
How to become a part-time programmer - handpickednames
https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer/
======
vemv
I've done this for a number of years. This would be my current advice:

\- Don't try it on-site (unless they specifically were seeking a consultant
beforehand). It'll just create resent.

\- Therefore go for remote jobs. Which don't need to be advertised as such -
strong applicants can negotiate a remote arrangement.

\- Don't bill by the hour, but daily. Leaving your earnings aside, this
approach puts the focus in work days, not hours (duh), therefore you aren't
framed as a 'part-time' contributor.

\- When asked how many hours your work day takes, reply "as much as needed".
This would be in fact a honest response. Some days (especially as you join a
team) you'll need 6-8h/d to perform acceptably. Gradually you'll be able to
deliver the same in 3-5h/d.

\- The key part is, employer/client is only aware (in principle) of days and
results (tickets closed, commits pushed, meetings attended, etc). Again this
is not hiding the truth - it is focusing on the results.

\- Do keep track internally of your time spent per day, and have some way to
graph your productivity vs. the time spent. That graph can eventually save
your ass!

\- Be aware that (at least IME), even if spending as little as 3 effective
hours per day, a large chunk of your day can revolve around work, especially
if you interact with a typical team. This includes being available in Slack,
for meetings etc.

~~~
mseebach
Especially in terms of resentment, it seems risky to conflate "remote" and
"part time", especially without very clear boundaries. This is exactly the
fear many managers have about remote work: that it gradually slides into part
time work. It's not at all generally accepted that if you can do "a days work"
in three hours, you get to take the rest of the day off.

If you want to decouple hours spent from your earnings without risking
resentment, you need to find a way to bill firm fixed price for well-defined
deliverables. This is very difficult and risky, to say the least (but very
valuable if you can pull it off).

I don't agree with the assertion that a negotiated part time agreement with
clearly defined boundaries ("John works Tuesdays, Thursday and Friday and
isn't expected to be available on email or Slack, except under the same kinds
of emergencies when we'd call people on weekends") necessarily created
resentment outside of how other workplace status dynamics might create
resentment -- meaning, something your boss should manage, and if they can't,
that person shouldn't be your boss.

~~~
vemv
> it gradually slides into part time work.

I would reword it as "the remote worker is getting more productive". As long
as the measured outcome (which I recommend keeping track of) remains constant,
invested hours don't matter that much.

Of course, if you repeatedly ask to the employer "is it OK to work less
hours", he will hesitate. Just don't ask, while at the same time ensure you
deliver constant meaningful work and document that activity.

Personally I'm serious about crafting meaningful git commits and logging my
daily activity.

Also important to be willing to work a longer day when you've wasted time in
improductive situations (e.g. discarded code, silly bug hunts). Employer
shouldn't necessarily pay for our blunders (which is why sometimes daily rate
is more 'honest' than hourly).

Also note that I specifically point that you cannot just sit 3 consecutive
hours and disappear the rest of the day. I doubt many can do focused high-
quality work without periods of rest. Also important to interact with the
team.

~~~
kelnos
> _As long as the measured outcome (which I recommend keeping track of)
> remains constant, invested hours don 't matter that much._

I don't think most employers would agree with that. If I'm a "normal" full-
time, salaried employee, I'm expected to work 5 days a week, usually for at
least 8 hours a day. If I'm able to become more efficient or automate parts of
my job away, my employer would expect me to take on more work or
responsibility, not work fewer hours a day. (You're free to argue that this
isn't fair, but I'm just talking about reality here.)

If I were to work a reduced schedule of 3 or 4 days a week, the same thing
would apply.

Of course, if the negotiation resulted in more of a contracting role, as in
being paid for milestones and project delivery, then time-spent-in-chair
shouldn't matter.

The grandparent post seemed to be talking of a sort of a hybrid of
FTE/salaried and consulting, so perhaps your advice _might_ apply to that sort
of thing, but I don't think what you're saying would apply to a traditional
salaried position, even after negotiating a reduced work-week.

