
Ask HN: Working part-time in tech? - jazz_from_hell
I would like to drastically reduce my amount of work hours per week.<p>My dream is to come down to about 15-25 working hours per week.<p>I don’t mean to work part-time for all of my career. But I would like to have such an arrangement for the coming five years or so.<p>Has anyone tried this? If so, how did you manage to achieve your goal?
======
mbrundle
I’ve been working 4d/week for the last 5 years as a Data Scientist. I first
proposed it during salary negotiations with a small startup, who were
surprised by it but were willing to give it a go. It worked out really well,
and once I had that under my belt, I was able to ask for the same arrangement
at subsequent job interviews - I would make a point to raise this up front,
and it proved a good way to filter out companies that likely wouldn’t have
been a good work/life fit. (I look after three young kids outside of work;
wife is a corporate lawyer who has to work 24/7, so my 4d/wk schedule is
important in maintaining some semblance of balance for the kids).

Now I’m at a multinational (a publicly listed health data company) and the
arrangement continues to work well, even though I now manage a team of 8 data
scientists. I’ve had colleagues who’ve dropped from 5 to 3d/wk, the company
seems very flexible around this type of arrangement. At the startups I felt
that I had to squeeze in 5d of work in 4d at times, whereas here the workload
has felt more commensurate with the hours I have available (and my manager
often checks in to make sure this is the case).

Overall I love having an extra day to the weekend (I take the kids out to
places in London on Fridays when it’s considerably less busy). My colleagues
with similar arrangements used this to split their working weeks in half, and
that worked well for them.

Happy to answer any questions.

~~~
rizpanjwani
Are you hiring junior/intern data scientists from Canada? I know someone who
is almost finished their masters and have worked on real data from telecomm
quality of service as part of their thesis, and have had a term of internship.

~~~
mbrundle
I don’t think we’ve worked with anyone in Canada in our team, however it’s a
huge company With multiple DS teams, and some may be open to this. Feel free
to send a CV and I can forward to the appropriate hiring partner.

~~~
rizpanjwani
thanks very much. Where/how can I forward it?

~~~
mbrundle
Just added my LinkedIn link to my profile, hope that helps.

------
itamarst
As other people have said, you can negotiate for this. I've done it at
multiple jobs. Here's an interview with someone who has been doing it for 15
years: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-
programmer...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer/)

1\. It's easier at existing job; you have all this knowledge that's hard to
replace ([https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/01/25/4-day-workweek-
easy-...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/01/25/4-day-workweek-easy-way/)).

2\. At new jobs, apply normally. Then _after_ you get an offer, ask for
shorter hours.

3\. I wrote a book about the process; it's no longer public linked on my site
because pandemic has lowered negotiation leverage a lot and I'm not sure how
to address that, but if you're interested:
[https://codewithoutrules.com/3dayweekend/](https://codewithoutrules.com/3dayweekend/)

~~~
bloudermilk
Having been a engineering manager before, it would put an extremely bad taste
in my mouth if someone waited until the offer stage to ask for a part time
role.

~~~
jazz_from_hell
I can understand why you feel that way. But many companies simply doesn’t want
to talk to people who wants to work part-time. (As in ”don’t call us, we’ll
call you”.) So even if it might seem pushy to negotiate like that, at least to
me it’s understandable.

~~~
ohyeshedid
It also has the potential to waste your time and theirs. I wouldn't call it
pushy as much as borderline deceptive.

~~~
srtjstjsj
Unless the employer posts the salary up front, they are bring deceptive too.

~~~
akimball
While that is valid, two wrongs don't make a right.

------
statquontrarian
I've been doing 20 hours per week (Mon-Wed) remote for nearly 3 years and I
absolutely love it. I'm at a $bigco and worked there for 10 years before
changing to this part time arrangement.

I believe it's harder to do for small companies due to legal/tax reasons
(something about less than 32 hours complicates things a lot although I don't
know the details why).

The "simple" solution is to be good enough that you have the bargaining
leverage to propose it and make it an ultimatum. Other ideas:

* Grind in a project for some years and become indispensable and then propose it.

* Propose it as an experiment for 6 months.

* Create an "excuse" of why you need the extra time such as pursuing an M.S./PhD.

