
Ask HN: Why are there so few part-time jobs? - iio7
A developer&#x2F;sysadmin friend of mine has been job hunting for a while now. He told me that he doesn&#x27;t want to work his entire life away and as such he&#x27;s only looking for part-time work, but that it has been impossible to find something.<p>Why are all companies only using full-time employment?<p>Why are there so little flexibility? It&#x27;s like everyone is &quot;brain washed&quot; into this robot way of working eight hours a day.<p>I must admit, I&#x27;m only really productive the first 4 hours, after that I just want to go home!
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quicklime
I'm a full-timer and I have to admit that I find it frustrating to work with
part-time colleagues. Sometimes you need them, and they're not around until
the next day. Not saying they shouldn't be allowed to do it, but there's
definitely a cost.

I don't think there's anything special about eight hours a day. It's more
about just having everyone keep the same hours, so that you can get a quick
turnaround on questions/requests. So I think it'd work if companies built
entire teams that were part-time, working on the same subset of the week.

~~~
barbs
I feel like there's a difference between being available 5 days a week 9-5 and
actually working those hours, and it seems like you would value the former.

It feels like there could be some sort of compromise between the two, where
employees are contactable during full-time hours, but only to organise actual
work hours, which are limited and flexible.

Of course, this would be less convenient for managers than simply having full-
time hours, but it would save money spent on wages/salaries and result in more
productive happy workers. I also feel there should be some way to reduce the
administration burden, perhaps a combination of allowing employees to arrange
working hours directly with each other and technology to facilitate this.

~~~
fjeifisjf
This is called being on call. Sysadmims and doctors do it.

~~~
barbs
Yeah sort of - although I kind of meant less about being available to drop
everything and work on something immediately vs. just being around to answer
questions perhaps that may or may not be urgent.

~~~
Arainach
That's still on call, though. If I'm expected to answer the phone and answer
work questions, I can't be hiking in an area with bad cell coverage. I can't
be drunk. I can't be in a theater. Perhaps I can't be on a bike ride if I need
to have a laptop nearby. On and on - if it's a restriction on my life during
non work hours, it's on call.

~~~
em-bee
i think it's still different. being on call means i must be able to work
during that time.

being reachable means that you can pass on your problem, and i'll acknowledge
it so that we can together decide what the best next step. sometimes we can
solve the problem, sometimes we can find someone else who can also help, and
sometimes we need to delay working on the problem and reschedule it for
another time. but at least then it's scheduled. on a few occasions i am not
reachable at all. but that doesn't happen often.

in other words being on call means always to solve the problem immideately,
whereas being reachable means i have the option to say no.

~~~
david-gpu
That is still work, and an intrusion on what should be free time but no longer
is.

~~~
em-bee
but it's different from being on-call. i understand that in many places, on-
call requires the same payment as regular work hours for the whole period, not
just for the hours worked.

and i don't feel it's an intrusion if being available is optional and not
required.

it's essentially how every freelancer works. they are available during
business hours. but they don't get paid if they don't get called for work by a
client.

------
jhwang5
As an employer, I can give you some color.

1) Hiring is a pain, and there's ton of friction. 2) Ideally you want to get
max efficiency out of roles that serve "business critical" functions. 3) More
people on payroll (parttime or not) = more time wasted for me on management

These two factors incentivize me to avoid having too many part-timers, if I
could

~~~
x0x0
Also an employer.

Add health insurance and office space as costs which don't scale down.

Lack of availability / presence creating difficulties for the rest of the org
for meetings / getting questions answered / answering questions / etc.

~~~
ken
The employer requirement for health insurance is only for full-time employees.
That scales down great. Two half-time employees should be much cheaper than
one full-time.

~~~
x0x0
And then I have an employee without health insurance.

