
Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs? - thy_inquisitor
I have had an extremely good experience doing a 4 hour per day, 4 day per week job, in which I was mainly doing a greenfield project for a startup company.<p>Hands down, it was best work experience I have ever had. I was asked to do little every week, so I always had an extreme desire to outperform expectations, which led to an extreme drive to work, great work &#x2F; life balance, and a very(!) productive throughput every single workday!<p>Another curious side-effect was to (on several occasions) actually work beyond the required ~16 hours per week, out of sheer pleasure.<p>I still remember that the same day I started working full time for that same company, my energy&#x2F;happiness&#x2F;productivity levels plunged, to only be lowered along the years.<p>I sincerely think it is quite unrealistic to ask a knowledge worker consistently deliver at full throttle for 40 hours every week (never mind the enslaving 60+ hours on many companies)<p>So my questions are the following:<p>- Are these 4&#x2F;4 jobs easy to find? In which areas &#x2F; programming language domains?<p>- Only greenfield projects make sense for this kind of work schedule?
======
gexla
Four hours per day of work where you are in high focus is about normal. You
will see that professionals across many creative fields only work 4 hours per
day.

There are a lot of posts here from developers talking about how they are more
productive than their peers working less hours. Really, they probably have the
same capacity for hours, but the less productive developers are carrying a lot
of baggage in attempting to manage themselves (trying to push themselves when
they shouldn't be.)

I think you could actually put in more. The trick is to observe your own
natural rhythm. For example, energy and your ability to focus is like a wave
through the day. For most, I think the time of the most energy is early in the
morning and then it declines from there. You aren't burning hours so much as
you're burning that fuel in your brain. But if you put in your 4 hours early,
then you could probably take a good break and get another good 90 minute
session. You could also find other tasks that are much less cognitive
demanding to fill your day. If you put in your 4 hours that you believe are
more productive than what your peers put in, then fill out the rest of the day
with things that are lighter and less "forced."

If you are running a business, then after your creative work you still might
have email, quotes, meetings, marketing, billing and a long list of other
things to do. It could be pretty easy for a business manager to knock out 4
hours of creative work per day and then still fill out the rest of a normal
working day with other tasks.

If you didn't have these other sorts of tasks, then maybe you could work out a
side project with your employer. After you do the "forced" work, then maybe
there is something that you could work on which is more a "scratch an itch"
type of project. This could be something that you see as a glaring problem for
the business which also happens to be something that you are highly interested
in. Maybe it's something that's a different area of expertise that you might
want to move into in the future.

Or maybe your 4 hours is all you can do without burning out.

~~~
gedrap
Totally agree. 9-5 (or 9-6) engineering jobs are a bit crazy - no one is able
to work productively for 8 hours, that's a fact. Many managers understand that
and are cool with people just not doing work while at work...

However, I would still prefer to go home than sitting and waiting for 5 or 6pm
so I could do something more meaningful, because e.g. side-projects is a gray
area while at work and that's fair. Even so, some non-technical higher-ups
might think that the engineer is not working hard and just slacking off
because everyone else is at the office till 6 or 7.

Some companies recognize that (e.g. Netflix, Twitter, etc) and they don't care
where and what are you do, as long as you get stuff done. In an ideal world,
every company would treat engineers like that :)

~~~
localhost3000
"no one is able to work productively for 8 hours, that's a fact"

tell that to a medical resident...or just about any in-hospital physician, for
that matter. many, many people work long shifts and are entirely productive.

~~~
e12e
I've not worked at a hospital, but I've seen people in _somewhat_ similar
circumstances: military exercises, working as leaders at a youth camp -- and
while they all get the job done, it's always been clear that they'd do a
_better_ job if they had more free time/more sleep -- in short they can work
productively (under high strain/stress) for more than 8 hours -- but they'd do
_better_ work if they could work fewer hours.

I'd be surprised if the rate of errors didn't go down with work hours (to a
certain point) at hospitals as well. And/or patient satisfaction went up.

To put this into (made up) numbers, if we assume that a software architect
works either 12, 8 or 4 hours a day, and that at 12 hours a day produces on
average 200 "valuedollars" per hour, that's 2400 vd/day. Is it _really_ a
stretch to claim that you could, on average, do 3 times better if you only had
4 hours, rather than 12? Paying 3 people 600/hour to work 4 hours a day, you'd
get 3 times the value/day (note: note value/pay -- but we all know deadlines
are important in projects).

~~~
robaato
There's plenty of research on this, e.g.

[http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a487169.pdf](http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a487169.pdf)

For an alternative take:

[http://theenergyproject.com/blog/sleep-as-a-competitive-
adva...](http://theenergyproject.com/blog/sleep-as-a-competitive-advantage)

------
cjauvin
Thank you very much for this, I think it strikes a major chord with many in
the "knowledge worker" community at large, and I hope it stays in the top spot
for a while, and spawn a healthy discussion.

For my part I've been doing a mix of freelance and salaried work in the last
few years (as a data scientist), and I have reached the conclusion that a
strict 40-hour week is not an easy thing to handle. I think it stems from the
fact that the "knowledge worker"/hacker ethos is often deeply rooted in a
self-driven and motivated agenda of learning and experimenting with new things
on a constant basis, very often just for the sake of it. This can easily
conflict with a regular work schedule in terms of number of hours and
commitment. But the point is that it really shouldn't, because very often,
those two "modes" nourish each other, which can result in a stronger, more
robust and ultimately more meaningful and happier work like.

I've been trying to convince my current boss that a 3-day week would be a more
efficient and compressed use of my time, while giving me more time to pursue
other contracts and projects. But it seems that there are some cultural
barriers that makes it a difficult message to pass. I actually intend to use
that thread to show that I'm not the only one in that situation, that such a
culture really exists, and thus that it must be taken into account somehow.

It might be somewhat cliché, but I really believe that this mentality is a
glimpse of the future in terms of work ethics.

~~~
VLM
"I've been trying to convince my current boss that a 3-day week would be a
more efficient and compressed use of my time"

I do four tens per week on flextime to avoid commute traffic and one major
"cultural impedance mismatch" is discussing this face to face with people who
are at their workplace (note that I don't describe that as working, merely
being at a certain location), perhaps five twelves or even six fourteens per
week on salary. Its possible to be polite on the internet, but face to face
they tend not to take it very well.

~~~
taf2
Sorry but this all sounds lazy to me. If there are any real customers using
the software they are going be rather unforgiving of your desired work ethic.
Perhaps in a large org with a staggering of staff this could work... But would
be challenging to keep the continuity throughout the work week. Certainly an
interesting idea for the larger orgs.

~~~
spacemanmatt
Perhaps his real customers are internal, and his continued employment proves
they are satisfied.

~~~
VLM
The above, and I'm on call 24x7x365 although I only get a call about once a
month.

Also both the company and I have a motto of fail gracefully. So the automated
testing system and the ticketing system decide they're not on speaking terms
anymore, well, we could all set our hair on fire and run around and scream, or
just buckle down and do it manually, 5x as slow and much more error prone than
my integration system.

They expect me to fix anything 24x7 or have an excellent excuse (most recent
excuse was my kid is in surgery so I'll go home and log in later) but they
only expect me to invent or create new stuff in a much more restricted set of
working hours (And the end users have absolutely no idea what those hours
are...). Actually they're pretty pissed off at me if I make any production
changes outside of certain work hours, unless I have an excellent excuse, so
in the ebb and flow of work sometimes I have to read HN until I get the mgmt
thumbs up if there's nothing else on my plate.

Enlightened self interest provides a strong motivation to automate the hell
out of all error recovery and have backups to the backups. My systems for
error recovery and resumption of production are much more complicated than the
actual production itself, most of which is fairly simple although on a very
large scale. I literally can't remember the last time I was woken up at 2am,
although it could very well happen tonight...

(Oh and edited to add, I don't work in Ops. A drive fails in the NAS, a vmware
server needs rebooting, they take care of it, that type of thing. The problems
I get involved in after hours are higher level than ops, like somebody thought
it would be funny to upgrade the software on a testing machine removing my
access, or they changed firewall rules without telling anyone, that kind of
thing, big fun)

~~~
walshemj
So your doing 4on4 on call I hope your getting paid for that - must ruin your
social life to be tied to a computer.

I assume you on the standard 15 min response and onsite or connected and
working on a fix inside an hour.

------
patio11
Many of my small business buddies [+] start with their first few programmers
on this sort of schedule. It generally fits within their/our budgets, gets
them continuity versus project-based freelancers, and doesn't cause them to
have to compromise on _their_ quality of life through managing you constantly.

It isn't my place to mention the salaries I've heard but, anecdotally, they're
a) more than anything I earned prior to going into business for myself and b)
a substantial discount to market rates for FTE programmers.

So that's one option for you. Another is to be very good at making companies
money and then, in negotiations, trade access to you for flexibility. Still
another option is to own the company you're negotiating with.

[+] Context: solo founders or married couples running software small
businesses with revenue in six to seven figures and no investor mandate to
radically change the character of the business.

