
Ask HN: Is there a market (both supply/demand) for half-time software engineers? - godot
In the SF Bay Area, senior full time software engineers easily get a pay of around $150-180k base salary, not including benefits and stocks.<p>What I would like, and I feel like I can&#x27;t be alone in this, is to be employed half time and get paid half of that. I&#x27;d like the flexibility of having more days to myself (at this stage of my life, i.e. starting a family, with priorities on family over work), and maybe even grow side projects into small streams of passive income to diversify my income.<p>I see a lot of pros on the employee side, and that there must be a pool of engineers looking for something similar.<p>On the employer side I see pros being that half-time employment doesn&#x27;t require benefits like health insurance, so these employees are on their own, and they also probably don&#x27;t get given stocks, so in total by paying 50% salary, you actually end up paying less than 50% of total cost for the employee.<p>The con I see for the employer is that part time employees don&#x27;t count as exempt so are required to be paid for any overtime hours, meaning it&#x27;s harder to get ops response type of work out of them (need to pay for OT). So definitely can&#x27;t see a company running with <i>only</i> half time engineers, but perhaps having a subset of engineers be half time could be possible (maybe even a good cost-saving idea).<p>Having said all that, does HN think there actually is a market for this on either side?
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ccdev
I'm wondering this myself. I'm currently in a part-time contract for indie
game development work. While it's been great, as far as I know it's an unusual
situation to be in. It hasn't been easy for me to find another good
complementary PT software job.

I am not expecting stocks or huge benefits at these sorts of jobs. What I am
hoping to get out of these jobs is a stepping stone into more advanced and
involved roles with the company. My current PT job is a big departure from my
last job in terms of both tech skills and industry.

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hsribei
I'd love such an arrangement myself too, especially remotely. I have friends
who tutor on Thinkful or some other company so they can choose to do fewer
hours a week and dedicate themselves to family/projects, but that pays much
less than working as an engineer. It works for them because they live in low
cost-of-living countries.