That's a hard no both ethically and because I don't want a sick employee.

~~~
tzs
Or you have an employee who buys their health insurance on your state's ACA
exchange.

There's even a decent chance that they can get an ACA subsidy. To get a
subsidy they need to get their MAGI below about $49k (I'm assuming they are
single...someone else can do the numbers for families). MAGI is for most
people income - HSA contribution - retirement plan contribution.

With an HSA and an IRA they can knock up to almost $10k off their MAGI, which
means they can take a part time job paying up to $59k/year and still get a
sweet ACA subsidy.

If your company has a 401k, and they work enough hours to qualify to
contribute to that (1000 hours/year, I believe), using that instead of an IRA
would let them knock around $24k off MAGI, meaning they can take a part time
job paying up to $72k/year and still get a subsidy.

The way ACA subsidies work is that even if you barely come in under the MAGI
limit, it is usually pretty substantial. You might expect that as you get
closer to the limit, the subsidy decreases--and you would be right--but it
isn't the kind of gradual decrease to 0 that you would probably expect. No, it
is a slow decrease right up to the cutoff then it drops to $0.

------
burlesona
I don’t have any hard evidence for this, but my intuition is that it’s about
the trade off between the cost of hiring and training workers versus the work
output you get from each one versus the workers desire to earn income.

For the employer, it would be better (in theory) to have fewer people working
for more hours, because then training costs less and the workers become more
and more expert.

For the worker, the desire to earn more is most easily accomplished by working
more.

Both of those are offset by the decrease in productivity and increase in
fatigue and burnout as you work too many hours.

Right now, most workers and employers have landed on about 40 hours a week as
a good balance between these concerns.

However this has changed over time and will change in the future. For example
there’s recently been an increase in so-called “30 hour jobs.” For example:
[https://30hourjobs.com/](https://30hourjobs.com/)

------
random_savv
Are you saying that you would only have one 50% job? Why not just take it as a
100% and find other ways to make best use of your non-productive side.

I would rather hire one person working 100% than two people working 50%,
because there is less communication overhead.

~~~
ISL
Not the original poster -- I'm presently trying to arrange my life to
accommodate 50% work and 50% family. I know a number of people who would love
to do 50% work and 50% life.

Life is too short to give 100% to a job unless it is a job you love or it
underwrites either love or necessity.

~~~
burlesona
Serious question, what hours do you consider to be 100% of your time?

I ask because the current 40-hour schedule was fought for in the early 20th
century specifically because it worked out to 50/50: 8 hours for work and 8
hours for “what we may,” each day (allowing the final 8 hours for sleep).

Considering Saturdays and Sundays off, that means a 40-hour schedule is only
5/14 of the waking hours per week.

~~~
akersten
> I ask because the current 40-hour schedule was fought for in the early 20th
> century specifically because it worked out to 50/50: 8 hours for work and 8
> hours for “what we may,” each day (allowing the final 8 hours for sleep).

The employer is getting a hell of a deal with that arrangement.

They'll get their 8 hours a day. Sure, some might be chatter with fellow
employees, a little screwing around on a phone, or using the restroom, but by
and large it's 8 hours of being at work.

We all need 8 hours of sleep, most of us don't get it. If we wanted to
actually get 8 hours of good sleep, we need to start getting to bed about an
hour before we plan on falling asleep. So let's conservatively call that 9
hours needed for 8 hours of sleep.

Going to and from work isn't really "what we may" unless you're telling me I
could or should consciously decide to live across the street from my workplace
to maximize my me-time. So there's another hour stolen every day.

So what are we at - 9 hours requisite for sleep, an hour of commute - leaves
us 14 hours split between work and "play," knowing that for most of us who
can't afford to hire laborers to take care of our domiciles, much of that
"play" becomes "chores."

In this scenario, even splitting the difference and affording capital 7 hours
of your time each day is theft. We'd all be better off around 4.

~~~
fjeifisjf
You overlooked that employers pay employees a wage for their working time.

~~~
akersten
No, I haven't overlooked that, it's just not really relevant. You'd still be
paid if the norm for a salaried position were a 16-hour workday, it wouldn't
make it any less exploitative.

In that scenario, you couldn't "choose" to go work for 8 hours instead and
take a loss in pay - no firm is hiring "full-time" at 8 hours - which actually
rounds right back to the issue brought up by this thread: you'd be looking for
part-time work that doesn't exist.

------
kiwijamo
I have worked both part-time and full-time and honestly I prefer working full
time as it feels less stressful. When I am working part-time I have to
coordinate heaps more with other staff if they are taking over my role during
the times I am not at work (eating into my work hours leaving me with less for
actual work). It takes longer to coordinate meetings especially if they
involve other part-timers (sometimes to the point when we have meetings about
when to have meetings—which wouldn't be needed if we all worked full time).
When I have heaps of work on I feel guilty leaving part-way—whereas if I am
full time I can confidently say I've done all I can during the time I have
available. The times I have been able to work full time on the same role has
really improved my mental well-being, reduced my overall workload (as I'm not
having to coordinate solutions for issues caused by not being available—I am
working 100% on my actual work) and getting a full pay check is just icing on
the cake. I am currently working part time (due to studying part-time) and I
absolutely hate it but it has to be done to gain qualifications for my current
role. Looking forward to going back to full-time work! YMMV of course.

~~~
anyfoo
There's the difference: You're studying the other part of the time. As someone
who has done every combination except for "study part-time", I can tell that
there is a big, big difference between "only working part-time" and "studying
and working part-time".

You are right that if you study and work, there's a lot of context switching,
competing requirements, and lack of real downtime. If you just work part-time,
you have control over the other time.

------
goatherders
I find that part time seekers want the part time to be their schedule,not the
schedule I need them

Me: 20 hours a week is perfect

Candidate: Cool, I'll do Monday 8 to 3, tuesday noon to 5, and thursday and
friday 1 to 5.

Me: well, really I need help 11-3 five days a week.

Candidate: that's not the schedule I'm after.