~~~
woodpanel
_Create an "excuse" of why you need the extra time such as pursuing an
M.S./PhD._

Having kids. Serves also as a pressure upon _you_ to actually seek part-time
instead of just procrastinating about it.

 _I believe it 's harder to do for small companies due to legal/tax reasons
(something about less than 32 hours complicates things a lot although I don't
know the details why)._

Not a US resident, but FWIW many countries because of redistribution schemes
need to categorize people by whether they are a) principally employed or b)
self-employed.

Hours worked for a/b are a common denominator for this. It's likely that
depending on the regulatory environment smaller companies when given the
chance will always opt for the candidate with less HR department overhead.

------
liamuk
I just asked my manager for a 24 hr work week (3 days on, 4 days off), and
they said sure, and the company prorated my salary down.

The company I was working for came out of a university research lab, and so
had a culture of PhD students working part time for it, so this was not
outside the norm there.

The downside was not getting equity, nor benefits, but I was on my parent's
insurance and wasn't too keen on their equity anyway, so this was fine for me.

~~~
liamuk
The other path here might be working somewhere with a culture of fixed goals
rather than a time expectation.

For example, many remote companies that operate asynchronously won't expect
you to be in the office 40hrs a week, but will expect a certain level of work
to be done each week. If you can get that done in 24 rather than 40, then it
works out fine for you.

~~~
cercatrova
This is why I love remote work. Studies [0] show that most office workers work
only 2.5 hours a day on average, with the rest being socializing,
procrastinating, surfing the web, and so on. If I can get my work done in 4
hours a day, I'll have done more work _and_ have more free time, since
managers in an office expect you to be there for 8 hours a day, but not so for
remote.

[0] [https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-
aver...](https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-average-
worker-is-productive-for-this-many-hours.html)

~~~
ashr
I don't believe 2.5 hours is representative, so please cite these studies.
Personally,senior engineers (individual contributors) that I have worked with
spend 4-6 hours per day making significant contributions on their own and the
other 4-2 hours working/coordinating with their team and sister teams. The
only plausible scenario where one can do an acceptable job in 2.5 hours per
day is where a senior person is doing the job of an entry level person. For
people managers, having effective 2-4 hour days on an ongoing basis are very
unlikely in my experience. I am open to be surprised with examples that prove
otherwise.

~~~
cercatrova
Here is the study I read it from, there might be others. In my experience,
yes, it doesn't work for managers, only those who are individual contributors
doing programming full time. I doubt however that even the senior managers are
coding the entire time for 4 to 6 hours, it is difficult to do so every single
day. More likely, you perceive them to be doing that much work since they are
present during that time, which is the same reaction I get as well; colleagues
and bosses speak of how much work I get done compared to others, yet they
don't realize I work a lot fewer hours. It's all about efficiency.

[https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-
aver...](https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-average-
worker-is-productive-for-this-many-hours.html)

~~~
yoloswagins
A specific note about this quote:

> However, this eight-hour movement didn't become standard until nearly a
> century later, when, in 1914, Ford Motor Company astonished everyone by
> cutting daily hours down to eight while simultaneously doubling wages. The
> result? Increased productivity.

What happened was the shift from craftsmen at a workbench to a deskilled
assembly line had significant turnover. The cost of training and retention was
high enough that Ford instituted the lower working hours and higher wages.

From one of Ford's biographers: “So great was labor’s distaste for the new
machine system that toward the close of 1913 every time the company wanted to
add 100 men to its factory personnel, it was necessary to hire 963.”

You see this in shipyards during the war war 2 years where once the initial
pool of workers is burned out, you need to raise wages to bring in more
workers.

------
TACIXAT
I do this currently. I was working at Google and left. I wanted more time off
since I have enough money to not grind, but still need to pay rent. Basically
personal project time.

I ended up at a small company that had additional hours but not enough for a
full time employee. I'm now part time across three DARPA contracts. It was
really just luck, a friend reached out and asked if I was interested.

Everywhere else I was talking to was just pushing unlimited PTO policies. I
wanted explicit acknowledgement about how much vacation I'd take and that was
hard to get.

I know people at Google went to part time. You probably just need to ask. My
route was definitely finding a place that needed a worker but didn't have
enough work for full time.