~~~
nhaehnle
Why don't you want to talk about salaries? Lack of data is a huge problem in
this space. I don't think anybody expects you to name the names of the people
involved.

~~~
patio11
I'm a let-it-all-hang-out kind of guy, but there exists adequate specificity
in my comment to narrow it down to less than five identifiable people. Neither
they nor their employers have OKed me putting their salary on the public
Internet. Accordingly, I politely decline to be more specific than I am
currently being. (The bookends I mentioned earlier were intended to
communicate "Between $30k and $100k.")

~~~
oohaba
I'm surprised no one has asked yet, but the next question is, are your small
business buddies hiring? I'd be interested in 10/20/30 hours per week
continuous employment at a below-market rate, provided it was remote.

------
asdfologist
I sometimes wonder if, for mind-intensive, non-repetitive jobs such as
programming (the good ones, anyway), lowering the number of work hours per
week may actually increase overall output. It's well known that people tend to
become more efficient the less time they're given to complete a task. So if
people were to work fewer hours and use the rest of the time to get more
sleep, relax with their family, etc. - hence keeping their mind refreshed and
maintaining motivation - perhaps they'd get much more done over the course of
the year than otherwise.

It's the reason I deliberately choose not to work late nights or during
weekends, even if I feel the urge to. I'm afraid that it may actually end up
hurting my overall output in the long run.

~~~
krashidov
I don't know how it works in other industries, but I would bet for software
you're right. Sometimes you need to step away from a problem and it let it
process in the background.

I've had moments where I'll work on something for hours late into the night
only to realize the next morning that I didn't need to or that I can do it
using some other method in only a couple of minutes. If I had stopped and went
to bed earlier I would've saved a lot more time.

------
akamaka
Thanks for posting this! I've been looking for the same thing, but my most
recent attempt failed.

I was asked to come back to a company that I used to work for, and I insisted
that I would only come back if I could do a 3 day work week. I'm convinced my
productivity would have been similar to when I used to work a 40 hour week
with them, because rarely put in more than 3 hours of actual work per day.
Unfortunately, they didn't hire me, because they said that absolutely needed
someone full time to be able to complete the project on schedule.

I think they rejected the idea because everyone else there is on a 40-hour
week, and they simply can't contemplate the idea of someone doing less work.
They've been slogging away at the same never-ending project for 2 years now,
and they aren't looking for someone to get work done efficiently. They want
someone who will join in their suffering.

Going forward, I'm going to keep looking for a part time opportunity, but not
waste time trying to convince people that it's good idea. I think I need to
find people who already just get it.

~~~
corford
There will be people lurking here who 'get it', but it's difficult to make
someone aware of part time opportunities without any contact info in their
profile :)

------
mark_l_watson
I am in my early 60s and I am retired now except for a little consulting and
writing a book or two a year.

That said, starting in the early 1970s working at a large defense contractor,
I got in the habit of only working 32 hours a week (took Mondays off). I
continued this process with several other companies until about 15 years ago
when I converted to having a lifestyle 1-man consulting business.

The deal is however, it is really important to realize that it is not in a
company's interest to have a part time employee in many cases so I really
tried hard to add value when I was at work.

I have never regretted getting 20% less salary when I only worked four days
per week.

~~~
delinka
Why is it not in a company's interest to have part-time employees? By
anecdotal accounts, it seems that part-time employees are less expensive than
full-timers (such anecdotes generally refer to mandated benefits for full-time
workers as the major cost difference.)

~~~
mark_l_watson
Good question.

Every company I worked for had to provide me with an office that was empty one
day a week.

In most of the companies I worked for, employees who worked a minimum of 30
hours a week got full fringe benefits :-)

~~~
delinka
Thanks. "Square-footage" is one of those things I always forget when
calculating the expense of employees. (Probably one reason I'm an employee and
not an employer.)

------
paul
I love this idea. If someone figures out how to successfully run a company
like this, it'll be huge, as it will attract a lot of top talent who would
prefer these hours.

In my experience, the biggest obstacle is the amount of time dedicated to
communication/coordination overhead like email and meetings. If you're already
spending 20 hours/week on that, then you're left with only -4 hours/week for
productive work. This is likely the reason why it worked well for an
independent, "greenfield" project.

~~~
percept
I've seen several (smaller) companies hiring developers for a 4-day workweek.

At least it's a start...

------
scarecrowbob
I work 4/5, mostly on either crappy wordPress projects (whcih, for all their
crappiness, can be kind of fun, since we're not grinding) or on a bespoke PHP
framework (which can be a bit frustrating, because I can't just find already
answered questions on a list or StackOverflow).

My strategy was to cycle through a bunch of agencies looking for freelance,
overflow workers and then be super good at performing... until I found a
couple that were a good fit (interesting projects, real pay, smart folks).

A big part of the strategy is that a) the agencies know I have other
contracts, so they understand if I can't commit to 60 hours of work in a week,
b) they don't know when the "other agencies" are my kids or my wife or my jazz
band.

I have worked on all kinds of things, so I don't think it is just for
greenfield projects... though often I think that new or redevelopment work
seems to be the norm, as if there were a massive effort underway people seem
to have/want employees.

~~~
mistercheese
As a complete newbie to contract/freelance work, how did you first get started
finding good agencies to work with?

~~~
scarecrowbob
As horrible as it sounds, I started with the Austin, TX craigslist for my
first groupings of folks, which paid terrible and had horrible projects. I'm
not in Austin, but I could meet folks in town.

But I did cycle through a lot of folks, and I also tried to leverage every
project into a better project.

Also, I answer questions on a facebook group, and that has led to new work
contacts. Just being generally helpful and occasionally asking for work netted
me a lot of work.

Finally, I just generally network, talk about what I do, make a point to talk
to other folks who do what I do when I meet them in my larger life. That's
created my best connections. One guy I met doing audio on a movie set hooked
me up with a company that turned into a high 5 figure client.

I find it especially valuable to be able to hook up folks I know who are
looking for work with people who need work done, at whatever level. People
generally find that super useful... it is harder to do when just starting out,
but I still get work from the guy I got hired to replace me at the first of my
crappiest jobs.

I do that mostly because it makes me happy to see my friends find work or
folks fill a need in their businesses, but folks don't usually forget people
who build good relationships for them. So, IMO, it is good to know other
freelancers or people who want to freelance... you get a lot more calls if
most times that you turn down a project you can shuffle it to someone else :D

------
hopeless
I worked 20-25hrs / weeks for about 2 years as a consultant but then, probably
against my better judgement, joined a company in March doing the standard
37+hrs. I'm unhappy, unfocused and RescueTime tells me that my efficiency has
dropped about 20%.