~~~
em-bee
someone's part time schedule is often defined by outside constraints. eg i am
able to work only while my kids are in school. i have no choice in the matter.
if the school lets out early, or is closed, like right now because of the
virus, then i have to change my schedule accordingly, and none of your
business needs can override that. being able to accomodate that is the
difference that makes for a family friendly workplace.

~~~
goatherders
Totally agree - my business needs don't override that. But it does mean we may
not end up working together.

~~~
em-bee
(for the sake of argument, let's assume that except for work hours, i am the
perfect candidate and you are my favourite choice as employer)

choosing not to work together is ok if the constraints are a lifestyle choice.
you may like to have your work done at that time, and i may prefer to work
certain hours. if that's more important to either of us than other factors,
then fine.

what bothers me is when there is no choice. i can't choose my work hours, they
are dictated to me and outside of my control.

yet you insist on workhours that are incompatible. now your hours may not be
by choice either, but something or someone has to give here, because it's not
good for society if we exclude a whole category of people from working just
because of constraints they have.

you have to realize that most business will act like you and are not flexible
on their hours. but at the same time, i can't change school hours either. so i
can't find a job.

there are discussions about how early school hours are bad for children but
starting late will cost many parents their jobs.

if your work hours are a preference, then i'd ask you to reconsider that. if
they are not by choice either then i'd like to explore what the problem is and
see if we can work around those constraints.

we won't be able to solve every problem. maybe you actually are accomodating
other parents already, and now you need someone to fill in for the remaining
time. that would be unfortunate for this particular situation, but if more
companies work like that then there would be enough other opportunities.

the problem i see is that right now most companies seem to have the attitude
that they get to decide and employees need to adjust and fit in. and that i
think, needs to change.

------
hocuspocus
It's very common here in Switzerland. I could reduce my work hours to 80%
without even needing approval from my manager. Many parents do some
combination of 80% + 60% or even less.

~~~
iovrthoughtthis
I would love to read a little about the culture and laws that afford this! Do
you know of anything I could read that might be available in English?

~~~
Spooky23
It isn’t uncommon for union jobs with good benefits. No laws are required,
although most companies would only do it for some executives.

When I worked for the public sector, it was possible go 80% without a lot of
red tape, and as low as 20% with approvals. The people going 20% had more
expenses, and were usually sick with cancer or something, and that allowed
them to stay on payroll to maximize their leave and insurance. You could work
5 days a week and “bank” a certain amount of leave for up to a year.

------
yesenadam
They are excellent questions.

Trading, economies were meant to serve peoples' wants and needs, but people
serve "the economy", with no thought given to what the actual quality of
working peoples' lives are like. As if the economy is the important thing, not
human lives. There is extreme attention on "economic efficiency", no attention
at all on the quality of the lives involved. We don't know where we're going,
don't care whether the journey is pleasant or not, but focus on getting there
as quickly/cheaply as possible. I guess that's easier to measure.

Also, modern economies rely on there being a pool of unemployed. If everyone
could do 1, 2 or 3 part-time jobs, balanced how they like it, that would mess
up the system. Anyway, the whole thing is designed to make the rich richer,
whether underlings enjoy that process is not really relevant.

------
smt88
I frequently use part-time people through Upwork. My highest-paid dev makss
$125/hr, has no other contracts right now, and works 10 hrs/wk. He spends the
rest of his time on his own projects.

~~~
mrfusion
I didn’t know you could make that much on up work. Do you monitor his screen
though? I heard up work makes you install something like that?

~~~
smt88
> _I didn’t know you could make that much on up work._

Our contractors range from $20/hr for something like content migration to
$150/hr for someone who has built multiple products from scratch, been the CTO
of startups, and has years of experience in coding, team management,
architecture/system design, and infrastructure.

