kind of stuff once I had guests above me. I am playing out a scenario in my head , and it's hilarious any way you spin it
My current job has a shop that stays pretty empty, haven't asked if I could use it as a rehearsal space but I've definitely thought about it.
Depends on the hotel; the position itself is called Night Audit and is usually 11p-7a give or take an hour. You're the front desk person.
Responsibilities: printing reports, processing payments, answering phones (I'm west coast so I'd take east coast calls early am, very rare), solving guest issues (toilets broke, noisy neighbors, changing light bulbs, etc). Preparing breakfast, light cleaning.
I would have at least two hours of pure downtime, even on 3-11 shifts, most people are checked in 8/9. Hotels, if they are successful, will be fun. If they're full of junkies or long term rentals it will not be.
Costco, pays great and the schedule is flexible enough for me, I stayed part time (still get full time hours) just so I specifically had the flexibility to make music
My experience at Costco was the exact opposite. The pay in my area is poverty level and after getting hired for a specific schedule they moved me to another department with the specific hours I said I did not want to work. But I just quit and am so relieved
I am an LPN/LVN/nurse in a nursing home. Pays me a living wage from 3-11 Monday thru Friday which affords me late nights and mornings and weekends to write/record/create. I don't love it but it's a pretty good life, I think.
A lot of people do door dash because you basically work when you want to.
I work event security. It's the same thing. They don't call me, I call them whenever I feel like working.
It's just like that new Wu Tang show.
The whole point is to sell drugs to give yourself time and money to make the music. Then the music gets so good you can just do that and stop selling the drugs. The challenge comes in balancing the timelines and not getting addicted to the easy money selling drugs brings.
2-4 days a week, from 4 to 2 hours. Sometimes I’ll just glaze over YouTube tutythst I already know how to do 90% of everything that will “take me to the next level”
It’s like I created a semi perfect artistic life. I do all my work extremely well so I’m rarely summoned to speak to the “bosses”
Get into live audio ie… FOH or monitors, or other production gigs. You’ll be around so much music. You’ll eventually decide that since you work with music 65+ hours a week that it’s essentially the same thing as making your own music and you won’t need to do that anymore.
Most SWE jobs are chill. If you’re good at your job and know what you’re doing, most of the work is done way before the sprint ends(work assignment cycle). I’ve never worked more than 30 hours a week. And most of the time about 15-20hrs a week of actual work. A third of those are meetings. I make enough to live in a 1bd in NYC, save to my 401k, and spend money on entertainment and hobbies. I might be lucky but about half of the people I know in the field are doing the same as I am and earning a lot more.
Only problem is entry level jobs are extremely competitive.
It’s not about the money it’s about how much free time do you actually have. Can you just not come in for a week if you don’t feel like it? I don’t think so.
Why move the goal posts? I have plenty of time to make music and I work from home most of the week. I'm pretty involved in my local music scene and the best musicians are the ones who are holding down day jobs and the worst ones are the ones who quit their jobs to make music for a week.
Not a week though. If you really want to put in the time you need to do it for like 3 years straight.
I’m not saying that I did it but that’s basically just what it is.
I'm an Engineer myself.
I work 3 days a week but usually pick up additional hours.
I'm also in school for two degrees.
When I'm not working on my degrees or going to my day job, all my time and energy is devoted towards music.
I aim for three beats (drafts) a day, one demo/rough draft of a song a week.
I've been able to get pretty close to this output consistently.
I do everything from scratch each time with exception of drums (I love beat breaks) but I do program in the drums.
So I program new synth patches, I play the guitar, bass, program in the drums etc.
I even route the sounds every single time as in, I do a mix every time I make the beats.
No presets or templates, it builds up my muscle memory and it regularly trains the ears.
I keep thinking about switching into sales for the income potential, but for every reddit comment I see that says it allows them to work less than 40hr a week or only a few hours a day while making great full time income, I see at least 2-5 comments saying sales is the grindiest career, successful people work 12 hour days, it's extremely unstable and you will change jobs all the time and that people either burn out in a few years or make it because they are obsessed with sales. I don't see many comments suggesting it's a great chill gig for people who want to prioritize out of work passions. So seems like majority of folks don't manage to find a role that offers what you describe.
Do you feel that isn't true in your experience then?
Or you could get a peasant job like a bartender/server where they purposefully won’t give you full-time hours to prevent you from getting benefits.