After only a few months, I'm going back to consulting with a 20-25hr week. If
you haven't tried it, you probably don't realise the universally positive
effects it will have.

~~~
huffer
probably off-topic: you mention 37h/w so I'm guessing (Western) Europe... Do
you find it reasonably easy to find consultancy jobs that allow for ~20h/w
(and still make enough for sustenance)?

To me it looks like freelancers are generally accepted by companies only if
hiring permanent staff is not feasible, and once they decide to pay the
(usually higher) daily rate, they would squeeze so much out of that day that
half-day jobs would be blasphemy - unless you're very well known for your
expertise in your field/niche, of course...

------
zackmorris
I have been working 25 hour weeks for a little over a year now, but agonizing
over finding a good number for years before that. I've found that for
difficult problems to crack, I may only work 1 or 2 hours per day. But for
easier stuff like initial setup, a little refactoring, translating wireframes
to layouts, etc, I can easily manage 6 or 7 hours per day. 8+ is too much, and
working 3 or more days in a row at that level has a taxing effect on my
health. I just don’t think humans are built to be sedentary with high levels
of cortisol. So short prolific bursts interspersed with long hours of
introspection seems to be the best route to writing the least amount of code
for me. I would say 50-75% of my efforts are subconscious, so I spend 5 or 10
minutes as I’m falling asleep thinking about the problems to be solved the
next day, and the answers either come to me or suggest some way in which I
misframed the problem (wow misframe is not in the Mac OS 10.9.2 dictionary,
but I digress).

I spend my off hours with a few dozen windows open with 50 or 100 tabs each,
basically a web of interests. I use Javascript Blocker in Safari to reduce
overhead, and periodically turn off Javascript and Flash then force quit and
relaunch to restore my workspace. It’s crude but until I have an indexed,
version controlled browser with everything I’ve ever viewed, it gets the job
done. The number of days since I’ve viewed HN is a good barometer for either
how far in the zone I’m in (if I’ve been using the computer) or how
disconnected I feel (if I haven’t). I would go to professional conferences for
the people, not the subject matter. That’s probably my biggest regret with
dabbling in the anarchism of autonomy, because without a safety net there
isn’t a lot of disposable income. So my big goal now is to remedy that, either
directly or by spreading the word if I learn something. Stumbled onto this a
couple days ago:

[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/programmers-d...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/programmers-
dont-need-a-union-we-need-a-profession/)

~~~
capisce
Hehe, the web of interests sounds very familiar. I'm using pocket
(getpocket.com) to cut down on the number of tabs though, maybe it would be
useful for you as well.

~~~
webmaven
I use Pocket for a different use-case (basically, saving long-form stuff for
perusal later). For taming the too-many-tabs problem I use Tabs Outliner:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-
outliner/eggk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-
outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl?hl=en)

------
mgmeyers
I've worked 25 hours a week for the past ~6 years as a web developer, and I
can't imagine a better work schedule. I've noticed that I'm just as productive
on average, if not more so, than my 40-hour-per-week coworkers.

I do find it difficult to progress in my career, however. I've been trying
desperately to transition into a full-stack, part-time position, but I feel
pretty stuck as a senior level front-end dev. In my experience, this is
because I need some weight to throw around when I request working only part-
time.

~~~
glesica
How did you get the part-time gig in the first place?

~~~
prawn
One of my past employees worked with me for about 6 years, doing four days a
week. He asked if it was an option and, while there were days when it was
inconvenient given that I run a small business, I didn't mind. He's since
moved elsewhere, but I would've kept him on doing three days or fewer hours
spread over the week.

I wouldn't feel comfortable paying full rate for part time hours under the
guise of it being "just as productive" though. I believe it _can_ be just as
productive but it would be too disruptive to face emergency situations or
social situations that pop up during work hours.

~~~
glesica
I agree that the pay shouldn't be the same in terms of annual compensation,
but I see no reason why hourly compensation shouldn't be the same, once fixed
costs are accounted for (such as health insurance).

~~~
prawn
Yes, it was a direct comparison in this case. I figure the discount you get
for buying time in volume is offset by the arrangement suiting seller.

------
gregpilling
I offered 12 weeks vacation to my staff in exchange for lower wages (but paid
during 12 weeks off). Nobody was interested, and they wanted to stay with the
current two weeks paid. So as an employer, I have never had anyone interested
in doing a 16 hour week.

I have had many ex-employees (and an ex-partner) who were paid for 40 hours a
week, but only worked 16.

To answer your questions directly. 1. They are not easy to find, nor are they
often demanded. 2. I don't think it has to be greenfield.

~~~
mikegillman
Interesting. If the staff thought they would have to work through those 12
weeks of vacation anyway... or that it would be impractical to actually take 3
months vacation (or every Friday off), they probably wouldn't risk taking the
salary cut. In our society the money feels more valuable than the time.

~~~
gregpilling
its a small manufacturing business. They would not have had to work the 12
weeks.. They simply weren't interested. I was surprised, since it is a rule I
wanted for myself. So I made the rule anyway.

My engineer wants to take a month off, but she is doing it as a unpaid leave.
She had already saved her living expenses for the time she would be off, so it
didn't matter to her.

~~~
dkokelley
A: Was it an even trade of days off for pay?

B: What is your unpaid time off policy? Could your employees take 4 weeks off
and receive their regular 2 weeks vacation pay? (Specifically, can they do
this upon request. I understand that your engineer is doing this, but I don't
know if that's available to everyone as a rule.)

If I was given the option of making 100% pay with a relaxed unpaid time off
policy, or making 80% pay with a 20% PTO policy, I would choose the former
option. That way I can decide exactly how much vacation/unpaid time as I want.

~~~
gregpilling
We are very relaxed. An employee could take 4 weeks off, get the normal 2
weeks and just have 2 weeks unpaid.

------
dennisgorelik
HN readers are well informed about decline in productivity in case of burnout.

But if number of working hours is significantly lower than 40 hours per week,
then productivity deteriorates too, for the following reasons:

1) In order to solve complex task, programmer need to load all relevant
details into his mind. That takes time. If working day is too short, then most
of the time is spend on such loading and there is not enough time to actually
accomplish something.

2) Shorter working hours usually means less expertise long term. Less
expertise means less productivity.

3) Shorter work time means it's harder to meet with coworkers, because there
is not enough work hours to meet. Less meetings with coworkers means lower
productivity, because work in isolation usually mean working on wrong problems
and less knowledge exchange.

So, on one side we have burnout risks. On another size we have incompetence
risks.

Our society tried various working schedule and worked out 40 hours work week
as the one that is closest to the optimum.

Note though, that 40 hours work week does not mean 40 hours per week coding.
There are many other things that developer should do at work.

~~~
UweSchmidt
Good points, except: Our society hasn't really tried various working schedules
to find an optimum work week for programmer productivity.

The 8 hour day was an achievement by the unions, down from the insane workdays
during the industrialization.

If it were optimized, it would have been optimized for assembly-line style
manual labor.

------
pling
If you're good, this is what good contract work is like.

Many times I got hired for a 3 month stint and got it all done in a couple of
weeks with one eye shut. I tended to chip in and help with any other bits
lying around that needed doing rather than sitting there playing solitaire.
Builds a good reputation.

This is how I started my current permanent job. They decided they wanted to
keep me so I'm getting paid a contractor's salary for a permanent job now and
have a 25h week flexible time as a technical advisor and general devops guy.

------
perplexes
We offer flexible work schedules (half time, full time, anywhere in-between)
with benefits.

1\. A. In my experience it's hard to find unless you're contracting or have
extremely rare knowledge.

1\. B. We're a rails shop, (mostly) b2b edtech.

2\. Not at all just greenfield. Having flexible schedules means that you have
to be realistic with scheduling and expectations. You have to work out what
will work best with the team and when they need to synchronize with you.

In some cases your work is orthogonal to main development critical paths, so
the need for synchronization is less (still important though for staying
synced with the culture).

------
Jhsto
I've been working independently for some time now and I've noticed exactly the
same thing - productiveness is significantly better when working less.
However, I do handle many projects at the same time, but for each project I
only hand the time when I've thought out what I'm going to build and how. I've
also found that doing so gets you straight into the coders high. It's like
that once you've set your mind onto the project you end up writing cleaner,
simpler and better code. I now honestly believe that something like coding
cannot be worked efficiently from 9 to 17 five days a week.

Only downside is that the people who have hired me have started to doubt
whether I've deserved the pay. I had this client who were really astonished
how much I had got done in only two weeks, but once they started asking for
the hours spent on the project, they answered me that they might need to
haggle the price a little bit. I'm bit new to this whole entrepreneur thing
and I've been naive enough to not really count any hours spent on a project. I
just work on them when I feel like my mind is set and the code I write is not
gibberish. Anyhow, when I later count my hourly wage from the amount of hours
I came up with at the clients office, I realize that my blunt estimation had
set my wage to 44€, which is kind of high even in my opinion. Though I believe
that the client probably wont drive the price down a lot, as just before they
asked for the hours they had told me how the application has everything they
initially asked for and can't find room for improvement. It really seems that
the idea of working less is not that open for everyone, so I can see reason if
there's not many agencies which promote it.

~~~
bermanoid
44€/hr is low, that's pretty much entry level for quality work. People
routinely charge multiples of that amount; if I was to go back to contracting
now, I'd be charging at least twice that much, probably more.

Also, you should not allow a client to try to renegotiate price after the work
has been delivered. Especially on a fixed bid project where they're satisfied
with the results (BTW, you probably shouldn't be doing fixed bid until you're
a lot more experienced, if even then - hourly is much safer until you know how
to deal with problem clients).

If you are going to do fixed bid, you shouldn't need to count your hours,
unless you're personally curious. I'd just hope that you have a seriously
tight set of acceptance criteria put down in writing that legally binds them
to a definition of "done". Nothing in that document should involve your hours:
the only reason to take on fixed bid work is that you're betting you can do it
in fewer hours than they're implicitly estimating it will take. If you win
that bet, then that's great, the client should still be happy with the agreed
upon amount but there's no need to show them how the sausage is made.