~~~
jazz_from_hell
Yeah I’ve been thinking about joining a small company like that. But they can
be quite hard to find since they generally don’t put up any job postings.
Congratulations to finding one! :)

------
semicolonandson
I'm someone who values tinkering time greatly and low-hour work weeks (at
least WRT "work" work) are a priority.

I've gotten to this stage from two different directions:

1\. Developing a relationship with a 'principal' consultant who handles client
relationships themselves (shielding me from weird hours and stress) but
outsources the tech to me (+ other technical freelancers). When this principal
consultant has no clients, they still have hours available for their own in-
house, entrepreneurial products.

2\. Bootstrapping a passive-income web business. I coded a Ruby on Rails
application to sell law notes following my law degree. By following the advice
here, I figured out how to market it with SEO and AdWords. Much to my
amazement, it ended up providing for all my financial needs for over 7 years,
sometimes with as little as 4 hours work a month. (Obviously there was a huge
upfront investment in getting to that stage.) I've got a YouTube video where I
talk more about how I came up with the MVP and what the first few months were
like, in case this is a path you're considering too

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKXlZz-
wbmg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKXlZz-wbmg)

------
biztos
In some countries you actually have a _right_ to switch from full-time to
part-time work.

Your employer can block you but only if they have a really solid reason, and
"we have to hire another person to make up the difference" won't fly. If you
want to go the other way (back to full-time) your employer can say no.

So -- if this is your long-term plan and you want to be _employed_ you might
consider going to such a country, and doing a year or so of full-time first.

Anecdotally, I was seriously considering switching to half time pre-plague so
I could do a PhD. Would have been trivial to get it approved, but I have a lot
of seniority; you might have to fight for it if you're new. But at least in
Germany, it's your right as a worker, not a privilege from your employer. I
would expect it's like that in much of the EU.

------
adyer07
I tried this and struggled. After taking a break from full-time developer
work, I reached out to multiple tech companies via personal referrals.
Everyone said that they’d love me full time, but couldn’t have a part-time
hire. I got a lot of soft brush-offs to “reach out when you have more
availability.”

Out of the blue, however, a former employer reached out to me and offered to
hire me for as many (or as few) hours as I could handle, which has worked out
to 10-25 a week. It’s been a really nice arrangement that I’ve enjoyed. The
catch is that this company is in a completely different industry, with a
completely different pay scale than tech. So I’m happy with my job, but
wouldn’t be able to support myself on it with part-time hours if I was the
only household earner.

~~~
jazz_from_hell
I hear ya. Many recruiters/bosses simply don’t want to hear anything about
part-time work at all. I think that’s a mistake on their end – it could be a
major benefit that would make that employer stand out from the crowd. But many
companies sadly doesn’t think about it that way.

PS. As someone else mentioned here, and in case you find yourself on the
market again: You might want to try to discuss part-time only after receiving
a written offer. Then you know for sure that they want to hire you. And then
you have some leverage.

~~~
rabidrat
In my experience, you have to negotiate part-time after the verbal "great job,
we want to hire you" but _before_ the formal written offer.

------
langitbiru
I did this. I wrote tech tutorials. I got paid by hours so it was up to me how
long I want to work per week. It's by pure luck I got this job. My friend who
worked in a company asked me to help with tech writing.