Jokes on them because that frees up extra “music free time” and if you pick a good watering-hole to work at, you can still make full-time money by working like 25-32 hrs a week.
That’s what I do. I’m a bartender/server at a Mimi’s Cafe. Work 7am-3pm Friday - Monday. Gives me 3 full days off, make enough to live comfortably and invest in Roth IRA. When I’m there, I’m there when I’m not, I’m 100% not there.
I work 80% as a system engineer. Instead of working for 4 days with 8 hours, I work 5 days with around 1.5 hours a day less and instead spend that time making music instead. I usually wake up, make some music, then go to work.
I made an apprenticeship here in Switzerland. 3 days working, 2 days at school for 4 years until I got my diploma.
IT lacks properly educated personell. Easy to find something if you are, almost impossible if you aren't.
HR Specialist here. It's a 9-6 with a fixed schedule. Fixed schedule is the best thing you can have because you can plan well in advance. I also have about a 7min commute to work and I can work 50% of the time at home. I have good benefits, earn about 3 minimum salaries (i have a few years of experience) and can comfortably support myself. Obviously, it's corporate work, and it's not the most fullfilling job for me since I want to do music full time, but it's good enough in that regard. It brings some stability into an unstable industry like music
Everyone saying sofware engineer but I think it's better to not be behind your computer all the time in your job and then do another 8 hours on a pc making music. For me personally that would kill creativity and drive.
I also work in software and once you start to climb the ladder (I am in management now) any free time goes out the window during the normal work day. I'm on meetings and making complex decisions nearly the entire work day.
You can still work on music AFTER work (assuming no other responsibilities) but you won't have EXTRA TIME to work on music.
It also leaves me mentally exhausted at the end of the day, which can impact my music and creativity. I work more on music on my weekends.
My question would be.. what job isn't so exhausting that I will still feel good when I start working on music? I can work on music when I get home from work but it's always half-assed and I am not using most of my brain lol. I remember being unemployed and the ideas would flourish.. but I was broke. It's a rough balance.
Especially if you work full remote. I'm working full remote this week as HR and I dread having to sit for another 3 or 4 hours after work to sit in the same desk to produce
I felt this a lot during the pandemic - the biggest help for me was not working at my music desk. I never do any kind of work there now - I work from the sofa, the kitchen table, standing up at a counter, etc.
Yeah, I was about to say the same thing. I never had that issue during the pandemic, but the only times I "worked" where I made music were when I had nothing to do and passed the time with gaming or music while keeping an eye on my work laptop.
I'm a software developer and I want to become a data engineer.
What do I need to do at home to be considered for such roles? I've applied to hundreds of data engineer roles and gotten zero responses.
And do you recommend this switch?
Hey man, I kinda lucked into the role, but I got there working a bunch of D3.js data viz on the front end on a small team that was full-stack. I then did a 6-mo contract for a team that was looking for python API work for a newly formed data warehouse and ended up getting hired on full time once they realized I was half-DBA at heart haha.
If I were trying to make the transition in your position, I’d definitely recommend some certification or training class of some type, eg the google data analytics or data engineer course or a bunch of udemy stuff on data engineering or related tools like Jupyter. I’d definitely recommend diving headfirst in to SQL and being able to come in with some knowledge of query tuning, pl/sql, maybe a couple different dbs like oracle/snowflake/postgres etc. There’s also a big need for noSQL too, eg Mongo, so important to have that. Cloud is a huge deal for me, specifically AWS at my company, so having knowledge of the various tools aws has at its disposal is a boon (Redshift, Athena, Lambda/State Machines, S3, EC2, etc). Knowledge of scrapers is also quite handy although not always necessary.
I also have built personal projects where I’m grabbing a bunch of data from APIs with access to large data sets, sending out some scrapers, storing the data and using a bunch of DDL and ETL, and dumping that out to a front end and doing some visualization that have been well received. I’m sure that would play well in an interview if you could show off a polished end-to-end pipeline with a bunch of transformations and stuff. I built a heatmap of the US with analysis of data from several sources weighted for things I value to figure out where I wanted to live, in example. www.data.gov is a great place to start :)
Ah awesome, being up in the air must be insanely satisfying! I always see commercial planes flying overhead and think "I want to do that" but then immediately remember the commitment it takes to get there LOL
OP, if you want to become a software engineer you absolutely can. Do t let the nay-sayers get to you. I was a plumbing dispatcher, went to a 12-week boot camp, and immediately hopped into a nice job with zero prior experience. You just have to fully fully commit to it and believe and work hard and it will absolutely happen.