~~~
Jhsto
Thank you for your reply! I found it well thought and I'll surely memorize
some bullet points for my later career.

I've been very humble with my pricing so far because people don't really take
me seriously if I try to pull that kind of wages. You see, I have neither a
degree or the age which would do the trick. Past work is kind of there, but
instead of URLs the clients I've met in person just want to know whether
_their_ software can be done. Peers my age are working in labor jobs for the
normal 9to5 and some even brag how they can pull out 17 hours of work in 24
hours. I've noticed that people treat software development with the very same
idea, where the young have the endurance to pull out sick work hours and where
more hours equals more work done. People seem to be afraid of hiring someone
who says their hourly wage is starting from 40€, especially when the person
can't, thanks to their lack of experience, say how many hours they'll
eventually need. Therefore, for the sake of getting any clients in my first
steps of lone entrepreneur, I've decided to stick with the lump sum.

It really is a pity that I can't get around keeping the work hours as my own
business, but so far I've found it easier than introducing them completely new
way of working, where part of the time is spent on thinking instead of doing
work. Until the latest incident, I had never even crossed the idea that the
client may think they are getting screwed, thinking that the work they asked
was really just that easy to do (because I was left with so little hours).

But about the price negotiation, yes, I agree with you and I'll not let them
do that. Our negotiations had no agreement on the hours I should spend, so
they have no reason to drive the price down because of that.

I'm going to be honest with you and tell you that I haven't made a single
black-on-white agreement on what defines "done". Instead, the idea has been
that I'll remain as the lone owner of the software, with the exclusive rights
to re-sell it. I'm currently looking for the chance of turning the software
into a SaaS, in which the original client has agreed on helping me by
referring businesses from the same field to use it. So basically, I'm charging
the original client one year worth of the subscription I've been planning on
selling it for. By so, I'm basically securing at least one customer for the
service for one year. At the same time, I'll basically launch a service which
has proven to have at least some kind of demand. Plus I get free marketing
from the original client on the same run.

You see, if they would be able to refer even two customers, I'd be glad, as
that's the turning point where it's financially sane for me to get a LLC for
my programming work (that's a huge thing for me in a country where you lose
most of welfare state's benefits by starting one). Everything above that is
really just a bonus. But should I get 20 recurring sales, I'd already make
enough money that I could live (in theory) the rest of my life with the money
I make from the product per month. You could say it's a risky shot, but as
long as I can do the thing I like and get paid for it, I'll keep choosing the
risk.

------
linohh
No, I've been working 20h weeks for years. Companies are very desperate to
find decent people and it's better to have one for 20 hours compared to 0
hours.

(I'm in Germany where students are not allowed to work more than 20 hours /
week if they want to keep cheap student rates with the mandatory health
insurance)

------
orbitingpluto
I think the four hour/day jobs are something you have to navigate yourself
towards.

At my current job I've automated almost everything with bash, Perl, PHP,
Latex, Prolog, Powershell and way too much VBA. Whenever I had a spare moment
I would spend it automating something. I've now reached a point where I only
need work 30 minutes to 4 hours/day. But of course, since I'm getting paid for
a full day and I would feel guilty reading HN all day, I end up in this
positive feedback loop where I continue to automate which gives me more time
to automate. My next step is to start using Selenium to automate those tasks
for which 'external partners' have not provided an API.

My contract is coming up and I'm going to negotiate for slightly less money in
exchange for a four hour work day.

It's not in my employer's natural inclinations to permit this, however they
would have to hire several unskilled workers to do my work or another
programmer for 8 hrs/day.

The tl;dr is: Make yourself indispensable so that a 4hr/day position is an
option.

~~~
asdfologist
If you're indispensable, you should ask for a raise, not a pay cut.

~~~
sliverstorm
A raise _and_ a 3/5ths reduction in expected hours would be one hard sell.

~~~
asdfologist
Only if they find someone cheaper and equally productive.

~~~
coldtea
You'd be surprised what stupid managers would do. They could just fire him out
of spite, and hire 2 people to do his work clumsily but "keep proper hours".

~~~
asdfologist
Those aren't the kinds of managers you'd want to work for anyway.

------
techdebt5112
People are probably willing to pay you to do this, but not advertising it so
much. Most tech companies (at least in the US) are desperate for work. Less
than 40 hours is a week is a tough sell because many people feel the
onboarding process eats up a lot of time. Primarily, since it's the norm to
work 40+ hours (and believe me, it's not difficult to do this and be actually
writing code more than 50% of the time) employers expect it.

> I sincerely think it is quite unrealistic to ask a knowledge worker
> consistently deliver at full throttle for 40 hours every week (never mind
> the enslaving 60+ hours on many companies)

I really disagree with this. Have you tried before?

~~~
thy_inquisitor
Yes, I tried it several times, both working for other people, as well for my
personal projects.

I managed to pull out some full weeks of full-time, full-throttle work, but it
is completely unsustainable. This is, social life, other activities, having
out of the box solutions and ideas, friends, family are all strayed aside as
secondary, weekend concerns. Work was the primary concern. That progressively
led to loosing focus with other realities, lack of diversity, and all the
things that brings on board.

The main point is, even if had 100% efficiency, would it matter if it was
directed towards the wrong thing? A good deal of our work is to judge and be
critical of how it will impact others, the world even. And sincerely, I think
that it is a major problem on many companies which just fail because everyone
is too busy "working", but do not collectively have the opportunity to ponder,
to talk to other people, to get different perspectives, and realize as whole
that the ship is going full steam ahead for the iceberg.

~~~
techdebt5112
Sounds like adult life.

~~~
tspike
This is the kind of simplistic response that prevents our society from
progressing. "It's just the way it is" terminates any rational discussion or
critical analysis of _why_ we do things the way we do. There's no actual
reason for everyone to be either unemployed or working themselves to the point
of exhaustion against their will; it's "just" a structural and cultural
problem.

As soon as people start openly discussing the possibility of a different way
of doing things, there will be subcultures that spring up around the idea. If
it ends up working, the subculture can eventually spread to the mainstream.
It's a very worthwhile discussion to have.

~~~
techdebt5112
I was suggesting that this is a fine way for things to be.

~~~
dkersten
This is a terrible way for things to be. Life is a finite resource. I'd rather
spend my time doing things for myself, even if it means I'm not rich.

------
anupshinde
I do 20-24 hours a week as a freelancer/consultant. And it is definitely
productive experience. I have at times hopped to 40+ hours and never enjoyed
it. I tried 30 per week but that was not better either. These 20-24 hours are
highly productive and I spend the rest of the time with family/friends - or
reading/experimenting.

The downside though - I sometimes feel I am wasting my time (because not many
do so) and occasionally worry about opportunity costs.

------
NDizzle
I negotiated a 4/5 work week with an ex-employer of mine at 80% of that
previous salary.

I'd say work somewhere, prove your worth, then negotiate a better arrangement.

~~~
user3487
I'm tired, but isn't 4/5 the same as 80%? How is that a better arrangement
other than working less?

~~~
jabits
As an independent, paid hourly, On many gigs over the years I have tried to to
get 4 day (28 or 32 hrs) work weeks, but most client companies still insist on
a 40 hour week. I work mostly in the northern midwest for mostly large
enterprises, and these clients are "conservative", and 40 hours is "what is
needed". I don't try to bill fewer hours at a higher rate.

------
ef4
I don't think it's too difficult to find such opportunities if you're willing
to be a freelancer/consultant.

I've gone for periods at as little as 5 hours a week. In that case I was
mentoring more junior programmers, rather than owning a software project
myself. It worked out great and the client was happy.

As you saw, at 16 hours you can easily own a software project and get great
results. There's no reason you can't bid for freelance work at that level of
commitment.

~~~
justizin
For what periods of time have you been able to sustain your needed income? I
did this for a few years, but found that it often took a significant portion
of time to line up the gigs, and some customers would hold payment for extra
work.

Do you ever end up with only 5h of work when you want / need more?

The economy was diff a few years ago, though..

