If you have an 'easy' flexible job, what is it?

[Anonymous]

It's a weird niche job, but I'm a standardized patient. I'm a lawyer who no longer practices and before I went to law school I was a model/actress and my undergrad is in theater. I did a play about 10 yrs ago and asked the other actors what they do for day jobs in dc and the answer was "We are all standardized patients." I said "What on earth is that?"

Short answer: We pretend to be a patient and med students practice their interview and physical exam skills on us. I can give the longer answer if anyone is interested.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a weird niche job, but I'm a standardized patient. I'm a lawyer who no longer practices and before I went to law school I was a model/actress and my undergrad is in theater. I did a play about 10 yrs ago and asked the other actors what they do for day jobs in dc and the answer was "We are all standardized patients." I said "What on earth is that?"

Short answer: We pretend to be a patient and med students practice their interview and physical exam skills on us. I can give the longer answer if anyone is interested.

How do you get into this, it sounds so fun. What are the hours like? How much do you make? What type of scenarios do you have to act out?

[Anonymous]

Gov attorney but in a fairly niche non-sexy practice area that gets kind of boring. It was difficult to learn the first few years, but I’ve now been there 15 years so it’s gotten much easier for me. And I have built up a good bit of leave. I am fully remote, which is nice too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a weird niche job, but I'm a standardized patient. I'm a lawyer who no longer practices and before I went to law school I was a model/actress and my undergrad is in theater. I did a play about 10 yrs ago and asked the other actors what they do for day jobs in dc and the answer was "We are all standardized patients." I said "What on earth is that?"

Short answer: We pretend to be a patient and med students practice their interview and physical exam skills on us. I can give the longer answer if anyone is interested.

How do you get into this, it sounds so fun. What are the hours like? How much do you make? What type of scenarios do you have to act out?

Yes, another NP here who would LOVE to know how many hours you work and how much you make. Also, what are the requirements to get the job?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are three of us.

Make that four now

Five. People occasionally mistake me for a SAHM but I’m a maxed, non-supervisory Fed in a very niche field. And I’m very grateful.

Pretty sure these are all pro DOGE trolls.

They won’t even describe broadly what they do (lawyer, auditor, nurse, whatever) but say they are high paid Feds. So many in succession, seems like pretending to make DOGE justified.

Yeah, I smell a troll.

Me too

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I won’t tell you, because it’s 100% telework, federal government, great pay, and fascinating work. I’m really good at it, my work product is superlative, I essentially make my own hours, and there are many days when I can sleep in or work just an hour or two.

I recognize this one. Federal financial regulator. Probably an attorney.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any corp/government white collar bureaucratic information economy job where you get lost in the org chart of a large organization. Company has a large budget for a large project and no one individually kills what they eat, doing planning, compliance, administrative, IT work that doesn’t really matter to anyone. No one know what you do so they can’t say you are doing it wrong. Your manager is just as lazy so they don’t want to rock the boat either. Create some new system or process and get paid forever to “maintain” it. Can be anything from project manager to IT operations to analyst to content specialist to staff attorney to CEO or President.

My husband is a federal program analyst that used to work for a FAANG. He would often get contacted after work hours, even late Sunday nights at times. You can’t get away with being mediocre at a FAANG unless you can move around before Focus.

As a fed, things are far more flexible, and weekends are respected. This probably depends on the team though.

Anyway, I’m envious because that’s not the case working in a school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a weird niche job, but I'm a standardized patient. I'm a lawyer who no longer practices and before I went to law school I was a model/actress and my undergrad is in theater. I did a play about 10 yrs ago and asked the other actors what they do for day jobs in dc and the answer was "We are all standardized patients." I said "What on earth is that?"

Short answer: We pretend to be a patient and med students practice their interview and physical exam skills on us. I can give the longer answer if anyone is interested.

How do you get into this, it sounds so fun. What are the hours like? How much do you make? What type of scenarios do you have to act out?

Yes, another NP here who would LOVE to know how many hours you work and how much you make. Also, what are the requirements to get the job?

Most of us have a background in acting, but not all of us. There are a number of medical schools in this area between DC and Baltimore (GWU, Georgetown, Howard, USUHS, Johns Hopkins, Maryland), and some are easier to get hired into and some are harder. I know that at least one school where I work does audition people who don't necessarily have acting experience. When I heard about it, just googled "standardized patient" and the name of each med school and figured out how to apply to each. It took me a while to get hired, but once I did it was relatively easy to get in at the other schools and I eventually had more work than I can take.

