The Venn-diagram of lazy people and efficient people is not a circle, my friend. There is some overlap, but not entirely overlapping.
The trick is to be lazy enough to seek a better solution but not lazy enough to actually implement it.
With external pressure to get something done and a full description of what needs to be done, lazy people will find a solution with the least possible amount of effort. That’s why they often make good developers.
Problems arise when there is no immediate external pressure, or when the task isn’t well-defined. In that case, lazy people will put it off until it becomes immediate (at which point the effort required may be much higher), or they will do the bare minimum to satisfy the requirements of the task according to the definition. If the definition of the task wasn’t complete, the task won’t be done completely.
That’s why they often make good developers.
Good developers don’t just write easy-to-write code. They write code that is easy to maintain and efficient to run - and oftentimes that requires forethought, a willingness to rewrite when a misstep is made, and above all else the willingness to tinker/learn effectively.
Source: I am a terrible developer and a very lazy person, and I have had to maintain lots of poorly-written code (some of it my own).
You’ve described my entire IT career.
This requires defining an additional separation between “lazy, but productive” and “lazy but NOT productive”
Depends.
Lazy people who automate their own tasks so they do less work - efficient.
Lazy people who pass off work to other people, causing them to get snowed under no matter how efficient they are - garbage shitsacks.