~~~
ef4
I had some relatively steady long-term clients. Sometimes they were slow to
pay, but they always paid eventually.

I had enough cushion from the previous job not to worry too much about short
term cashflow. Otherwise it can be a problem.

------
atemerev
I do hire on such terms. I believe it will become more and more widespread in
the course of years. James Altucher is right — in the future, there will be
only business owners and temp staffers/freelancers instead of our usual
"permanent" office jobs, with lots of legal obligations.

~~~
coldtea
In the future there will be less jobs, and more unemployment, including more
broke "business owners".

In other words, business owners would be commoditized and not mean much at
all...

~~~
atemerev
Yes, sure. We are already commoditized. Capital is the commodity. Startup
talent is a commodity. Ideas, of course, were a commodity since the very
beginning. The stage is set, the only option is to play.

------
primitivesuave
I coordinate 14 summer camp locations for kids every summer, it allows me to
take the rest of the year off for travel or really whatever. Being a developer
helps because you can build and sell web products to keep yourself working on
something constructive, but nowadays most of my projects are random tasks that
I've always wanted to do (construct a Wing Chun dummy, bike all the way to SF,
build a go-kart, Lego rubiks cube solver, etc)

------
justizin
I've found that schedule flexibility on that level is rare unless doing
freelance work, which has tons of accompanying challenges like actually
getting people to pay and maintaining enough work to fill the hours you want
without selling more than you want.

I agree with all of your points, though.

~~~
ChrisAntaki
Choose your clients well, and always deliver yourself, and they'll tend to as
well.

~~~
cerberusss
And solidify the client relationship with a good contract.

------
neilsharma
I'd really love something like this, but haven't heard of any companies that
hire for less than 40. Some companies (like Google) occasionally hire part-
time, but they get proportionally lower salary and none of the benefits.

I'm a big believer that the 40 hours you'd spend at work has a lot of
unproductive time and drains too much energy to do meaningful activities or
work afterwards.

Here's a great piece on why 21 hours is the best work schedule:
[http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours](http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours)

If anyone knows any great jobs that hire 4/4 or some other similar schedule,
love to get a thread going about that :)

~~~
VLM
The linked to piece has a lot of "post carbon era" talk, but we currently live
in the pre-"post carbon era" and all this 4/5 or whatever would seem to burn a
lot of extra gasoline and irreplaceable commute time.

I'd rather work 10/2 and not spend so much time sitting in a car burning
expensive non-renewable gasoline. Invert the work week and the week end!

~~~
reustle
The primary point of this thread is that it is hard to be very productive for
6 or 7 hours a day, let alone 10. Also I gather most people here are talking
about working remotely.

~~~
VLM
I take a long lunch (yeah flextime!) and if at all possible, exercise during
lunch, and I have enough simultaneous projects that the silver lining is I do
different stuff before and after lunch. I tend to code/deploy more in the
morning and design/test more in the afternoon (only a lunatic deploys five
minutes before going home, no matter how well tested...) So its more like two
separate five hour working shifts. I get the feeling this kind of lifestyle is
pretty unusual here and people just code, continuously, for 18 straight hours,
and think thats productive, or whatever.

Like most hacker types my home life is more interesting than my work life and
I do totally agree with the assessment that its impossible to grunt out even 7
productive hours on one individual task.

(and edited to add that at the cutting edge I don't think its possible to work
more than 4 continuous hours. Either its not really cutting edge or you're not
being productive. I can do mindless yardwork reinstalling my paver brick patio
for 12 hours, but there is no way to be productive when interfacing a new DDS
synthesizer to a rasp-pi which as far as I could tell has never been done
before, I could sit at the bench for 12 hours but I won't get any more done
than just 4 hours, I'm just a little more honest about it than some, maybe
most. At home I can do whats "right" not what is "management approved")

Another interesting aspect is a lot of design work is thinking and surfing the
net for new ideas and inspiration and I can see from outside my brain that
looking fairly unproductive. Or from a noob perspective, noobs not
understanding that a half hour staring off into space might save five hours of
coding despite not feeling like its as productive.

------
VLM
A request:

Does anyone have actual scientific data from archeologists / biologists /
doctors on what the human body was evolved to do?

Not interested in commentary on what strategy maximizes profit to owners of
peasants or moral/ethical arguments.

Strictly looking for hard science like biochemist XYZ found human butts and
spines are not operationally effective for sitting for longer than X hours due
to scientific reason A, B, and C, or brain biochemistry shows indications of
wearing out after Y hours of concentration or whatever?

It would be interesting to find out the science of optimized productivity
rather than anecdotes. If we had consultative doctors like pro athletes had
doctors...

~~~
capisce
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglatter/2013/02/09/why-
sit...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglatter/2013/02/09/why-sitting-
increases-your-risk-of-dying-sooner/)

Though that's more of an argument for using a standing desk instead of sitting
the whole day.

~~~
VLM
Unfortunately thats more "recent research and anecdotes"

I'm looking for something with a summary like "archeologists, biologists, and
orthopedic surgeons recently cooperated on a paper indicating that
biologically identical humans spend the years 200K to 100K BC walking around
50% of the time, sitting about 25% of the time, and 25% of the time doing
everything else, based on electron microscope analysis of microwear patterns
on fossilized hip joints and computer simulation" With the obvious unstated
conclusion that millenia of evolution has optimized the innards of
biologically identical modern humans to sit no more than 25% of the time.
Assuming evolution did successfully optimize innards, which is kind of an open
question WRT spinal design and appendixes and things like that.

------
jahaja
Why is it so unusual that employers compete with less hours rather than with
larger wages? Is it because granting someone with less work would probably
make other employees require the same?

I feel that after a certain amount it would be much more enjoyable to get less
hours rather than a raise. However the latter seems to be much easier, if not
the only one, to get.

~~~
aidenn0
I don't know the answer, but I have a few ideas:

1) Puritanical roots of America (Idle hands are the devil's workshop) still
linger as the ideal is you spend most of your time working.

2) Hiring more people is hard; furthermore the larger the team, the less
efficient (per person) the team is. Therefore you want to get maximum value
out of the people you have any way possible. A 25% boost in output of each
person on the team is easily worth as much as (if not more than) hiring twice
as many people. Similarly a perceived loss of 20% of productivity per person
would be like halving the size of your team. I could easily believe that a 16
hour week has 20% lower output than a 40 hour week.

3) Lots of companies do offer lower hours for lower pay. They just typically
don't hire people into that situation for some reason (I'm open to suggestions
why that is so). However, no good place I've ever worked would fail to do that
for an employee they want to keep.

~~~
jahaja
I agree with point 1 - sad but true. Not only in America as well.

I like that you say "perceived loss of 20%". I wonder how substantial the
actual difference in productivity is. I wouldn't want to compare at this day
to 16 hours, but rather something like 30 hours.

------
NickSharp
To answer your question, this is almost impossible to find.

I tried for 12 years in the Bay Area with no real success. I'm a highly
skilled software engineer with a solid qualifications. I never had any problem
getting full time job offers with huge salaries, even in bust times; but god
forbid I ask for Fridays off, I'd be shown to the door real quick.

Finally I started my own company.

Most people work 16-20 hours/week and no one works more than 30 (other than
myself sometimes for a crunch.)

Everyone is happy, and I get great value for my money. As a bootstrapped start
up, that value per dollar is vital.

~~~
capisce
> god forbid I ask for Fridays off, I'd be shown to the door real quick

They must be really afraid of the precedence it sets - that other employees
would also start to negotiate for reduced work hours.

------
dlevine
At the moment I'm a freelance software developer, and I take on multiple
projects at once. Right now, I'm working on three projects, and typically end
up spending 4-6 hours a day on billable work. I can put in more, but after a
point, I can feel my productivity drop off.

Realistically, I end up completing 20-25 hours of billable work a week (and
probably another 10-15 doing stuff that isn't directly billable). I could
spend more time working on billable stuff, but I find that there are heavily
diminishing returns after that point. Sure I can get in more productivity for
a brief period (a few weeks max), but there is always debt to repay.

A lot of people tell me that they are looking for someone who is "half time",
which to them means 20 hours a week. I've tried to explain to them that I
don't schedule 40 hours of work in a week, and that for me "half-time" is
10-15 (productive) hours. A lot of people won't accept that.