Hours vary a lot, but the folks who work at all of the schools can get close to full time, especially during the fall and spring. It's an academic schedule so I've pretty much had the last three weeks off completely. And I will have very little over the summer. But before the holidays, it was exam season, so I was working 12 to 15 hour days (often going from one school to the next in the same day). But we are recruited for each project so if you don't want to do that, you don't have to. We are recruited separately for each project. You get an email that says something like "We are booking for the Internal Medicine clerkship exam on 1/3, from 9 to 1, with training that morning. Please let me know if you are available." Projects may range from 1/2 a day like that one, to several weeks long. Training is always paid, and for most projects there is a 4 hour training.

SP work doesn't pay a lot, $20 to $30 per hour, depending on the school. But this other thing that a lot of us end up doing -- working as a PETA (physical exam teaching associate) or SPI (standardized patient instructor) which involves learning how to teach med students physical exam maneuvers, pays more. Anywhere from $35 to $50 per hour. There are not as many of those hours available though. But it is extremely rewarding, interesting, and challenging. I'm booked far in advance for teaching for multiple dates throughout the year.

The thing I appreciate most about this is that it is extremely flexible. With all of the prof actors around, people are always having to leave for a show in NY for a few months, and it's fine.

We work in simulation centers, that basically look like a bunch of exam rooms like you would be in at the doctor with an exam table in them, and we pretend to be patients with a variety of ailments. The flu, pancreatitis, appendicitis, depression, migraines, a patient who doesn't want to take their med because of side effects, a patient who gets angry about something, someone who has had a stroke, etc. You name it, we have done it. For extremely emotional cases, like SA or dying of cancer, we are often paid a bit extra. You have to memorize a script. It isnt all verbatim, although a few lines are. But we will have to memorize all of our symptoms, our medical history, family medical history, social history details like where we live, our job, etc. Getting all of the details correct is crucial, because we are often giving the students a clinical exam and we can't mess that up. So a good memory and attention to detail is essential. We also grad them -- which is the hard part. Pretending to be sick and spitting out the stuff you memorized from the script is pretty easy, but grading them can be challenging and tax your brain a bit. We fill out checklists after we see the student, which is basically "done" or "not done" for stuff like "listened to my heart in four locations" and "asked about family history" and "asked me to put pain on scale of 1-10" ... so it isn't really that complicated. But remembering what the student did and didn't do can be very challenging when you have already seen 9 other students do the exact same thing and you have been there 10 hours and the checklist has 20 items on it. That's the hard part, and you have to get it right. Med students are pretty serious about their grades being accurate (as they should be). Also, we sometimes provide face to face feedback to the students afterwards.

My coworkers are amazing. The students are a joy. It's a great job. You won't get rich doing it, or even pay huge DC area bills. But if you are looking for something easy and flexible and don't need full time or to make a huge amount of money, this is a really rewarding and fun job. I'd still do it if I won the lottery, let's put it that way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I won’t tell you, because it’s 100% telework, federal government, great pay, and fascinating work. I’m really good at it, my work product is superlative, I essentially make my own hours, and there are many days when I can sleep in or work just an hour or two.

I recognize this one. Federal financial regulator. Probably an attorney.

All the Financial regulators are RTO

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any corp/government white collar bureaucratic information economy job where you get lost in the org chart of a large organization. Company has a large budget for a large project and no one individually kills what they eat, doing planning, compliance, administrative, IT work that doesn’t really matter to anyone. No one know what you do so they can’t say you are doing it wrong. Your manager is just as lazy so they don’t want to rock the boat either. Create some new system or process and get paid forever to “maintain” it. Can be anything from project manager to IT operations to analyst to content specialist to staff attorney to CEO or President.

My husband is a federal program analyst that used to work for a FAANG. He would often get contacted after work hours, even late Sunday nights at times. You can’t get away with being mediocre at a FAANG unless you can move around before Focus.

As a fed, things are far more flexible, and weekends are respected. This probably depends on the team though.

Anyway, I’m envious because that’s not the case working in a school.

FAANG are not all the same. And if you can get into a leadership (manager or tech lead) role you can coast.

[Anonymous]

Package delivery, usps, walmart delivery you basically get paid to NOT deliever, you get to keep your job for not doing your job in northern Virginia. Start there op with one of those jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a weird niche job, but I'm a standardized patient. I'm a lawyer who no longer practices and before I went to law school I was a model/actress and my undergrad is in theater. I did a play about 10 yrs ago and asked the other actors what they do for day jobs in dc and the answer was "We are all standardized patients." I said "What on earth is that?"

Short answer: We pretend to be a patient and med students practice their interview and physical exam skills on us. I can give the longer answer if anyone is interested.

How do you get into this, it sounds so fun. What are the hours like? How much do you make? What type of scenarios do you have to act out?

Yes, another NP here who would LOVE to know how many hours you work and how much you make. Also, what are the requirements to get the job?