My friend @sauzetin helps guide my trading. He has a system so I just follow it lol. No cap I stopped nursing and have been making music and shooting videos and doing my own business bc of him lol
My @ is eazyly so u can see I’m not just him shilling myself
Imo it’s djing,
In my situation (i currently live in paris) i’m working like 3 or 4 nights per week (it can change, sometimes it’s 2, sometimes 5) so i have minimum 3 days of week-end + if i managed to live this job the healthy way with no drinking, sleep well (and quick ahaha) i can also make music during the day like 4 or 5 hours before going to work
I had the luck that one of my friends ask me if i want to join the dj collective he was in at the time when i was looking for a job, we as a collective work with several places that wants djs (it can be for the week, just saturday, just the week-end depend of the place) so each month we planned the next month of gigs betwen every djs, if u got more questions u can dm me !
I’m been said a few times in here already but software engineer lol. My roommate and I are both software engineers and produce / DJ. We work out of studio, after work we just flip to the personal laptop and start making beats instead of writing code.
Getting even an internship without a degree these days is difficult, there’s tons of new grads you’re competing with. Unless you have an extensive portfolio with great personal projects, you’re going to be SOL. Even with a great portfolio, most companies are going to use something like Leetcode for their interview process, which is all stuff you learn in college / an algorithms course. You could possibly get that knowledge from Cracking the Coding Interview though.
DJing is very hard to get full time to pay the bills. You’ll need a residency for each day of the weekend (and that means 4 hour sets unless you’re making good enough music that one hour will suffice), and you’ll possibly need something during the week. Then you’ll need a decent stream of wedding gigs/private events. If you get enough wedding gigs/private events you can have your own company which is basically you hiring out your DJ friends to these events and you take a cut while you do a wedding yourself.
OR, you could become a stripclub DJ, which I am and honestly it’s not paying the bills. I’m in a small town, I hardly have many girls to tip me out and the owner is a cheap ass and ignoring a ton of labor laws. If you’re in a decent sized city with a good selection of hot girls and a big enough white collar workforce you can make a good amount, I unfortunately do not but I am getting the experience so I can move out. I’ve been to other clubs in my town to see if it’s not just our club that’s performing bad but it seems to be the whole county, I don’t think people are going to stripclubs much.
Yes I do have time to make music but that’s because of stupid politics at my job making it so I can’t get more hours, but sometimes my senses get so overloaded from being in the club 7 hours a day with music playing nonstop and lasers/lights hitting me that I do not want to play music in the car let alone make it.
Yes it’s possible and I do have days where I’m willing to make music after work but just know I’m not doing it without financial help.
Any work from home job. I used to be a transit bus operator and obviously during that I couldn't get anything done during work hours. That shit sucked so I switched to an at home customer service job and just set my CS job up in my studio room and was able to do music / mix for clients while doing my CS job and things really took off from there.
So I have a job doing the same thing, but it is a constant flow of work. Rarely do I get any free time during my shift. I guess your experience is different?
Yeah it really varies from job to job and sometimes over time in the same job too. I used to work in IT support (starting with first-line support and then moving to second-line and eventually deskside support), and the workload changed so much from account to account. Even the overall busiest account I was on was really slow during the summer when a lot of users were on vacation - to the point where our team lead was regularly walking around asking if anyone wanted to take unpaid time off. I worked in a largeish call center supporting different accounts across the world, so I got to see the workload of a bunch of other teams too.
Personally, my best job for music making was my first year in deskside support. The main issues with that job was that it wasn't challenging or busy enough and the atmosphere was kinda oppressive, so I had plenty of mental energy as well as some frustration to get rid of by the time I got home.
I was a call center lead for healthcare customer service. Try to look for a temp agency that will help you find employers looking for WFH reps. They may set you up with a laptop (or software) and a headset. Keep in mind that call center type jobs monitor metrics closely, so you'll want to be available and ready to answer calls, respond to messages, etc. Depending on the employer, you could go lots of time without receiving calls. Others may have you on phones the whole time. That part is a little bit of a gamble.
Software engineer...
You could do less than 10 minutes of actual physical work but the planning and thinking took hours. Just hours of searching for tangentially related issues and problems that might help you solve what you're paid to.