Sometimes you have to ask:
[https://twitter.com/shl/status/1300848723182776322](https://twitter.com/shl/status/1300848723182776322)

------
daxfohl
My wife arranged this and ended up getting just as much work thrown at her,
working just as much, but getting paid less and next to zero promotability.
She obviously went back to full time after about six months.

~~~
jazz_from_hell
Ouch. There are definitely pitfalls along this path. And if the manager
doesn’t understand what the deal implies I’m sure it can be very hard and
stressful. Too bad it didn’t work out for your wife.

~~~
quickthrower2
That’s why it’s good to have two things. One is to be able to easily pick up a
job somewhere else for same pay and benefits if required. Second is to say no,
ideally in a respectful way. Pretend you have another boss vying for those
other 8 hours (this boss is you of course!)

------
sdedovic
I just (4th week tomorrow) started a similar thing with my company.

I work 16 hours / week and am on a support rotation (albeit 3rd tier). I only
cover unplanned work on weekends. I took a 60% pay cut but keep all my pre-
existing benefits.

So far it has been wonderful for my mental health, although with social
distancing and the pandy it certainly has been difficult to keep busy some
days. I am passively looking for supplemental work as I don't make enough to
deposit into my savings. I imagine as winter rolls in this will be a necessity
to stay busy/sane.

In the meantime, though, I have picked up lots of cooking, baking, and work on
some personal coding projects. I have also been focusing much more of my time
on art, which is really awesome! It's too early to tell but this might end up
a more permanent situation for me (if not at the current company then maybe at
the next one?).

I think this has also made me more productive at my job. I have 16 hours this
week - what NEEDS to get done? What is a nice to have? Constraints are
wonderful for productivity.

~~~
jazz_from_hell
Sounds great and kudos to you for trying an alternative to the rat race!

Was it hard to negotiate or was your employer positive to the idea from the
beginning?

------
sgt
You can probably do consultant work. Come up with solutions, don't necessarily
implement everything or anything yourself. If you try doing everything
yourself on a per-hour basis, you put yourself at a massive disadvantage.

~~~
jazz_from_hell
Interesting. Do you mean solution architect kind of assignments?

~~~
sgt
Yes, that is certainly one option.

------
golergka
Yes. I just explained that wish when I was hired. I was not the most important
engineer on the team, doing frontend (not in JS/HTML sense, just in UI sense)
work for a project where most of the work was in the backend, and it was an
easy sell.

Ended up divorcing my wife after spending 4 days a week at home with her, so
wouldn't recommend it, but no professional problems.

------
inglor
I don't work part-time at the moment but have before and have part-time
positions currently hiring for in my team and I manage part time employees and
have before.

It's not unheard of just uncommon.

The biggest drawback is that you feel less belonging and you aren't always
there for all the decisions. At certain times I am OK with that.

------
mark_and_sweep
I work at $BIGCO, 3 days on, 4 days off, 2 of which I usually spend learning
tech and non-tech related things and/or working on side-projects I'm
interested in.

I think there are multiple reasons why I was allowed to do this:

A) I'm working on a stable, long-term project. So there were no objections by
colleagues that this might impede short-term progress (and, as a side note, I
think I'm far more productive now than previously).

B) My manager is a reasonable and kind person. I know other managers at $BIGCO
who, I'm sure, would have objected.

~~~
jazz_from_hell
Sounds like a good deal.

Are you a developer or some other role?

~~~
mark_and_sweep
Yes, I'm a dev.

------
limograf
I work 24h/w (TWT) for my employer. I did this by... saying that's what I
could do when they offered me the job. (There are some specific personal
circumstances that prevent me from taking full time work.) And sure, it does
limit you; a lot of places demur, but not everyone. For sure my small company
are happy to have me. Of course they are: they get a massive bargain. I am
prorata so they get a developer for janitor wages and still everything gets
done. Who wouldn't be happy with that deal?

------
pxue
Contracting is your best bet.

I set my own hours + fully remote. Typically about 2-3h of team meetings
(sprint kickoff, retro, grooming etc) a week. Rest of time is off on your own
dev work.

Bill by the hour. As long as you work predictable amount of hours, you can do
20h or 60h week.