~~~
vemv
I think it's pretty normal for remote employees (not contractors) to not be
expected to work 8 solid hours per day at home.

Have specifically asked so in quite a few job interviews worldwide. Most
common reply is literally "we don't care as you do what you have to do"

Most folks who have participated in remote workflows for long enough know that
a lot of 'waste' is elliminated by working interruption- and meeting-free, so
8h/d becomes an exhausting workload.

------
bumbledraven
I'm an SRE at Google. I switched to 3 days/week (Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday)
on January 1, 2018, and it's been insanely great. Every weekend is now a 4-day
weekend. I now have the time and energy to make meaningful progress on
personal projects on which I was previously stuck for a long time.

As expected, my annual vacation time (along with my salary, bonus, stock
grants, and stock vesting) is 60% of what it was when I was full-time.
However, holidays that fall on Monday or Friday (of which there are about 8
per year for U.S. Googlers) now generate comp time for me to take whenever I
want. Furthermore, about once per quarter I have a week-long oncall shift
which requires me to be in the office for 8 hours on Monday and Friday; each
of these oncall shifts generates 2 comp days for me to use later (a total of 8
comp days per year).

Working only Tue/Wed/Thu means I can go away for 11 consecutive days by taking
only 3 days off. So far this year I have:

\- taken a 10-day trip to Japan,

\- taken a 10-day trip to Iceland and the UK, and

\- done a 10-day silent meditation retreat.

Google has HR policies that support flexible work schedules. I wouldn't be
surprised if this were the case at most of the larger tech companies.

~~~
toast0
Is it possible to get hired directly into a flexible work schedule? This
sounds really nice!

~~~
bumbledraven
I don't know, but I guess the answer is "yes". Can't hurt to ask during the
application process.

------
sigfubar
Last fall, after having been laid off from a high-pressure, 90-hours-a-week
job, I joined a company that has a liberal remote work culture. At first I
went to the office every day. Then I skipped the commute each time I saw that
the NYC subway was having a sh_t day. After two months I was down to two days
a week, and after three months I stopped coming in altogether unless I felt
like it, which happens to be once every couple of weeks.

The amount of time I spend working is anywhere between 4 and 6 hours per day,
sometimes less. There are days when I arrive at the 3-hour mark and feel that
I won't make progress that day due to needing time to meditate on a problem.
Other days I'll code straight through dinner without so much as a toilet
break. Ultimately, I determine my own schedule on a tactical basis, and am
more productive as a result.

I joke that I do 8 hours of work in a 4-hour workday, but this isn't really a
joke: it's an understatement. I get more done than ever before in my career.

~~~
agumonkey
I hope this can be extended to other places. This is one of the major issues
in my life. I can't stand the absurd pressure to "produce" solutions. I need
time to make things right, when I reach that point I will go 300%.

------
MrBuddyCasino
Antirez just posted this relevant thread:

"I don't want to claim I've accomplished a lot in my life, but somewhat I was
able to work in Security for N years, create two startups, write some OSS, and
later focus on Redis. I've _never_ worked more than 40 hours, and I struggle
to reach 40:"

[https://twitter.com/antirez/status/999199204680577025](https://twitter.com/antirez/status/999199204680577025)

~~~
FLUX-YOU
I only spend huge amounts of time working with other people's code (with
greater-than-linear growth depending on how bad it is)

But I almost never work 40 hours when I'm only working on my code.

------
dmichulke
One important argument I always use is (I also work 30h/w):

"You get my most productive 30 hours per week. You know those hours where you
somehow don't feel productive and you end up doing stuff that wasn't really
worth it ? I don't work those hours."

------
tomohawk
I don't find 40 hours / week to be any trouble at all for me, but I always
take a 3 day weekend. Flexible work hours is the key.