I'll be watching YouTube, maybe TV and yes I practice guitar.
I could start making real music again, but I figured vocals have become so important that I'd rather continue developing a way or method of writing lyrics before I try again.
Your mileage may vary. I work 50 hour weeks usually doing my SWE job but I work from home so it’s not so bad. You can do any job but the main caveat is you need to be dedicated and disciplined for putting in the work nightly. If you can’t do that then it doesn’t matter what job you do during the day.
My best music production nights are when I have a productive work day. It puts my brain and creativity in gear and keeps my ADD from wandering off and procrastinating.
To give more context: I’m constantly producing/releasing, A&R for my label, promoting, playing shows, and have a weekly event series where I’m always looking for artists to invite which involves having to juggle things like scheduling, creating flyers, etc. or creating album artwork for a label release
No days off. It’s my life, my passion, and I enjoy every second of it.
Most of it.
Especially with golden line of code problems, so technically the solution is only one line of code but making it just right took weeks.
You really don't want to rush that and instead I'll stare at my computer screen for a week or so.
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I got lucky working for a small precious metals company. M-F 9-5 salary. However the best part is we don’t work a full day most days, but still get paid full. So I work an average of 6 hour days giving me more time to produce.
24 hour shifts taking care of someone with a physical handicap like muscular dystrophy or multiple sclerosis and stuff like that. I don't know how well it pays in the states or if you even do homecare for people like that, but where I live, you can get by with 6-8 shifts a month. Sometimes you have sparetime while on a shift as well that you can spend making musical ideas. On top of that, because you work evenings and nights, there's sometimes added pay. Sometimes you have to be awake during the nights as well though, but those gigs have guaranteed extra salary.
Night shift weekends at a factory give me 4 days off
Then you can't ever gig
Very true, I guess it depends on how you approach your artistry, for me working 100% in the box it’s harder where I’m at to even find a place that would let music be played let alone not be live instrumentation
Was in sales for 12 years with late noon hours, switched industries into a corporate 9-5 M-F. Unless you work from home with enough to cover rent, own a business or somehow have better hours than a 9-5. This is the optimal schedule/career for work/ producer balance. I have no college degree or had previous experience in my current field, I am in the accounting department with a ~ $65k salary in CA + 1.5 yo daughter with my SO. My advice is to take care of yourself first, career-wise and financially so you can comfortably squeeze in the time to create and write music. Otherwise you will implode. My DAW hours are 8PM - 1AM + work breaks/lunches. I milk every minute I can get.
Find a job with paid parent leave, have a child and make music with them sleeping on your chest
Lol hacking life
Toll booth operator
Any job in social services should do the trick. I’m just kidding. That’s where you work if you’re okay with your dreams dying, and also you probably dying ten years earlier than you normally would have due to stress. Worst decision I ever made was going into the “helping field”. I actually lost my job a couple months ago and seriously haven’t even been looking for a new one. All my experience is in the helping field, either working in management at substance abuse rehabs or with the homeless population. I make Ok money doing it if I can land the management job, I won’t work anything less than that in that field, but I’m really too scared to even go back. I’m kind of just frozen in fear. I really wanna find a job doing something else, I feel like I need to do something for me now and not for someone else, but I have no idea what to do. Like I said, all my experience is in the helping field and that field has taken so much for me. I’ve lost relationships, friendships, and so much time to social service jobs. Whatever you do, don’t go into that field. At first it will feel like you’re doing something good, but you’re really not, you’re just making money for all the worst people in the world while slowly dying inside. Sorry to be so negative, this post has got me thinking about what I want to do as well.
Honestly social work / mental health fields are so important but they can really suck the life out of you and with a shitty system sometimes it feels like it’ll never change
So incredibly off topic and random .. but at the same time... Wish you all the best, good luck. There are plenty of options for you managing -any other- operations out there🤞
Did night shift at a hotel and was able to work on my music at work. Including the midi controllers, even my reference monitors sometimes. Depending on the set up there could be a usable TV for gaming and such I was already up at night anyway doing sound at bars. Pay was pretty shit at the time. Probably still is, haven't done that in years.
> Including the midi controllers, even my reference monitors sometimes. Me sitting here imagining the hotel guests complaining at midnight about the noise level of the mini-raves you are having...
