
Ask HN: How do you scale salary for part-time work? - stepbeek
Question:<p>How does your company scale salary&#x2F;benefits for part-time work?<p>Context:<p>We&#x27;re a small startup in the UK trying to figure out our hiring policies. An idea we&#x27;ve tossed around before is that since we offer remote work with fairly flexible hours, there&#x27;s a terrific opportunity to hire people who are taking a career break due to their personal life (young children etc).<p>Our perceived benefit is:<p>* we&#x27;re getting access to a talent pool that might otherwise be ignored<p>* the offerings that are very possible as a small company (remote, flexible hours, easy access to management) are far more impactful to someone in this situation<p>* we have a future opportunity to let our bandwidth grow<p>The cost of two part-time employees isn&#x27;t quite the same as one full-time, since we incur about the same fixed costs anyway (management time in 1-2-1&#x27;s, payroll administration, dev setup etc). So we&#x27;re wondering if cutting the salary in half is actually what we want to do?
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pmyteh
I've mostly worked in public-sector bureaucracies, not software companies, so
my experiences won't line up exactly. In each case, the rule has been strictly
pro-rata.

I've generally felt that the company has had the good end of that deal,
especially for the higher fractions (0.6/0.8 of full time): productivity seems
to me to be non-linear, and trading off the end-of-the-week burnout for a
little more payroll admin and management sounds great. Where the fraction is
much smaller, the increase in coordination costs probably means that it's more
finely balanced.

The other point I'd make is that less than pro-rata will _sound_ unfair to
your part-timers, whether the intentions and justification are good or not.
And defending that isn't a hill I'd die on: in skilled jobs staff goodwill is
a precious commodity not to be squandered.

There may also be legal issues: I suspect that lower rates for part-timers
would be unlawful indirect sex discrimination in the UK (the part-time
workforce being female to a much greater extent) but that may well not be true
where you are.

~~~
asdkfjasl
I mostly agree, although it's worth noting that there are probably some fixed
overheads of being employed that eat up some of the otherwise expected
benefits. Let's consider a scenario where there are 4h average fixed overhead
for working at a company. Now let's run the 0.6 time vs. 1.0 time scenarios.

1.0 time. 40h - 4h overhead = 36h. Pay = 1. Work-to-pay ratio is 36h:1p.

0.6 time. 24h - 4h overhead = 20h. Pay = 0.6. Work to pay ratio is 33h:1p.
You'd have to suppose that the 0.6 time worker is at least 1.1x as productive
per hour just to break even. If you provide benefits that don't scale with
fractional work you need even more of a productivity edge to justify it.

The corollary of this is that you'd really better make sure you have little
fixed overhead time for your workers if they are working fractional time.

~~~
pingyong
>You'd have to suppose that the 0.6 time worker is at least 1.1x as productive
per hour just to break even.

IMO that is easily achievable. Probably an underestimation. People who work
for 6 hours, 4 days a week are going to be vastly more concentrated and
rested. Physical labor might be different, but jobs that require mainly mental
effort/creativity will benefit a lot from being rested.

Wasn't there a company that tried 30 hour work weeks for everyone and
production stayed almost equal?

~~~
jerrre
Who says they will rest in the downtime?

------
nbrempel
You might also ask yourself if a person working half the time is half as
productive. There is evidence to support the idea that a person working a bit
less per week can actually maintain the same weekly output:
[https://4dayweek.com](https://4dayweek.com)

In any case, I run a job board and newsletter for companies and job candidates
who want flexible working hours:
[https://30hourjobs.com](https://30hourjobs.com)

Please feel free (as in free beer!) to post jobs on the job board! And if
you're interested in being featured in the newsletter as well please feel free
to email me at nick@30hourjobs.com.

~~~
ponyous
I am working 3days per week these days and I believe I produce equal amount as
I did in 4 days before. Note I worked 5 days before, but my effectiveness was
lower because I didn't want to burnout. With 3 days a week it's easy to give
your 100% and be chill next few days.

What I want to say is, that I am way more motivated and I think I am better
value for money than on 5 days work weeks.

------
matthewmacleod
I would advise you to just make it pro-rata. Don't fiddle around and worry
about the relative pocket-change of overheads. You will save yourself lots of
headaches, and my experience is that you will get more value out of two
employees working 20 hours a week than you will out of one employee working 40
hours. It all evens out in the end.

Aside: I really want to encourage you to do this. In my previous job, I went
to 40% time so I could spend 60% on my startup. This let me make enough money
to get by, while freeing up a huge amount of time. This was incredibly
valuable, and the experience of working part-time like that will be something
I will definitely consider in the future when personal circumstances (like
children) make it desirable, and I think I was contributing more than 40% of
my previous full-time value.

~~~
purrcat259
Hey, I have a few questions if you don't mind I am working 30 hour work week.
I recently switched jobs and I consider myself a strong candidate.

In nearly all of my interviews, as soon as I mentioned wishing to work 30
hours (because I want to have time to sharpen my skills in my other 10 hours,
which I always sold as a positive feedback loop which helps me be more
knowlegable at work), the HR admin/recruiter would go all deer in the
headlights, promise to check and get back to me and promptly ghost me.

Luckily I found a place where the CTO appreciated my reasoning. I am just
wondering whether my approach was incorrect or whether reduced hours is just
really unheard of where I am (southern EU)

~~~
warp
Why 30?, that just seems like a strange number.