I found working 4 10s was not good at all, but working 2 12s and 2 8s works
out great. I'm a morning person, so I get to work early, before rush. The 12
hour days, I leave after rush. The 8 hour days I leave before rush. So, I
pretty much skip rush hour, which is life changing.

I started doing this after working a year or two of 60 hour weeks. I found I
could do 12 hour days pretty well, but had no desire to work 12 hours every
day. I've got relatives who are farmers and a 12 hour day seems normal to
them. Only working 8 hours in a day seems incomprehensible to them.

------
toomanybeersies
I'm happy working full time, 40 or so hours a week.

What I would really like is more leave, even the option to take more unpaid
leave. I get 20 days leave a year, plus 10 days of public holidays. I wish I
could just have 30 days of leave, plus the option to take more unpaid days off
if I wanted to. I'm amazed that the standard for the USA is closer to 10 days,
with no legal minimum. I'd go stark raving mad with only 10 days of annual
leave.

Flexi time would be nice, the ability to work longer weeks in exchange for
that extra time being converted into annual leave. Work an extra 5 hours a
week for 6 months and that's an extra 16 days of annual leave.

~~~
ben_w
Have you considered Europe? Legal minimum in the EU is 28 including public
holidays, but only my first job and my university industrial experience year
were that low, and even then they added an extra day to your annual allowance
for every year you worked there. Most are 24-26, and I’ve seen one place in
Cambridge that offered 25 +/\- 5 as standard flexibility, buying unused
holiday or selling more holiday as you needed it.

~~~
toomanybeersies
I have considered it, yes. I'm thinking of moving next year, having an EU
passport certainly makes it easy.

What I really want, which is not what most companies want, is to be able to
pick up a 6-8 month contract, then spend 3-6 months traveling and doing my own
thing, and then picking up another contract. Unfortunately, I'm short a few
years of experiences to do that.

------
itamarst
Hi, author of the post here. If you enjoyed this interview, want to become a
part-time programmer (or even just work 40 hours a week), but still don't
think you can do it, I wrote a book—The Programmer's Guide to a Sane
Workweek—that will how help you:

1\. Become more valuable as an employee.

2\. Improve your negotiating skills.

3\. Negotiate the specifics of what you want from your job.

You can read more about it here:
[https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/](https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/)

------
zerr
I work from home, and 40 hours is a LOT - I don't remember when I've worked
(for others) 40 hours per week last time.

Now, when I get to visit a client office, work there full-time for a week or
two - it seems quite easy - a LOT of time is spent on quick talks, drinking
coffee, eating snacks, etc... the actual work I do there is around 3-4 hours
per day (but I get paid for 8) - and this is a small company, where everyone
knows everyone and also it is transparent to what's everybody is doing or
working during the day. And at 18:00 the office is closed no matter what
you're doing - I remember I wanted to finish one "if" statement but I had to
left at "if (...) { " \- continued the rest of the block next day. And I've
actually found that to be quite nice - people really do have a life outside
the work.

------
taurath
I find it really interesting that he said only one interviewer turned him down
flatly. In my experience there’s been almost no willingness to negotiate - it
messes with HR systems a lot is a frequent answer I get. Truthfully, I feel
like if you’re not at a consulting or contract gig you need to be very
specialized to pull this off.

Most larger organizations (>50 technical staff) seem to avoid anyone that
doesn’t fit the mold.

~~~
elbear
I have the expectation that this works if you do it remotely. I imagine your
other colleagues would find it weird or unfair if you were the first to leave
office every day. Especially since they won't know you're getting paid less,
unless you make a public announcement.

~~~
Ultimatt
You are also likely still getting paid more. 80% of an offer for someone who
can negotiate 20% of the year off is still likely to be more enticing pay than
anyone working a tonne of free overtime.

~~~
elbear
Oh, definitely. I find the time off more valuable than the extra money.

------
MaysonL
Of course there's the other way (it's easier to get forgiveness than
permission): do more work than expected in less than 40 hours in the office,
and see if anyone notices. One of the most productive stretches of my career
was spent in this mode.