~~~
mac01021
How much time do you spend with nonbillable work like lining up clients? I've
always been interested in contracting but not really felt like I knew how to
get started.

------
liberate0287482
I transitioned from FTE to ~25 hours per week as a contractor and it
definitely works for my situation.

If you go this route, make sure when you calculate your rate that you build-in
the benefits such as paid leave, health insurance, lunch break, and company
holidays. The number might seem high but you can justify it.

We arranged a deal where I work between 0 and 40 hours per week, with the
option to work more hours with approval.

Also you might enjoy The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss

~~~
jazz_from_hell
Cool!

I’ve heard about Ferriss book but haven’t read it. Is it good?

------
gherkinnn
I work 4 days on, 3 off. Not quite what you’re looking for, but along the same
lines.

Has been no issue at all. Never has been.

What I do see with my 3on/4off colleagues (usually students) is that they lack
any sort of continuity in their work. Not enough time to tackle larger
problems in one go and always missing out on how the smaller pieces fit
together. On top of that a lot off friction when handing things off, etc.

Surely it can be done better, etc etc.

------
adamsvystun
Have never tried it. But have been on the other side of the situation looking
to hire developers half time.

Look for small companies. Startups, small businesses, anyone who needs a
developer but can't afford a full time employee. This can especially work out
if you are a senior developer whose 20 hours are often more valuable than 40
hours of a junior dev.

------
christophilus
Been doing this for 6 months (50% time), and loving it. In my case, a former
employer reached out and asked if I’d like to work part time. I’ve got a
friend who’s working 2 full time gigs; 15hours each. He’s more productive than
his peers in each company, and only puts in a fraction of the hours. If you
deliver high value, you can negotiate.

~~~
jazz_from_hell
Yeah it would probably help if I get better at identifying work that is
actually high-value. It’s kinda easy to fall in to the trap of doing busywork
that demands lots of hours but doesn’t really produce so much value.

------
d--b
I'm at 22.5 hrs/week fully remote. I had been a full time employee for 6 years
and wanted to resign. They wanted to keep me. I asked for this and they said
ok.

------
flats
I’ve been working as a software engineer at a non-profit for a little over
four years. I started at 40 hours per week, went down to 32 after a couple of
years, and now am at 24 because they were looking to cut costs and I was happy
to oblige.

When I brought it up to my manager, I told her very specifically _why_ I
wanted to reduce my hours - I wanted to spend more time on other projects
(specifically musical projects) - and she was totally open to it. If you
really feel like you need more time for other pursuits, and you are lucky
enough to work at a good company where your manager has your best interests at
heart, it shouldn’t be an issue.

Plus, hiring and training new employees is an expensive pain in the ass.

------
dlondero
It's possible. If not an option for the company you're working for at the
moment look for other companies with openings for 80% or 60% of effort. I am
currently working 80% (4 days per week) after almost 1 year at 60% (3 days per
week).

Good luck!

~~~
jazz_from_hell
Thank you!

------
michannne
I work remote at a startup. I don't think that's a repeatable strategy but it
does allow me to work very little hours throughout the week and spend most of
my time relaxing with my family. It also helps being decent enough at my job
that I can finish a week's worth of work in a couple hours at home. I imagine
as the company becomes more mature I'll be working even less than I am now.

~~~
jazz_from_hell
Wow. Sounds pretty great. I’ve generally thought of startups as quite
stressful work places – might not be the case for all of them though?

~~~
NateEag
I think that if you only do a few hours of actual time working each week, you
are deceiving not only your employer but yourself about what is productive and
whether you're a good employee.

There are no good metrics for programmer productivity, but spending < 20 hours
a week actually switched-on as a full-time employee is obviously a problem, to
me.