I'm finding that it's easier to tell them that I'll work half-time, get more
work done in 10-15 hours than most people would in 20, and then bill them for
the time that I actually worked. If I'm getting the project done, then they
aren't going to complain that I'm billing them for too few hours. That
obviously doesn't work if they are expecting me to be on-site 20 hours a week,
but in my case (where I work in my own office), it seems to be ok.

~~~
capisce
A comfortable level of 20-25 hours of billable work per week seems to fit my
experience in freelancing too. In the long run I don't think I'd want to try
to push much beyond that.

------
brainless
Let me share how I am trying to work more per day and still have better focus
than I even had in my life.

I have always considered working lower hours per day to stay more focused. I
have many failures in projects, many of them I could relate to my issues with
being able to focus and finding love in my work.

Recently I have been ill and was without work for about 4 months. I used to
lead a stressful like, like many entrepreneurs. But my physical issues started
making things more problematic. Thus I started figuring out how to solve them
and yet work at decent 8 - 10 hours each day with very good attention.

After trying a different timing routines, I finally am working with this - I
get start work at about 9:30 - 10 AM. Work till about 2 PM. Then I take a good
break till about 5 PM. I take my lunch and a short but comfortable power nap.
I take a shower before heading back to work at 5 PM. Then I work till about 9
- 10 PM as my situation permits. I sleep usually at 11 - 11:30 PM and wake up
at about 7:30 AM.

The major benefit I get is that I have 2 * ~ 4 hour slots every day. I
understand it is difficult for many folks to commit this much time. But I have
very few options left. I need put in good, focused work each day and the
amount of work I have can not, sadly be finished in 16 hour work weeks. Hope
this helps someone.

------
drcross
I have been working as a high tier network engineer for the past few years for
40 hours per week (but always looks to go out on my own with a startup idea).
I'm starting to really find that 40 hours per week make no sense and i'm
actively going to try to find alternatives. Life slips by and there is little
point in spending 1/3 of your working day dealing with monotonous bullshit.

~~~
mgmeyers
This.

If I was working somewhere I was 100% passionate about, I would have no
problem working 1/3 of my life. But, it's rare to find a position that
completely matches one's values and professional desires.

------
brickmort
I think it's a very interesting concept and it should be experimented with
more, especially with so many things now being facilitated by being automated.

I think a big factor for this idea not catching on is the grey area of what
qualifies as 40h workweek labor. Some jobs like customer service positions
make sense, but what about jobs that require a 24h standby? What about
positions with fluctuating periods of downtime through the year? what about
jobs that _could_ be 8h workdays, but they haven't yet been confirmed that
they could in fact be more effective as a 6h or 4h workday?

It's a by-product of modern times not quite catching up with modern
technology. We certainly have the ability to think up algorithms that would
better suit certain positions based on these factors, but the idea of it right
now is too drastic and 'unfair' sounding. Ideally, in time, with the right
evidence proving it's effectiveness, workdays would be shortened, quality of
lives would bump up and robots would gradually take over.

------
torq101
Jumping on this thread a little late, but a lot of the points raised here and
in the comments resonate quite strongly with me.

It sounds like many of the comments here from people who have achieved a
shortened work week are from consultants/freelancers. So I have a few general
questions towards that end, for anyone that would be willing to answer them:

1) How did you get into consulting/freelancing?

2) Have you always managed to work at a reduced work week(< 40 hrs/wk), or
were there times in the beginning where you were working more, and if so, why?

3) It sounds like much of this depends on finding good clients to work for.
How did you go about finding those clients? How long did it take? How did you
know they were good clients?

4) What resources did you find most helpful when you were first starting out
consulting/freelancing?

I'm really interested in achieving this goal, I'm just not sure how to get
started or where to look for information. Any help/discussion would be greatly
appreciated!

------
mou5trap
Crazy it is to sit steadily for 8 hours for even a fresh out of the college
guy like me. I am currently into the training phase, but my employers are not
providing the training. Nevertheless I have to sit 8-9 hours no matter what! I
don't find it productive at all, I might read all day about things but that
sure ain't propelling me anywhere ahead in work. Scenario is that after a
certain hours of sitting you do loose the consciousness quotient. Might as
well be that it drops only by a percentage. According to some people here,
they do see their colleagues working for 8-9 hours daily, whereas what they
don't know is that they are paid to do so just like you are, only difference
being that they are more afraid stand out and relax during work as it might
decrease their chances of a salary hike.

------
gingerlime
To me this makes total sense, and I can't figure out why it isn't the norm for
hired freelance developers.

For most people I know, myself included, you're at your best productivity
before lunchtime. Afterwards you might get a few bits and pieces done, but
generally it's a waste of time.

------
capisce
I too am looking to work less than the standard 40 hours a week for similar
reasons. Only committing to 4-6 hours in a given day also gives me more
freedom to take a large break in the middle of the day to go for a walk or a
run, which can be useful in the Scandinavian winter when the sun is only up
for a relatively limited time each day.

There are some political parties in Norway and Sweden who want to make a six
hour work day the norm.

There are many good arguments for significantly reducing the amount of time
the average person works, both for the benefit of individuals and community:
[http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours](http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours)

------
eswat
I’m doing a 4/5 schedule now for client projects. It was a lot easier to do
this since going freelance and charging based on the value I generate, instead
of an hourly rate.

While more “free time” has been a bonus (realistically I just work and study
things that improve my business or my clients indirectly). The best benefit
I’ve found from this work schedule is the push to get the day’s work done
within those few hours. This doesn’t mean cutting corners or half-assing the
work done, but rather figuring out solutions that get the most bang for the
buck and being ruthless as to what details to sweat afterwards.

------
mahyarm
You don't work in full focus for the full hours. Other hours your are doing
relatively low focus things such as code reviews, answering questions, eating
lunch, attending meetings, interviewing, talking about the direction and
design of the project, etc. They want you around as an on-call 'consultant' so
you can unblock other people more quickly.

When it's just yourself green fielding a project, you don't really need to be
anyone's consultant then, so you can just work the productive hours.

Some companies unfortunately care about face time too :/

------
mrottenkolber
I do this kind of week as a consultant. I think its the perfect work week.

~~~
threepipeproblm
Similar here.

~~~
cerberusss
What kind of consulting are you guys doing? Sounds really nice.

------
cs02rm0
No reason only greenfield projects should be suited to this. Contracting is
the only viable route I've found. Otherwise you just won't get paid enough.

The downside of that is you need to be (loosely provably) good and experienced
enough to (i) pick up contracts and (ii) that they'll flex to your schedule.

I've worked 16 hour days before with a manager literally sat behind me telling
me to keep coding. They didn't care that half the next day would be correcting
the mistakes of the previous. I don't miss those days.

------
a-saleh
20hour/week, my first job, working at RedHat while still at school. Of course,
they paid me by the hour, but I don't think I would have managed to finish my
masters thesis on 40h/week job :)

RedHat is a large corporation, so mostly your work conditions depend on
managers around you. I.e.: I started as an intern and after a year manager
asked me, if I want to become a regular employee, and I had a condition to
remain on 20h/week. Friend of mine had just the option of intern or full-time
(40h/week).

------
nolite
As an enrepreneur, having to now hire developers for my startup, I don't see
how this could work practically. As a company, there are objectives you need
to meet by a certain time frame. If there's a task that needs to be done in 3
weeks, and there are 2 weeks of full time work estimated in order to do it,
you're not going to hire someone and let it take 4-6 weeks just because they
don't feel like working a full week.

For programming projects especially, its much simpler to have one person work
on a given task, than splitting out an assignment over 2+ people - it lowers
complexity, and keeps the process coherent.

So 1 person, needs to get the work done in the time frame. I personally don't
care how much time the person spends doing the task, as long as its done
properly, and on time. And its not always possible to see so far in advance
what needs to be done that you can afford to let people take twice as long to
do it (also taking into account the difficulties with estimating software
project durations when work is done full time).

So working 16-20 hrs a week sounds GREAT in principle. But in practice, as an
employer, I don't see a practical interest from my perspective

EDIT: I'm not a pointy-haired manager either.. Prior to starting my own
company, I was full-time lead developer (and very well paid) for several years
in a startup environment. My work pushed the envelope forward at the company,
so I have a deep understanding of software development projects, and how
development teams function as a whole, all first-hand experience

~~~
nthj
> But in practice, as an employer, I don't see a practical interest from my
> perspective

I'd venture that may be because you view programmers as interchangeable cogs.
Rather, for one developer, a project may take two 16-hour weeks, and for a
less talented developer, it may take three 40-hour weeks. If you need it done
in 2 weeks but the price tag is the more talented developer only works 16-hour
weeks, and you accept, everyone wins.

[P.S.: I'm not sure this is a valid thread for the "10x programmers" debate,
and I would hate to derail a very interesting topic. But I would say that if
your goal is to only work 16-hour weeks, it's in your interest to attempt to
demonstrate you can provide at least as much value as an average 40-hour-per-
week-developer.]