~~~
ironjunkie
Definitely this one, and this is what a lot of people do at bigger companies
BTW. I know a couple of those people myself.

They "Work from home" on Mondays and/or Fridays and do very easy work, or
commit//send stuff that they managed to do beforehand to generate some easy
activities.

If you are performing and producing what you should, this shouldn't matter,
but here we are anyways...

~~~
Cthulhu_
If you have a manager checking how much units of work you do, you should look
for something else.

------
Vinnl
It's such a shame that often the only/primary axis companies are used to
negotiating over is pay. As a young person without children, I've been at a
point where pay has been more than double the amount I spend (without even
cutting down on spending, though I'm not a big spender), so free time is so
much more valuable to me than pay is.

~~~
orand
Turn your money into time like this guy did.
[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-
sim...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-
behind-early-retirement/)

~~~
Vinnl
(After only scanning that article:) Unfortunately, my time _now_ is also more
valuable to me than my time _later_. I'd much prefer working half weeks for 40
years over working full weeks for 20.

~~~
orand
Once you understand and are persuaded of how everything hinges on your savings
rate, this gives greater confidence to take sabbaticals, or explore other
options including self-employment. Temporarily dropping your spend rate is
both a useful exercise and a way to extend things even farther.

According to that article, if your savings rate is 50% of your take-home pay,
you're done in 16 years. If your savings rate is 64%, you're done in 11 years.
Both of these assume you're starting from zero.

I'm still working, but I've found the mindset change from that article (and
many others on his site) to be extremely useful when choosing how to spend my
time and money now. Think of it as just another tool in your toolkit for
making the most of life, both now and in the future.

~~~
Vinnl
Right, I think that's absolutely the right approach: try to think carefully
about what amount of money you really care about spending, and exchange the
rest for free time (or at least: time spent the way you'd prefer to spend it)
- now if you can, later if not.

------
pm
The best part-time gig I had was working 4 hours a workday remotely. I'd start
at 5 and finish by 9, which left the rest of the day to do anything I wanted.
I got as much done as the other (mobile) developer who worked full-time.

I find 40 hours a week to be tolerable if I'm working remotely. Unfortunately
I have a 2.5 hour commute for my current gig, and it's sucking up all my
personal time.

------
dannyw
This is what I'm doing right now; I work four days a week. It is amazing and I
don't think I will go back to full-time unless there is an extraordinarily
compelling opportunity (and that doesn't mean FANG).

One benefit is I'm able to shift my off-days to Fridays and the next Monday to
get a 4 day weekend, every once in a while. For example, I have a friend
overseas visiting me this weekend; and that's what I'm doing.

There are a couple others here who are on non-FT contracts, so it hasn't been
that odd.

I'm curious how 75% time works. Would you work 4 days a week, with one of the
days being a quarter shorter?

~~~
itamarst
The person I interviewed in that link who has been doing this for 15 years has
seen many different arrangements depending on the company's needs, HR rules,
and the like:

1\. X hours per week, spread out however.

2\. Specific day off per week (so I guess you could do 1.5 days off?)

3\. Lots of extra guaranteed unpaid leave/vacation that he could use as he
wanted.

I've done 35 hours a week, and I just have longer and shorter days, based on
personal needs, when I have meetings, the weather, etc. :)

------
zupatol
I worked part-time during almost all of my programming career, maybe 17 years.
One job was 3 days a week, another 9 months out of 15, currently it's two
weeks out of three.

If you want to do something like that, my only advice is to stubbornly refuse
to work more. I always make that clear before the first interview.

------
davidnaught
I like this idea, but for me the challenge with being a part-time employee is
that from my experience you become a part-time 'person' in management's eyes
and that can be difficult in terms of promotion.