I've observed other people under-paying someone hourly and ending up spending
a lot more in the long run. The most cost-effective strategy is to find the
right person and pay them what they're worth. If you don't have the money to
do that, you don't have the money to be in business.

> _Do you monitor his screen though?_

No. That's an insane practice, and it's shameful that Upwork promotes it.
Anyone who needs to do that is incompetent at assessing talent and/or managing
it.

> _I heard up work makes you install something like that?_

It does not force you, as far as I know. Our contractors log their time
manually, and we trust them.

I prefer fixed-fee, but the way we run hourly work is similar in practice. We
guarantee a minimum number of hours, and we expect a certain amount to get
done.

As long as it gets done, what do I care if they finished it 2 hours faster?
Whatever money I recovered by micromanaging, I'd end up losing again because
micromanaging takes up my time (and drives talent away).

~~~
em-bee
the challenge with upwork is how much effort and work is required to reach a
point where i can find great clients like you.

do you have any advice for someone who can't afford to start at the bottom and
work their way up? how do i screen clients and avoid the bad ones?

~~~
smt88
Unfortunately I have no idea how to help you. There really should be an Upwork
competitor with only high-quality employers (agree to certain policies, like
no screen monitoring) and contractors. Perhaps there is one and I just don't
know about it.

------
yc-kraln
There are many people in Germany who work 4/5 or 3/5 jobs. I was previously
3/5 and moved to 4/5, but it's nice to have the extra time.

For the employers here, the only downside is if they are being measured by
head-count (but even then, I count as 4/5 of a headcount...)

~~~
wink
In my experience it's not generally so easy, depending on your employer
though. Some allow blanket 80%/75%/50% jobs for others it's hard work to
persuade them to let you scale down your hours.

Can't say how _common_ it is, I obv. have a limited set of past employers to
look at. Some friends have said their company doesn't do it, and when I talked
to Swiss people it seems a lot more common there.

------
elil17
I have a theory about why this is. There’s this economic concept called
signaling - it’s the ways the economic choices we make also communicate
information to other agents in the economy.

If you apply for a part time position, what do you communicate to your
potential employer? Namely, that work is not your #1 priority. I think that
employers want employees who are as obsessed with work as possible. It’s not
that they don’t want part time employee, it’s that they don’t want the sort of
person who would apply for a part time job.

------
mynegation
As a manager, here are my reasons:

1\. Biggest one: transfer of knowledge between people is lower bandwidth than
going to one person. If I have Jill and Jane doing work function A, I can
assign primary responsibility to some sub-parts A1 and A2 to Jill and A3 and
A4 to Jane. If I need A2 on Tuesday when Jill is off, sure Jane can do it (and
as a manager I should make sure of that) but it would take her more time while
her othe things slip.

2\. Overhead per employee: I have to do one on ones, regular reviews, and
various other per-employee bureaucracy.

3\. All team update meetings and other get togethers requiring non-trivial
subset of the team get exponentially harder to organize.

------
blaser-waffle
\- Synchronous vs asynchronous communication -- if we're all full-timers and
you're not then you're hard to communicate with

\- Security and access -- I know and trust my full-timers, be they contractors
or direct hires. They get to see my codebase, have access to my servers, and
get insights as to what my roadmaps are because they own them. If we already
knew you, like you were a full-timer who scaled back hours for a while, that
might be a different story, but I'm not going to give some rando 20-hour-a-
week person access to things.

\- IT contracting firms / headhunters already do much of this.

\- Hiring is a pain. Why interview for 2 positions when I can just hire one
person?

Note: I'm in Canada so some of the healthcare and overhead-related questions
are different from the US.

------
Fezzik
I have been pushing to go 1/2 time or 3/4s time for a while* with a large
state agency and the primary reason I was given that I could not is because
part-time jobs are more difficult to fill in the future. Which makes sense to
me: in my field, and a lot of professional fields, most people have large
student debt (I don’t) a family (I don’t) and barely manageable mortgages to
boot (I don’t) and, therefore, they need a full-time paycheck. I am on my
phone so I could not search all the comments to see if this had been said.

* I am hoping the unavoidable budget shortfalls following this pandemic make this possible.

------
Arubis
I am being incredibly reductive in terms of how much effort is needed to
position yourself for this successfully and sustainably, but: your friend can
get that schedule by going freelance and moving towards a consultancy model.
Consulting clients don’t have to worry about the same overhead per employee as
a proper employment arrangement entails (onboarding, legal, benefits, etc.)
and tend to be more focused on what will be done and by when.

DevOps has some nice potential niches for this sort of arrangement, like one-
time projects to move between platforms.

------
ajushi
I think most of the people who are full-time are more dedicated to the
projects. They are more focused to think on how to solve a problem better,
sometimes even when they are off shift.

------
TACIXAT
I do flexible part time hours. As in, I'm flexible. I'm on Slack if people
need me. I work when there are hours for me. I get to pay rent, take a trip
whenever I want, work on side projects, and work on interesting work.

I agree completely that it's crazy that it is not not common. We make an
insane rate compared to the average salary, might as well take advantage of
that and enjoy some extra time.

------
anticsapp
Interesting that no one has mentioned the real reason. It's because you need
butts in seats. In an office. A real office. Preferably within a half hour
drive of Sand Hill Road or Silicon Alley. Then you have visual and social
proof for future investment. Moreover, FTEs are assets. Salable assets. Not
one by one, but as a collective. Assets for an exit.

------
janee
What about pay. Do you expect to get paid as much as someone doing the full
eight hours?

If not then how much 80%, 50%, even less? Answering that already just makes me
want to avoid opening up part time positions.

Unless you just change the whole work day to 4 hours (gl with that), having
some employees work double what others are just sounds like a headache to me.