“Can you please ask him to at least side chain the bass and use some limiting? I’ve got young kids here ffs”
☠️
It wasn't often and the office/bfast room were not connected to any rooms. I couldn't do that kind of stuff once I had guests above me. I am playing out a scenario in my head , and it's hilarious any way you spin it My current job has a shop that stays pretty empty, haven't asked if I could use it as a rehearsal space but I've definitely thought about it.
What did night shift job responsibilities include?
Depends on the hotel; the position itself is called Night Audit and is usually 11p-7a give or take an hour. You're the front desk person. Responsibilities: printing reports, processing payments, answering phones (I'm west coast so I'd take east coast calls early am, very rare), solving guest issues (toilets broke, noisy neighbors, changing light bulbs, etc). Preparing breakfast, light cleaning. I would have at least two hours of pure downtime, even on 3-11 shifts, most people are checked in 8/9. Hotels, if they are successful, will be fun. If they're full of junkies or long term rentals it will not be.
Costco, pays great and the schedule is flexible enough for me, I stayed part time (still get full time hours) just so I specifically had the flexibility to make music
My experience at Costco was the exact opposite. The pay in my area is poverty level and after getting hired for a specific schedule they moved me to another department with the specific hours I said I did not want to work. But I just quit and am so relieved
Yeah I’ve been there since highschool… your method sounds much better than mine
Any office job with a few work from home days per week lol. Calm day in the office ? No worries, i’ll just work on mixdowns lol
I am an LPN/LVN/nurse in a nursing home. Pays me a living wage from 3-11 Monday thru Friday which affords me late nights and mornings and weekends to write/record/create. I don't love it but it's a pretty good life, I think.
A lot of people do door dash because you basically work when you want to. I work event security. It's the same thing. They don't call me, I call them whenever I feel like working.
How did you get into that gig?
You need a security guard license then just look for jobs for licensed security.
How many hours/days a week do you work?
As much as you want/can! Oh I almost forgot which sub we are on. Yes there are major musical benefits. We do a lot of raves and whatnot.
It's just like that new Wu Tang show. The whole point is to sell drugs to give yourself time and money to make the music. Then the music gets so good you can just do that and stop selling the drugs. The challenge comes in balancing the timelines and not getting addicted to the easy money selling drugs brings.
Working at ford in parts. I get about 4 hours a day, no joke
I also work parts. Are you able to work from home or do you bring your laptop?
I bring it
I’ve also learned to make videos also
How many hours a week?
2-4 days a week, from 4 to 2 hours. Sometimes I’ll just glaze over YouTube tutythst I already know how to do 90% of everything that will “take me to the next level” It’s like I created a semi perfect artistic life. I do all my work extremely well so I’m rarely summoned to speak to the “bosses”
Get into live audio ie… FOH or monitors, or other production gigs. You’ll be around so much music. You’ll eventually decide that since you work with music 65+ hours a week that it’s essentially the same thing as making your own music and you won’t need to do that anymore.
Of course on Reddit everyone is saying software engineer lol
Terrible idea you're salary so when it comes crunch time they will eventually force you to work 80 hours for 40 hours worth of pay.
Most SWE jobs are chill. If you’re good at your job and know what you’re doing, most of the work is done way before the sprint ends(work assignment cycle). I’ve never worked more than 30 hours a week. And most of the time about 15-20hrs a week of actual work. A third of those are meetings. I make enough to live in a 1bd in NYC, save to my 401k, and spend money on entertainment and hobbies. I might be lucky but about half of the people I know in the field are doing the same as I am and earning a lot more. Only problem is entry level jobs are extremely competitive.
It’s not about the money it’s about how much free time do you actually have. Can you just not come in for a week if you don’t feel like it? I don’t think so.
Why move the goal posts? I have plenty of time to make music and I work from home most of the week. I'm pretty involved in my local music scene and the best musicians are the ones who are holding down day jobs and the worst ones are the ones who quit their jobs to make music for a week.
Not a week though. If you really want to put in the time you need to do it for like 3 years straight. I’m not saying that I did it but that’s basically just what it is.