With a previous manager when I worked as a Part-Time Engineer, I wrestled
(internally and externally) with the fact that my contributions were viewed as
less because of the total hours spent but the quality and complexity of the
tasks I completed were no different to that of many of my peers that were
promoted before I managed to receive the same recognition.

Going the other way (excess hours), in many teams that I have worked, I have
observed that those with more outside commitments or interests seem to do less
well in a team than those that choose to spend their time on work tasks
outside of normal office hours no matter how effective/brilliant/capable they
are.

I've not made up my mind if this is a small or massive problem. I guess if you
REALLY want a promotion you will be prepared to put the hours in, but what
about if you can't do this due to your given situation? (eg: a single parent?)
What about burn out? What about people who are succeeding with dumb work
practices?

Part-timing on a contract type position rather than salary would be a pretty
good fit in my mind and I have seen this work well based on the huge grand
total of two examples I have seen in 10 years of work.

------
Cthulhu_
Going self-employed is always an option if you can't find an employer that is
able to offer you a not-40-hour-a-week job, although often enough companies
expect their consultants to also work an X amount of hours a week.

------
jvvw
I'm half-time (18.75 hours per week) but got my job by originally being full-
time and putting in a flexible working request - which you have a legal right
to do in the UK if you have children under a certain age and have worked there
a certain period of time. No right to have flexible working granted but if
they refuse the reason has to fall into one of a certain set of categories.
Obviously not a good way to get a part-time from scratch though!

~~~
itamarst
This is the most common way for people to get part-time work. Don't even need
legal right to do so, though it helps, e.g. I know people who have done this
in US where your rights as an employee are... not as good.

Here's why: you've been at company for a while. You know the code, you know
the dependencies, you know the business logic, you know who to talk to, you
know the mindset, you know the priorities. Replacing you is _expensive_. Even
if they can hire someone with same skills on paper, there's a long and costly
organization-specific ramp-up for most companies.

Thus, a good rational manager (not all of them are, obviously) will prefer to
have you part-time than to have you leave. Which gives you negotiating
leverage.

The longer you've been at a job, the more valuable you are, the better this
goes. Even better if it's a tight hiring market, like now.

(I write about this at length in my book, Programmer's Guide to a Sane
Workweek:
[https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/.](https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/.))

------
JoachimHarris
Hi guys

I think that this is actually my first posting in here. I have though been
reading a lot of posts in here and love the forum. However, I do not know, if
there are any "rules" about spam, please do tell me as I do not consider this
as spam.

The reason why I choose to post now on this thread is, that this thread really
leans up at what we are trying to do at Worklified, a startup trying to solve
work-life balance for developers.

I have written a Medium post, goo.gl/89moUC, where I go into dept what
Worklified is at this point.

If you are interested in the idea about a better work-life balance please do
sign up here [https://www.worklified.com/](https://www.worklified.com/), so we
can get a feeling about the interest for this subject.

Thanks

/Joachim

------
a-saleh
I have just signed a contract to do this. 32 hours a week. I will still need
to hash with HR out how this will work with i.e. bank holidays and such, but I
am looking forward to that :-)

------
jnichols35
I really want to switch to part time work and this article is really
motivating to take the leap. My skill set is in desktop support and I want to
free up time for studying programming. Right now the job I have is fairly
intense with a weekly ticket count regualarly reaching over 100 at times.

I'm nervous about asking my boss for less time at work, but at this point I'm
prepared to quit just to get some of my sanity back.

------
chuckgreenman
I've had luck seperating the hours of work needed to be completed and the
amount of work needing to be completed. If you start to automate aspects of
your job you can be more productive than most folks in the office while
working a fraction of the time.

------
xstartup
So, one of our talented employees was telling me that he asked to be switched
from fulltime to parttime, the previous company let him switch but kept the
compensation fulltime. He was moved remote to not cause resentment among
existing employees. Guess who wants to see others leaving early that too with
full compensation? New VP came and axed his position after 6 months.