~~~
Delk
It's not necessarily an impossible idea to live okay with 80% of a salary,
especially a tech one. (Unless you live someplace really expensive, perhaps,
but Silicon Valley isn't the only place with tech jobs.)

I don't really know what would be so uncomfortable about that that you'd want
to avoid it altogether.

As to whether it should be the same as someone else doing either hours... that
shouldn't depend on the number of hours but on how much and how valuable work
they get done. You probably don't pay exactly the same to everyone even at
100%.

Seriously, I used to do ~30-hour weeks for a while. Got paid accordingly. Of
course I'd like the total salary to reflect the fact that I was still fairly
productive, but I still don't see what the problem there would be as long as I
was happy and the employer was happy. Both apparently were.

------
Spooky23
Nobody wants to deal with the drama. It’s 2 o’clock and I need something from
you, but whoops, I’m stuck waiting until tomorrow, or I call you in and lose
you for a day at the end of the pay period.

It’s the same thing with contractors. I used to get stuck on call over
Christmas all of the time because contract staff are out of hours.

------
mc32
Maybe have them start with an MSP, as they demonstrate ability, rigor,
decision making, etc., they may be able to pull back on hours and get to
service a few choice clients, as they get known they may be able to go on a
1099, if that’s what they’re after.

------
nakodari
Beware that some companies demand full-time effort for an advertised part-time
job. It’a better to join a company full-time that offers flexible work routine
that can fit your friend’s routine/lifestyle.

~~~
fjeifisjf
It s relative. You can work 40 hrs for a 24hr job, or 60 hrs for a 40hr job.
The former is still part time.

------
mxcrossb
From the employee side, I’m not really sure there’s any benefit to being part
time vs. going full free lance. You might think you have additional job
security, but the part timer is the first one to go.

------
katzgrau
I find that someone looking for "part time" work is kind of suggesting that
the role isn't important to them, or they don't plan to stick around. I say
that as both an employer and a former freelancer. As an employer, hiring is a
pain in terms of time and resources, so you want to get it right.

By contrast, I find that someone representing themselves as a "fractional"
expert suggests that they are serious and plan to stick around. Many times
they are very experienced and have hourly rates that would make it difficult
to afford employing them full time, but 2-3 days a week is tolerable.

It's really how you position it. I currently employ a fractional professional.

------
bluedino
Let's say I have a part time guy, and a full time guy. I can give the a task
that takes 5 days. The full time guy gets it done in a week, the part time guy
takes 3 weeks.

------
brianwawok
Run a company.

Rather hire 3 full time devs than 6 half time devs.

Lots of work to train and keep people updated.

Life’s too short to increase my complexity for people to have a more relaxed
life.

------
6nf
Theres a lot to be said in favour of a shorter working day. Not many people
can deliver value after 9 hours of concentration!

------
sys_64738
Most SW jobs are salaried so you stay at work until the critical work is
complete. A PT position doesn't allow for that so PT can't get critical work.
PT only works for hourly type positions as you do the work and go home.
There's also a reason that SW positions generally say you work only for them
and them only so you're not preoccupied with other work.