~~~
michannne
I honestly doubt any one who says that they are productive for 40 full hours a
week, or even 6 hours per day. There's a lot of downtime that employees
usually do not notice from a first person perspective. Even still, the goal of
IT is first and foremost to empower business goals through technology, one of
the main aspects of that is increasing workflow efficiency and throughput of
the rest of the business processes - in other words, make good software so the
rest of the business doesn't have to work so hard.

I have definitely met workers who I've given a task and they produce sub-
average work and, when confronted, give me the spiel about they worked "so
many hours on this" and how could I "invalidate the time they spent".

At the end of the day, as long as you are doing the job at the pace I need you
to be doing the job, then I don't care if you did it in 1 hour or 8 hours. If
you want more work, ask, and if you're spending too much time on a task, then
there is a communication problem as a team member should have caught that you
were on the wrong track.

In my experience, focusing on hours worked has never produced quality work.

~~~
NateEag
I know I don't hit a full 40 hours of "productive work" each week.

That's different from intentionally deciding to aim for less than that,
though.

~~~
michannne
The goal of work is to intentionally decrease the amount of work you have to
do to achieve the same tasks. Why pay you when I can find a person who will do
the same work you do in less time?

I think what you're arguing is that employees should always have some work to
do, which simply won't be the case in every industry

~~~
NateEag
What I'm saying is that if I manage to build enough tooling to streamline my
work so it takes me twenty hours of "at work" time instead of the forty it
used to, then under the standard full-time employee arrangements, I have an
obligation to use the remaining time for other tasks, like finding a new
corner of the company's workflows I can help optimize and streamline.

I've never seen a system that was even close to perfectly designed or
optimized. You can always find more to improve.

Yes, there are diminishing returns for any specific corner, and there comes a
point when the increase in risk from doing further deployments is not worth
the shrinking business gains for optimizing a given corner, but I strongly
believe there are always more improvements that can be made, both at a small,
focused level and stu the big picture level of what systems should even exist
in a given company.

~~~
srtjstjsj
> I have an obligation

You don't though. If you become 40% more productive, you should be paid more.
Quietly taking that time as part time hours, instead of staying full time and
getting a promotion+raise, is fine.

~~~
NateEag
You are welcome to your opinion, and to your own moral code.

Mine means I _do_ have that obligation.

I suspect many share this aspect of my code, which boils down to "keep your
commitments, both explicit and implicit."

Nobody hires a full-time employee expecting that they'll start slacking off
once they get the basics of their job going smoothly, and I know that going in
(as do most people).

Thus, if I plan to do that, I have to warn them up front that our expectations
are likely not aligned.

If I don't want to have that obligation, then I can negotiate up front, or
take on the risk of being a consultant or startup founder.

Thought experiment: ask yourself whether you'd hire someone advertising my
work ethic or yours, if all other aspects are equal between the candidates.

Then ask yourself why you answered as you did, and which response the market
will reward better in hiring.

My reason for this stance is my personal code of ethics, not pragmatism, but I
think the pragmatic consideration may clarify my point.

~~~
michannne
You put a lot of weight on your morals and work ethic but my point is that
those mean nothing to me. I don't care how hard you work to get the job done.
Once you're salaried, how efficiently you perform your job is up to you, and
what action I take when you don't meet the pace I expect is up to me. When I
manage a team, I encourage those on my team to bring up any obstructions or
changes they'd want to see to improve the efficiency of their work - past that
I don't care as long as they understand the timelines we are working under and
if everything is on time, why would I add undue stress to my team?

If timelines become tighter, at that point, and only at that point, would I
crack down on efficiency.

>Thought experiment: ask yourself whether you'd hire someone advertising my
work ethic or yours, if all other aspects are equal between the candidates.

That's like asking all else being equal, would I hire the person who wore Air
Force 1s to the interview or the person who wore chelsea boots. That has
nothing to do with your performance of your job and any distinction on that
matter is personal preference. The only thing that is important is are you
getting the job done on the pace it needs to get done.