Most of us have a background in acting, but not all of us. There are a number of medical schools in this area between DC and Baltimore (GWU, Georgetown, Howard, USUHS, Johns Hopkins, Maryland), and some are easier to get hired into and some are harder. I know that at least one school where I work does audition people who don't necessarily have acting experience. When I heard about it, just googled "standardized patient" and the name of each med school and figured out how to apply to each. It took me a while to get hired, but once I did it was relatively easy to get in at the other schools and I eventually had more work than I can take.

Hours vary a lot, but the folks who work at all of the schools can get close to full time, especially during the fall and spring. It's an academic schedule so I've pretty much had the last three weeks off completely. And I will have very little over the summer. But before the holidays, it was exam season, so I was working 12 to 15 hour days (often going from one school to the next in the same day). But we are recruited for each project so if you don't want to do that, you don't have to. We are recruited separately for each project. You get an email that says something like "We are booking for the Internal Medicine clerkship exam on 1/3, from 9 to 1, with training that morning. Please let me know if you are available." Projects may range from 1/2 a day like that one, to several weeks long. Training is always paid, and for most projects there is a 4 hour training.

SP work doesn't pay a lot, $20 to $30 per hour, depending on the school. But this other thing that a lot of us end up doing -- working as a PETA (physical exam teaching associate) or SPI (standardized patient instructor) which involves learning how to teach med students physical exam maneuvers, pays more. Anywhere from $35 to $50 per hour. There are not as many of those hours available though. But it is extremely rewarding, interesting, and challenging. I'm booked far in advance for teaching for multiple dates throughout the year.

The thing I appreciate most about this is that it is extremely flexible. With all of the prof actors around, people are always having to leave for a show in NY for a few months, and it's fine.

We work in simulation centers, that basically look like a bunch of exam rooms like you would be in at the doctor with an exam table in them, and we pretend to be patients with a variety of ailments. The flu, pancreatitis, appendicitis, depression, migraines, a patient who doesn't want to take their med because of side effects, a patient who gets angry about something, someone who has had a stroke, etc. You name it, we have done it. For extremely emotional cases, like SA or dying of cancer, we are often paid a bit extra. You have to memorize a script. It isnt all verbatim, although a few lines are. But we will have to memorize all of our symptoms, our medical history, family medical history, social history details like where we live, our job, etc. Getting all of the details correct is crucial, because we are often giving the students a clinical exam and we can't mess that up. So a good memory and attention to detail is essential. We also grad them -- which is the hard part. Pretending to be sick and spitting out the stuff you memorized from the script is pretty easy, but grading them can be challenging and tax your brain a bit. We fill out checklists after we see the student, which is basically "done" or "not done" for stuff like "listened to my heart in four locations" and "asked about family history" and "asked me to put pain on scale of 1-10" ... so it isn't really that complicated. But remembering what the student did and didn't do can be very challenging when you have already seen 9 other students do the exact same thing and you have been there 10 hours and the checklist has 20 items on it. That's the hard part, and you have to get it right. Med students are pretty serious about their grades being accurate (as they should be). Also, we sometimes provide face to face feedback to the students afterwards.

My coworkers are amazing. The students are a joy. It's a great job. You won't get rich doing it, or even pay huge DC area bills. But if you are looking for something easy and flexible and don't need full time or to make a huge amount of money, this is a really rewarding and fun job. I'd still do it if I won the lottery, let's put it that way.

Thank you so much for explaining so thoroughly! It sounds fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any corp/government white collar bureaucratic information economy job where you get lost in the org chart of a large organization. Company has a large budget for a large project and no one individually kills what they eat, doing planning, compliance, administrative, IT work that doesn’t really matter to anyone. No one know what you do so they can’t say you are doing it wrong. Your manager is just as lazy so they don’t want to rock the boat either. Create some new system or process and get paid forever to “maintain” it. Can be anything from project manager to IT operations to analyst to content specialist to staff attorney to CEO or President.

My husband is a federal program analyst that used to work for a FAANG. He would often get contacted after work hours, even late Sunday nights at times. You can’t get away with being mediocre at a FAANG unless you can move around before Focus.

As a fed, things are far more flexible, and weekends are respected. This probably depends on the team though.

Anyway, I’m envious because that’s not the case working in a school.

FAANG invented Rest and Vest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are three of us.

Make that four now

Five. People occasionally mistake me for a SAHM but I’m a maxed, non-supervisory Fed in a very niche field. And I’m very grateful.

But you sign a time sheet for 40 hours a week?

NP here. I think they hit or max a production quota and don’t worry about hours

That’s only relevant to PTO jobs. Other Fed jobs are not comped that way.

Pardon me, but you are ignorant. there are many fed decision writing jobs that are on production (maybe all of them?) - have you not read the many pages long thread about BVA? What about SSA? Any agency that provides written decisions/guidance/private letter rulings/benefits determinations, etc. Something similar is to use “metrics” and there are many jobs that use those to establish a quota of work to be done.

[Anonymous]

Entreprenuer