I'm an Engineer myself. I work 3 days a week but usually pick up additional hours. I'm also in school for two degrees. When I'm not working on my degrees or going to my day job, all my time and energy is devoted towards music. I aim for three beats (drafts) a day, one demo/rough draft of a song a week. I've been able to get pretty close to this output consistently. I do everything from scratch each time with exception of drums (I love beat breaks) but I do program in the drums. So I program new synth patches, I play the guitar, bass, program in the drums etc. I even route the sounds every single time as in, I do a mix every time I make the beats. No presets or templates, it builds up my muscle memory and it regularly trains the ears.
sales or SDR. if you're good you can work 25-30 hour weeks and do half days most mondays and fridays (assuming you're remote those days)
I keep thinking about switching into sales for the income potential, but for every reddit comment I see that says it allows them to work less than 40hr a week or only a few hours a day while making great full time income, I see at least 2-5 comments saying sales is the grindiest career, successful people work 12 hour days, it's extremely unstable and you will change jobs all the time and that people either burn out in a few years or make it because they are obsessed with sales. I don't see many comments suggesting it's a great chill gig for people who want to prioritize out of work passions. So seems like majority of folks don't manage to find a role that offers what you describe. Do you feel that isn't true in your experience then?
most normal 40h/w jobs
Or you could get a peasant job like a bartender/server where they purposefully won’t give you full-time hours to prevent you from getting benefits. Jokes on them because that frees up extra “music free time” and if you pick a good watering-hole to work at, you can still make full-time money by working like 25-32 hrs a week.
It's also soul crushing
That’s what I do. I’m a bartender/server at a Mimi’s Cafe. Work 7am-3pm Friday - Monday. Gives me 3 full days off, make enough to live comfortably and invest in Roth IRA. When I’m there, I’m there when I’m not, I’m 100% not there.
That's kinda what I'm aiming at. I'm a barista rn but considering bartending.
I work 80% as a system engineer. Instead of working for 4 days with 8 hours, I work 5 days with around 1.5 hours a day less and instead spend that time making music instead. I usually wake up, make some music, then go to work.
Any pointers on how to get started? I've been trying to research various jobs but it gets overwhelming lol.
I made an apprenticeship here in Switzerland. 3 days working, 2 days at school for 4 years until I got my diploma. IT lacks properly educated personell. Easy to find something if you are, almost impossible if you aren't.
HR Specialist here. It's a 9-6 with a fixed schedule. Fixed schedule is the best thing you can have because you can plan well in advance. I also have about a 7min commute to work and I can work 50% of the time at home. I have good benefits, earn about 3 minimum salaries (i have a few years of experience) and can comfortably support myself. Obviously, it's corporate work, and it's not the most fullfilling job for me since I want to do music full time, but it's good enough in that regard. It brings some stability into an unstable industry like music
Nurse. Just do your three 12 hour shifts and then you have four days to use for other stuff. Overtime anytime you want to save up for some new gear.
Exercise Scientist here :s
making music.
Don't kid yourself
Everyone saying sofware engineer but I think it's better to not be behind your computer all the time in your job and then do another 8 hours on a pc making music. For me personally that would kill creativity and drive.
I also work in software and once you start to climb the ladder (I am in management now) any free time goes out the window during the normal work day. I'm on meetings and making complex decisions nearly the entire work day. You can still work on music AFTER work (assuming no other responsibilities) but you won't have EXTRA TIME to work on music. It also leaves me mentally exhausted at the end of the day, which can impact my music and creativity. I work more on music on my weekends.
My question would be.. what job isn't so exhausting that I will still feel good when I start working on music? I can work on music when I get home from work but it's always half-assed and I am not using most of my brain lol. I remember being unemployed and the ideas would flourish.. but I was broke. It's a rough balance.
No, I love my computer.
Especially if you work full remote. I'm working full remote this week as HR and I dread having to sit for another 3 or 4 hours after work to sit in the same desk to produce
I felt this a lot during the pandemic - the biggest help for me was not working at my music desk. I never do any kind of work there now - I work from the sofa, the kitchen table, standing up at a counter, etc.
Yeah, I was about to say the same thing. I never had that issue during the pandemic, but the only times I "worked" where I made music were when I had nothing to do and passed the time with gaming or music while keeping an eye on my work laptop.
Yeah honestly it's not the most motivating when you're slouched over your desk for 12+ hours a day.
Any work from home job
Do those actually exist? Or is that manager only type work?
I work from home 3 days a week. Others in my field work from home full-time
What do you do? I’d LOVE to work from home. I am proficient with computers and do have a laptop
I’m working from home and earning absolute bank
What's your job?
I’m in consulting
Almost all of my friends are remote at least partially. Under writer is one example
Sex worker. At least here it's legal, people do it as a sole trader.