At this point you seem like you'd discriminate your employees based on which
IDE they were using. If they produced good work, would you care that the most
productive person on your team was using Notepad++ to do their job?

~~~
NateEag
Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're saying.

It sounded to me like you were suggesting an hour or three a day of actually
focusing your attention on your workplace is plenty for a full-time, salaried
employee.

If that's not what you mean, then I've obviously misunderstood you.

What do you suggest regarding hours of "butt in seat" when WFH? It's a truly
wretched metric for productivity, but I think ignoring it entirely is unwise.

I would (and do) encourage my teammates to use whatever editor or IDE they
want, as long as it doesn't cause issues for the rest of the team (which I
have seen crappy obscure tools do, in one memorable case by converting line
endings to classic Mac OS style across many files, but only on edited lines).

> That's like asking all else being equal, would I hire the person who wore
> Air Force 1s to the interview or the person who wore chelsea boots. That has
> nothing to do with your performance of your job and any distinction on that
> matter is personal preference. The only thing that is important is are you
> getting the job done on the pace it needs to get done.

Whether a candidate thinks they should put in 8 hours a day vs. two or four,
if that's all their current task takes, is directly relevant to how effective
an employee they will be.

It is not at all like what kind of shoes they wore to the interview, which is
indeed unrelated to their technical skills or workplace conduct.

As far as ethics or working hard mattering, I think of them as necessary but
not sufficient. If I have a great work ethic and bust my butt but do not
achieve anything, I'm a poor employee.

When I have a task estimated at four hours but it takes me two, I don't think
"Sweet, HN until lunchtime," I grab the next thing off the stack.

Like I said, perhaps I'm not understanding what you're trying to describe.

------
jakub_g
A bit more than you're aiming for, but from anecdata I heard, it's relatively
popular and accepted in Switzerland to work 4 days a week in IT.

In other countries I'm aware of it's probably not that common, except when
you're really senior in your domain and have unique skills.

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chucksmash
I haven't tried this personally but my company has a relevant policy and I've
considered it from time to time.

The employee handbook lays out opportunity to take x% of your current hours
for x% of your current pay. If you'd be happy working 4x8s and 80% salary +
80% bonus works for you? As long as your manager doesn't object, go for it.

I think this is a great benefit to offer. Abstractly, I imagine that the
system means that once you hit an income threshold you're happy with, a 10%
raise immediately gets converted into 10% less hours per week. You never
retire, just get asymptotically close to doing so.

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yodsanklai
It's certainly possible. Some people do it in my company. Either working part-
time, or contracting. A lot of things are possible, but it depends on how hard
you're willing to try, and how valuable you are for your employer.

~~~
jazz_from_hell
Yeah it could perhaps be easier if I manage to transition to a niche (or two)
that is in high and stable demand.

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02020202
i have worked a full-time job one year in my entire life. after that always
part-time. part time sounds bad but it's just you leaving the office at 1pm(or
however that works out for you). it is the best setup and i have been working
like this for over a decade. i prefer to work from office but it is not easy
to find local companies for this setup and either way you have to be a self-
employed entity. so i rented a desk at my previous job and worked from there
for other companies, part-time, for many years. now i work from home since i
have not found suitable alternative for my office since the company have moved
to new space. but now i work on pre-paid hours, credit-like system, if you
will. and have no schedule whatsoever. client pays me for certain amount of
hours, upfront, and then as i work i just work up to the amount of hours i got
paid. nobody is looking over my shoulder, nobody is giving me deadlines. when
it's done, it's done. best setup, bar none. but ymmv. i charge enough so i can
work hour or two a day if i want. i could make a bank if i would go do a full-
time gig again and i have been thinking about it, for a year, to save money
but i have not found interesting jobs so yeah... it is a individualistic
lifestyle, not suitable for everyone. but as i have said, you can rent a desk
at a company you know people from or something like that, so you are with
people and not alone all doy long. i would not recommend corowking spaces at
all though. that's the worst setup i can imagine.