~~~
Smudge
> if your goal is to only work 16-hour weeks, it's in your interest to attempt
> to demonstrate you can provide at least as much value as an average 40-hour-
> per-week-developer.

I'm not convinced that's true. Most developers, 1x and 10x alike, are not
evenly productive across a 40-hour week. If, in 20 hours, you can get even
half the work you get done in 40 hours, you're already just as valuable based
on time worked and should get compensated accordingly for that time.

And I'd argue that in 20 hours you can get far _more_ than half the work done,
since the other 20 hours are likely the tail end of your productivity anyway.
So your value-to-time ratio goes up, even if you aren't providing _as much_
value as a 40-hour-per-week developer.

------
NathanKP
In the startup industry you'll find lots of greenfield projects, but very few
where working only 4 hours a day is acceptable. Startups tend to need to get a
lot of work done, relatively quickly, with a very small team. This is just the
most effective way to build a business during the startup phase.

However, you will also find lots of startups have very flexible work hours as
long as you get a reasonable amount of work done every week. Additionally,
depending on your skill level and role within the startup it is likely that
you'll be working on lots of different types of projects from day to day,
which for me personally has always been enough to keep me enjoying what I do
for a living, even though I'm usually working 40+ hours per week.

And some startups are very open to you contributing code back to the open
source community. (Especially Node.js startups, where publishing NPM modules
is just part of being a member of the ecosystem.) For me personally this also
gives me that feeling of pleasure that ordinary work related coding might not
always.

------
cerberusss
Actually I wouldn't value the 16-hours so much, but rather the freedom to
divide 32 hours over four days. We've got a toddler and I don't want to be a
parent that has to race from/to the day care.

I'm quitting my day job and starting freelancing in October this year, in iOS
development in The Netherlands, Europe. I'd really welcome a project.

------
Thiz
25 hours a week is for me the perfect schedule, dedicating four hours a day to
full coding and one hour to fuck off with management about brainstorming,
requirements, proposals, design, and boring meetings.

Once they're happy, I say goodbye for the day and immerse myself in my editor.
Not a single fly tries to cross between me and my monitor while coding.

------
spektom
Did you think about your work beyond these four hours a day? I you did, then
it makes a lot of sense. Normally, thinking should take a half of the work
time, the rest is dedicated for the implementation. So, if the four hours a
day is the implementation net time, and another four (may be more) you were
chewing all possible solutions, architecture, optimization, learning new
technologies to apply, then totally it becomes much more than 16 hours per
week job.

I work in a big company now, and I try to split my time exactly the same: four
hours - I'm thinking/reading/learning, another four or less - I'm typing some
code. And this scheme is proving itself as much more optimal comparing to a
daily 10 hours implementation rush in a start-up where I worked before.

------
vardy
__4hr day PHP job opportunity __

We 're Looking for a knowledge PHP/LAMP/Symfony2/MVC/CSS developer to join our
niche dating startup on 4hr/day 5 days a week basis. Offering £30k/yr and
based out of London. Remote working is a possibility for the right person.

The current team of 4 is spread between London and Birmingham. We've spent the
past 12 months turning around an exiting business into the leader in it's
niche and have big plans for broadening the business over the next year.

Email me if you're interested and would like more details about the
job/business/team: contact dot vardy at gmail dot com

Thanks, James

------
mmaunder
You've described the perfect job for most developers. No one wants to maintain
old code. Everyone wants plenty of free time. Everyone wants low pressure with
an opportunity to outperform.

These jobs are more common in startups and almost never found in going
concerns for obvious reasons (there is no green field).

It's worth pointing out that hopping from one greenfield project to the next
with low pressure isn't going to expose you to world-changing opportunities.

[http://youtu.be/Ji_me74Xvg0?t=12s](http://youtu.be/Ji_me74Xvg0?t=12s)

~~~
wyan
It's worth pointing out that not doing so probably won't expose you to world-
changing opportunities either.

------
goblin89
So at 9-to-5 job in an average US company, if you work only 9-to-1, and spend
the rest of the time doing what you like and chatting with coworkers, but
produce the expected results—you'll be considered not working hard enough?
Sounds like Japan.

I doubt that's true, though—I bet OP can just find any job and _work_
comfortable hours (provided OP delivers). Any decent company in our field
shouldn't judge you by how hard-working you appear throughout the whole work
day. Just find a decent company.

------
rfrey
For those that would enjoy such a situation: what would you consider to be a
fair renumeration arrangement? Not I. Raw numbers but in comparison to
traditional 40 hour/week gigs.

~~~
aianus
I'm doing about 20-25h a week and make roughly 40% of the standard full-time
bigco offers I turned down. No benefits either (but I'm 22 and single so I
wouldn't be using them anyways).

------
uhmmmm
I want to work less hours for an employer / a client also because I want to
invest productive hours in my own self improvement and personal projects.
There should be a lot more flexibility from the employer side in how many
hours an employee commits to working. It should probably be negotiable and
explicitly stated in the employment contract.

------
mathattack
I have never seen this. I've seen actual productivity in those amounts. (4
hour push in the morning, less productive afternoon, nothing gets done on
Friday) If you can find it and pull it off, all the more power to you, because
it is hard to stay productive after 4 hours of mentally draining creative
intense thinking.

------
mdotk
Try being a lawyer.... 16 hours days standard and when you are being charged
out at $500 / hour (and receiving maybe 20% of that) your boss isn't expecting
4 hours of real work and 12 hours of admin... they want 16 hours of extreme
concentration. Gotta be one of the worst careers you can choose.

~~~
ClassicFarris
The OP was talking about 16h _weeks_. Not 16h days. I can certainly feel for
you if you're the one working 16h days week in and week out.

~~~
mdotk
Sorry got that, was more replying to the guys saying that in your average 8-10
hour day you'll only do 4 hours of intense work anyway (so that a 4 hour
"actual work" day is kinda normal).

------
ivanhoe
As a freelancer I've also found that 3-4 hours sessions are perfect, although
I usually go for 2 x 3-4h a day and then one slower day every couple of days.
That's just necessary to counter those periods when you have to work around
the clock and save yourself from more serious burnouts..

------
ethnt
This concept is great for students especially. I'm lucky enough to have a job
where I can set my own hours, so during the school year I can work about this
much. It's nice to have some income, especially while working a job relevant
to my field of study.

------
cenhyperion
My main question would be salary. You really can't reasonably expect your
employer to pay you the same salary as someone working more than twice the
hours.

Are you comfortable making less than half the salary of a programmer working
40 hours a week instead of 16?

~~~
Ramp_
What if you are more effective/productive in 16 hours than they are in 40?
Wouldn't this warrant a higher salary?

------
brittonrt
The only correct work schedule is the one you are able to work out with your
employers and customers which works for you and for them. If those conditions
are met it's a legitimate schedule, even if it's only 1 hour a day one day a
week.

------
fizx
You didn't say what you do. We have a remote team and would do this for any of
the following skillsets: server Java, Rails, FE/JS, designer, sysadmin.

------
JshWright
A lot of emergency services (fire, EMS) are 4-on/4-off, but they're generally
4 12 hour shifts...

------
lsalamon
1,600 Chinese die daily from overwork. That is the cause of the china selling
very cheap stuff.

------
mike_esspe
If you can't find such job, there is a simple hack: work one year, then take a
year off.

~~~
cerberusss
That requires you to save 50% of your income.

For most of us, that requires relocating to a cheaper home, or telling your
significant other that she'll need to chip in just as much as you do. Both are
pretty big hurdles.

However if you can pull it off, it's great.

~~~
mike_esspe
But if you are working 16 hours week, you are forfeiting 50% of your income
too.

------
ycwes
If you work on your own you can do it. I did it for a year or two and
traveled.

------
Sindrome
Are there countries where working ~20 hours a week in Tech is acceptable?

------
pentasec
I think it is not easy nowdays....

------
lily2014
I'd like to know too

------
k0t0n0
> I have had an extremely good experience doing a 4 hour per day.

me too.

------
mproud
The good news is yes, these do exist!

They’re called “part-time jobs.”

------
PeterGriffin
I'm very happy to see people working 16-25 hour work weeks, and it's probably
very good for their personal life.

Just one question, don't you feel guilty going like that? I'd feel guilty, as
if life gave me this time to get as much work done as I can, and I just don't.

I know, I know, weird question. But I'm serious.