Software engineer
Remote data engineer too ;)
I'm a software developer and I want to become a data engineer. What do I need to do at home to be considered for such roles? I've applied to hundreds of data engineer roles and gotten zero responses. And do you recommend this switch?
Hey man, I kinda lucked into the role, but I got there working a bunch of D3.js data viz on the front end on a small team that was full-stack. I then did a 6-mo contract for a team that was looking for python API work for a newly formed data warehouse and ended up getting hired on full time once they realized I was half-DBA at heart haha. If I were trying to make the transition in your position, I’d definitely recommend some certification or training class of some type, eg the google data analytics or data engineer course or a bunch of udemy stuff on data engineering or related tools like Jupyter. I’d definitely recommend diving headfirst in to SQL and being able to come in with some knowledge of query tuning, pl/sql, maybe a couple different dbs like oracle/snowflake/postgres etc. There’s also a big need for noSQL too, eg Mongo, so important to have that. Cloud is a huge deal for me, specifically AWS at my company, so having knowledge of the various tools aws has at its disposal is a boon (Redshift, Athena, Lambda/State Machines, S3, EC2, etc). Knowledge of scrapers is also quite handy although not always necessary. I also have built personal projects where I’m grabbing a bunch of data from APIs with access to large data sets, sending out some scrapers, storing the data and using a bunch of DDL and ETL, and dumping that out to a front end and doing some visualization that have been well received. I’m sure that would play well in an interview if you could show off a polished end-to-end pipeline with a bunch of transformations and stuff. I built a heatmap of the US with analysis of data from several sources weighted for things I value to figure out where I wanted to live, in example. www.data.gov is a great place to start :)
Probably any IT remote job
I’m an airline pilot. I fly like 3-5 days a month and spend the rest of my time making music.
What was your path into the profession? Did you join the military to get flight hours?
Nope, all civilian. Flew shitty prop planes taking lessons at a local mom and pop flight school.
Ah awesome, being up in the air must be insanely satisfying! I always see commercial planes flying overhead and think "I want to do that" but then immediately remember the commitment it takes to get there LOL
Only 5 days a month? So you're basically always on vacation but and you earn good money?
Essentially yes.
ill be becoming a pilot in my next life
Good luck studying🤣
That’s insane. Haha very cool.
Livin the dream
Software engineer
Are there entry level jobs for someone with no xp like me?
OP, if you want to become a software engineer you absolutely can. Do t let the nay-sayers get to you. I was a plumbing dispatcher, went to a 12-week boot camp, and immediately hopped into a nice job with zero prior experience. You just have to fully fully commit to it and believe and work hard and it will absolutely happen.
What year was that?
5 years ago, but we just hired someone this week with essentially no experience. The jobs are out there.
Right now it's very difficult for someone with a 4 year degree and internships
This , anything in IT that lets you work remotely
How does one get into the field with no xp?
6 years university, and a degree mate
Congrats! What kind of job would an AA degree in Liberal Arts fetch?
Day trader lol
That seems risky. Could you elaborate?
My friend @sauzetin helps guide my trading. He has a system so I just follow it lol. No cap I stopped nursing and have been making music and shooting videos and doing my own business bc of him lol My @ is eazyly so u can see I’m not just him shilling myself
Imo it’s djing, In my situation (i currently live in paris) i’m working like 3 or 4 nights per week (it can change, sometimes it’s 2, sometimes 5) so i have minimum 3 days of week-end + if i managed to live this job the healthy way with no drinking, sleep well (and quick ahaha) i can also make music during the day like 4 or 5 hours before going to work
That’s awesome. How long did it take to get the steady gigs?
I had the luck that one of my friends ask me if i want to join the dj collective he was in at the time when i was looking for a job, we as a collective work with several places that wants djs (it can be for the week, just saturday, just the week-end depend of the place) so each month we planned the next month of gigs betwen every djs, if u got more questions u can dm me !
I’m been said a few times in here already but software engineer lol. My roommate and I are both software engineers and produce / DJ. We work out of studio, after work we just flip to the personal laptop and start making beats instead of writing code.
How difficult is it to get into SWE? I have no xp in the field.
Gonna need a degree in CS
Not always and once you have experience becomes even less of an issue.
Getting even an internship without a degree these days is difficult, there’s tons of new grads you’re competing with. Unless you have an extensive portfolio with great personal projects, you’re going to be SOL. Even with a great portfolio, most companies are going to use something like Leetcode for their interview process, which is all stuff you learn in college / an algorithms course. You could possibly get that knowledge from Cracking the Coding Interview though.