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ForHackernews
The easiest way to do this is by becoming a contractor. Your client(s) don't
have to know that the other 20 hours a week you're kicking back rather than
slaving away on a different client's project.

~~~
jazz_from_hell
That’s a very interesting idea.

Any suggestions on what kinds of assignments that would work better or worse
in such a setting?

Many of the consultants I’ve seen in IT are more like regular employees except
that they are employed buy the consultants. (I.e. they sit in the client’s
office 40 h/week.) But I guess there are other ways to do it.

~~~
ForHackernews
Is there anything you're an expert at? Postgres, Django, React, etc.?

Companies hiring contractors want to pay somebody to "show up" (perhaps
virtually) and do the one thing they're an expert at, not waste time getting
up to speed or learning on the job.

Figure out what you're an expert in, and contact some recruiting firms that
hire for contracting gigs in that area. Explain that your schedule is "half
full already" but you'd like to fit something else in, if it's the right
opportunity.

~~~
jazz_from_hell
That’s a really good phrasing.

I’ve been working mostly in IT and I’m a bit of a generalist. I’ve thought
about doing contracting and specialising ”on-the-go”. It could work... but it
could also be a bit stressful. I think my current job will allow me to go
quite deep in some areas so I might want to hang on to it for a while in order
to allow for better opportunities further down the road.

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eliasbagley
How would this work when substantial equity is involved? It makes sense that
if you drop your hours, your salary would drop in proportion. But if a
substantial amount of your total comp is from unvested equity, it doesn't
makes as much sense. Your employer can't take away unvested equity, right? If
so it seems like your employer would have much less incentive to want to do
something like this - you may be working half as much, but your total comp
only drops by like 25% or something.

~~~
singron
In some places I've worked, HR has a hidden target total compensation for each
employee. When they make compensation adjustments, they try to bring you
slightly closer to that goal. In this case, they might drop just your salary
proportionally since that appears fair, but future adjustments will be lower
or zero until your target compensation is above your actual compensation.

------
jjav
It is easy to make companies cut your salary but difficult to make them
respect the reduced work hours!

Wife has been working nominally 4 days a week at the G of FAANG for several
years. Prorated to 80% of the salary. Management has repeatedly stated that
they expect far more than 40hrs/week from a full-timer, so an 80%-timer better
turn in at least 40+ hours. Which largely defeats the intended benefit of
doing a 4 days week.

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cercatrova
Work a remote job, and finish your work quickly every day.

~~~
volkk
not that simple when you have people pinging you and asking questions or
meetings, etc etc. i mean you can just slack off maybe after doing several
hours of deep work, but theres no way you can just log off and go do your own
thing without anybody noticing

~~~
WJW
Logging off and not being reachable is entirely a function of expectation
management though. It's difficult to go from responding in a minute every time
to responding the next day, that's true. But try stretching your response
times by 15 minutes per week and give reasonable and unassailable excuses like
"I was on the phone with my mother". Pretty soon you will find that
expectations about your reachability will change.

~~~
srtjstjsj
Or your coworkers might notice your chronic unavailability and deception.

------
HenryBemis
Give us a bit more background (location, work domain, etc.)

For EU/UK market: Contracting. You can get small gigs (but on a low pay) on
places like Upwork, or you can get a proper contract with a company that needs
hands for 3-6-12 months on a larger project. Some of the Big4 also do
contracting work on which you are the back-end (think Service Center) for
large IT projects (and/or compliance etc.)

~~~
jazz_from_hell
Location is Stockholm, Sweden and I’ve done lots of IT support kind of work,
but very recently transitioned to doing more of sysadmin kind of work for a
small MSP (Managed Service Provider).

------
RobbieHacks
I work about 25 hours a week at home right now. I started with a startup tech
company and at first we were doing 35 hours a week but we decided those 10
hours allowed us to work slowly. By cutting down our hours we were able to get
more stuff done in a short amount of time with deadlines and the pressure of
time limits

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g00gler
I've sent you an email re:part time work :)