~~~
surreal
This is an interesting point, but it assumes that one's 'purpose' in life is
to work. That's a pretty sweeping assumption, and one which the guilt is
predicated on.

Any idea why you feel this way? Would it not be just as valid to say that
one's purpose in life might be, for example, enjoyment? Or helping others (not
necessarily through a job)? In which case you should feel pretty guilty about
going to work for 40 of your precious hours each week..!

I'm certainly not saying there's a right answer here, by the way.

~~~
PeterGriffin
I'm not sure it's bad to feel guilty about this. I'm more interested how
people who don't feel guilty see life. I mean surely at some point having
aimless fun starts looking a bit like wasted time in someone's life, no?

We live to give our tiny contribution to humanity, and we do it by creating
something through work. That also brings joy, and we do it to help each other
(deviations notwithstanding). But it's a meaningful joy.

If I'd work 16 hours a week all my life, I'd have some serious regrets on my
death bed.

~~~
duckmysick
Isn't that a slippery slope? Even if you worked a "proper" 40-hour week you
could always ask yourself why don't you devote 41 (or 42, 43, and so on) hours
per week for work. One could argue that your productivity plummets as you work
more hours, but in absolute terms you're still getting more work done.

Also, consider this: instead of having two people work 20 hours a week we're
having one person working 40. Shouldn't that person feel guilty about taking
the opportunity to contribute and being valued from somebody else?

As for creating contribution through work - are we talking about salaried
work? What about volunteer work then? If by work we mean anything that adds
value whether we get paid for it or not, it's not always so obvious. The lines
between enjoyable hobby and work are blurry at times and an author who writes
for fun could end up creating a piece which inspires millions.

In the quest for maximizing collective productivity of the humanity we could
start introducing teenagers into workforce as soon as possible and scrap the
retirement age. Maybe we could even leave out one or two public holidays and
add couple of work hours on Saturdays. Some would complain, sure, but overall
we would become more productive.

Personally, I don't think that's the way to go. 40-hour work week is a relic
of the 19th century and time is a poor indicator of productive contribution.

~~~
PeterGriffin
Well, it's a U shaped slope, because at some point you become less productive,
not more productive as you add time.

So it's about finding one's balance. If someone's balance is 16 hours a week,
so be it. I just find it a bit unlikely though.

------
notastartup
This is a great way to increase efficiency at our job. At my first job as a
developer, it was literally a sweatshop. We literally could not go home
because if a project was not delivered on time, we would get fired, and this
was worry was back in all of our heads. People would get sick from working 50+
hours (weekends too sometimes) , no overtime pay, lower end of salary in the
area. At one point, the manager would call me at 1 AM in the morning while I
was going home after leaving at 10PM and press on about the work. All you got
from this guy was a handshake and a "Thank you come again". The company was
rated fastest growing, the tech startup to look out for, featured in magazine.
The company had 100+ people and they kept on hiring new people whenever people
quit or got burnt out and got fired.

------
comment3323
0.)the entire system or MATRIX design basis is wrong 1.)standard work hours
are for industrial revolution and mass manufacturing of low quality items
2.)over age 58 and it is EASIER (yes, to those who are ignorant) IT IS EASIER
to understand complex software. Obviously, that is why all the piano GENIUSES
are under age 9! 3.)hours make no difference except for the sprint or "Death
March" as per Yourdon or do or die. Sure, my best is less than 42 hours
straight, but that's because I can avoid mistakes. 4.)There are old pilots.
Bold Pilots. and in the USA there are old, bold and "ignore it, deny it"
pilots. But there are no old AND bold pilots.

5.)Simple portfolio theory diversification. I want 2.5 jobs time 16 hour work
week. SUDDENLY FIRE ME! Oh well, I have my good garden (self taught using OPEN
SOURCE SOFTWARE) and my 0.5 job. So, I often tell the boss the truth, even if
it is a pain in the 'tookus.' \- See Capitol Steps song.

6.)Small companies with diversified part-times including some OLD and WISE
like me, who have seen MANY MANY failures.. ahhhh what is a dot-com? something
with a dot-bomb? how does mergers destroy value and the corporate souls?

8.)I continue on my peripatetic ways. As long as Windows is around, there will
be a need for human jobs... err Unix? errror BSD, Solaris... good by Java now
that the founder had some public and not nice comments about the BIG O - ra //
cle.

14.)LESSON OF LIFE - how strange. take a full time job and boss must DEMAND
extra hours. It is not about productivity, but POWER and CONTROL. (in old
days, this is called SLAVERY, yesss massah! go to consultant. go part-time.
Suddenly the time is VALUABLE. - too much travel. - real simple - Yahoo CEO
must work from the office - simply SHUN these types of companies.

18.)As a BOSS, Founder, Open source comrade, I do not want you spreading your
cough and sneezes at my office. I only want to see you at the conference where
we try to avoid laughing at the competition as they try to hide their pathetic
ways of doing business. 19.)yes i am into hobby of strength training, par-
kours, informal soccer and so this is play... not work and no, i do not talk
about work when I play, u that ignoree

20.)FIRE ALL HR personnel. I personally assign myself 4 hour work week JOBS
(55 weeks a year). I am a math flunkout and so I continually CREATE extra time
and get MUCH MORE done. Peter Principle - make work expands like in the GREAT
USSR COMMUNE SYSTEM to fill the time that is DICTATED from above. right,
COMRADES?

We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us We pretend to 16 hour work week,
while sending our mind through remote viewing and THEY pretend to take jail
attendance.

------
robertlf
Typical Millenial

------
xiaoqibo
yes

------
blablablaat
Sounded good untill I read: "I sincerely think it is quite unrealistic to ask
a knowledge worker".

What is this with you programmers that you think that you're the best thing
that has happend to this world? It's just a job. No more a job then any other
one.

Same thing as that bullshit as companies that want every employee to program.
Do you see CEO's with a background as a carpenter writing blogposts about how
everybody should build at least a chair every month?

Self obsessed rich kids.

~~~
nitrogen
What motivates your disdain?

 _What is this with you programmers that you think that you 're the best thing
that has happend to this world? It's just a job. No more a job then any other
one._

...as evidenced by the equivalent years of training required to, say, use a
shovel?

 _Self obsessed rich kids._

Don't assume that all of us are rich, or even solidly middle class. Sometimes
startup founders (unwisely) spend years at or below poverty (been there, done
that).

 _Do_ assume that anybody with ~average intelligence and above average
motivation could become a programmer, though.

------
tslathrow
Well I have a lot of experience with 16 hour/day work weeks (have worked at
banks most of my life). Yeah, you're right, it's not fun.

It really comes down to the time-sensitivity of your work. For someone in
their 20s, I think the perfect balance is less than 80 hours/week but more
than 40-50. If you're being paid two standard deviations over US median
household income ($120k+), you're going to be expected to put some work-life
balance on hold.

"Knowledge worker" makes you sound like you think programming is rocket
surgery. VC is actually much closer to knowledge work than programming, and
could more realistically have 16-hour work weeks.

~~~
seivan
I down voted you for the VC being closer to knowledge work than writing
software. Sorry but that is just plain wrong - on both ends.

Hen is right that expecting 40 hours out of a software engineer is ridiculous.

~~~
Cederfjard
I'm not sure that "hen" has spread quite so much yet that you can expect to
use it in English conversation. Nu undrar ju folk varför du kallar OP för en
höna. ;)

If anyone is curious what I'm on about, "hen" is a gender-neutral pronoun in
Swedish that has had a resurgence in the last few years. It's partly
politically motivated and a little controversial, since we generally only use
gender-specific ones. Sorry for this very off topic aside.

~~~
seivan
I don't care. Will still use it and educate. I am aware that it might mean
höna for some, but I am expecting curiosity to get the better of 'em and hope
they look into it.

~~~
Cederfjard
I think it's a bit weird to be honest. Are other Swedes doing this, trying to
shoehorn "hen" into other languages?

I've seen "they", in the singular, used as a gender-neutral English pronoun
pretty extensively, perhaps that's worth looking into. Either way, kudos.

~~~
webmaven
English has some invented gender-neutral pronouns as well, such as Zie, Hir,
etc.: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-
neut...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-
neutral_pronouns#Invented_pronouns)