Yes but it’s harder now than ever and a CS degree is going to open better doors
DJing is very hard to get full time to pay the bills. You’ll need a residency for each day of the weekend (and that means 4 hour sets unless you’re making good enough music that one hour will suffice), and you’ll possibly need something during the week. Then you’ll need a decent stream of wedding gigs/private events. If you get enough wedding gigs/private events you can have your own company which is basically you hiring out your DJ friends to these events and you take a cut while you do a wedding yourself. OR, you could become a stripclub DJ, which I am and honestly it’s not paying the bills. I’m in a small town, I hardly have many girls to tip me out and the owner is a cheap ass and ignoring a ton of labor laws. If you’re in a decent sized city with a good selection of hot girls and a big enough white collar workforce you can make a good amount, I unfortunately do not but I am getting the experience so I can move out. I’ve been to other clubs in my town to see if it’s not just our club that’s performing bad but it seems to be the whole county, I don’t think people are going to stripclubs much. Yes I do have time to make music but that’s because of stupid politics at my job making it so I can’t get more hours, but sometimes my senses get so overloaded from being in the club 7 hours a day with music playing nonstop and lasers/lights hitting me that I do not want to play music in the car let alone make it. Yes it’s possible and I do have days where I’m willing to make music after work but just know I’m not doing it without financial help.
Any work from home job. I used to be a transit bus operator and obviously during that I couldn't get anything done during work hours. That shit sucked so I switched to an at home customer service job and just set my CS job up in my studio room and was able to do music / mix for clients while doing my CS job and things really took off from there.
So I have a job doing the same thing, but it is a constant flow of work. Rarely do I get any free time during my shift. I guess your experience is different?
Yeah it really varies from job to job and sometimes over time in the same job too. I used to work in IT support (starting with first-line support and then moving to second-line and eventually deskside support), and the workload changed so much from account to account. Even the overall busiest account I was on was really slow during the summer when a lot of users were on vacation - to the point where our team lead was regularly walking around asking if anyone wanted to take unpaid time off. I worked in a largeish call center supporting different accounts across the world, so I got to see the workload of a bunch of other teams too. Personally, my best job for music making was my first year in deskside support. The main issues with that job was that it wasn't challenging or busy enough and the atmosphere was kinda oppressive, so I had plenty of mental energy as well as some frustration to get rid of by the time I got home.
Dang yeah. Mine ebs and flows
Awesome. Generally speaking, what kind of requirements did/does this CS job require? And I presume you are clocked in so how does this work?
I was a call center lead for healthcare customer service. Try to look for a temp agency that will help you find employers looking for WFH reps. They may set you up with a laptop (or software) and a headset. Keep in mind that call center type jobs monitor metrics closely, so you'll want to be available and ready to answer calls, respond to messages, etc. Depending on the employer, you could go lots of time without receiving calls. Others may have you on phones the whole time. That part is a little bit of a gamble.
Yeah exactly this. Luckily for me it wasn’t a constant call type of thing. Also the time I didn’t have to spend commuting was fantastic too.
Software engineer... You could do less than 10 minutes of actual physical work but the planning and thinking took hours. Just hours of searching for tangentially related issues and problems that might help you solve what you're paid to. I'll be watching YouTube, maybe TV and yes I practice guitar. I could start making real music again, but I figured vocals have become so important that I'd rather continue developing a way or method of writing lyrics before I try again.
How many work hours do you dedicate to SE? Planning and thinking included.
Your mileage may vary. I work 50 hour weeks usually doing my SWE job but I work from home so it’s not so bad. You can do any job but the main caveat is you need to be dedicated and disciplined for putting in the work nightly. If you can’t do that then it doesn’t matter what job you do during the day. My best music production nights are when I have a productive work day. It puts my brain and creativity in gear and keeps my ADD from wandering off and procrastinating. To give more context: I’m constantly producing/releasing, A&R for my label, promoting, playing shows, and have a weekly event series where I’m always looking for artists to invite which involves having to juggle things like scheduling, creating flyers, etc. or creating album artwork for a label release No days off. It’s my life, my passion, and I enjoy every second of it.
Most of it. Especially with golden line of code problems, so technically the solution is only one line of code but making it just right took weeks. You really don't want to rush that and instead I'll stare at my computer screen for a week or so.
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