Assuming 8 hour work days, 32 seems a more obvious choice. You get 1 day/week
off.

I've always started at 40, then negotiated down to 36, then to 32 at the same
salary whenever offered a raise. If you're having a hard time finding a job,
maybe tough it out for a year then negotiate for less hours when you've proven
yourself. Obviously helps to be working for smaller companies which tend to be
more flexible.

~~~
yitchelle
Actually, it seems very logical.

I would do 3 days at 10 hr per day, and 2 days on other stuff. Personally, I
would prefer full days slots rather than a few hours free per day

------
brianwawok
Remember the downside: Knowledge sharing and communication.

Think of a company going from 1 to 2 people. You go from the entire app in 1
persons head, to having to communicate and talk about decisions. There is a
reason solo founders can do some really good things.

Now imagine going from 5 to 10 people. The communication web of the two are
different. 4 possible communication points vs 9.

What about meetings and discussions? Are people working the same days? Does it
take 3 days to get your PR reviewed because X and Y are not in on Mondays or
Tuesdays?

All of this is not so say this is a bad idea. Maybe it's great. Just things to
think about. I think it can have some good upsides, but it can also lead to
some very negative things.

~~~
tsss
As the company gets bigger this becomes less of an issue because there is
communication overhead anyway. And don't forget the other side of the coin: As
you increase the number of employees you decrease the risk of a bad hire and
similarly the risk of knowledge gaps when an employee leaves. There are
already so many inefficiencies; Even if two people each working 20h are less
efficient than one person working 40h, this difference will be negligable.

~~~
cbanek
I respectfully disagree. While there is communication overhead, it really does
scale with the number of people you have to communicate with. If you have
twice the people working half the time, you still have twice the communication
cost.

Moreover, the communication overhead will eat up a much larger percentage of
working time, since the person is only working half time. But you can't just
communicate half as much. Any fixed overhead, such as status meetings, breaks,
etc will suffer from the same effect.

Then there's the concept of flow. It's hard to get into a high productive
state doing something like programming if you are working 4 hours a day, and 1
hour a day is overhead. Even if you get into that zone, you will benefit from
it for a short period of time. For me, it can easily take half an hour to get
my mind back to where I was on the previous day.

Ramping up and learning a codebase is also an overhead, and will take longer
in terms of days (since you aren't working as long), take communication time,
and then once you are an expert, you'll bring a smaller amount of time to bear
against the problem.

In terms of teams, having a larger team (2x as large, let's say) means that
you will get more good hires and more bad hires. But bad hires are far more of
a problem than good hires, especially if they spend all the time
communicating, asking questions, and making work for others. One bad hire can
ruin a team. One good hire really cannot make a bad team into a good team.

All of this assumes also that all the part time people are working at the same
time and able to communicate, which almost certainly won't be the case. Part
time workers will not always be able to communicate, and may have to wait a
while for an answer, further reducing productivity.

It's not only not negligible, but I worry it's not scalable.

------
dylandavidson
My company (Big4) has 2 versions of part-time.

If >=50% time, you get full benefits, and salary/bonus/stock is pro-rated at
whatever percentage you work. Due to the way the stock vests for part-time,
I've heard this ends up being ~10% more pay cut than time cut (80% time ==
~70% pay).

<50% you lose a lot of the core benefits (healthcare, 401k, etc.), but I doubt
anyone really does this except people who are basically retired.

But +1, big fan of companies that support part-time. I think most companies
view it as a benefit basically like parental leave, etc., so it's a way of
recruiting/retaining talent and are willing to eat some of the fixed cost.

------
throway2432
I think this is a good thing - in fact I'm sharing my specifics with you
because I think it could help out others.

I have 20 years professional experience. Systems admin -> DBA -> software
developer, with lots of overlap with each role change.

Job #1, 20 hours a week, no set schedule. $115k USD salary, no benefits.
Yearly bonus is 5-15%. Less than 50 employees.

Job #2 30 hours a week, set schedule, $122k USD salary, full benefits. Yearly
bonus is 2-6%. Less than 500 employees.

Both job titles are senior level software-related things.

~~~
yitchelle
That's a interesting combination, especially to the benefits. Is that because
you are only entitled to received benefits from only one salaried position?

------
Someone
As long as the UK is in the EU, the EU rules apply.
[https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-
resources/employ...](https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-
resources/employment-contracts/part-time-work/index_en.htm):

 _”Equal employment conditions

You must offer your part‑time staff the same employment conditions as full-
time workers, including pay, leave, notice periods and other rights and
benefits linked to their employment.

Modifying working arrangements

Whenever possible, you should try to accommodate requests from your employees
if they want to change their working schedules, such as:

\- transferring from full-time to part-time

\- transferring from part-time to full-time

\- increasing their working hours

You cannot dismiss an employee if they refuse to transfer from part-time to
full-time work or vice versa.”_

As they have lots of ‘fairly urgent’ matter at hand, I don’t see the UK change
this soon, but who knows?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
If the Tories get Brexit then this could be one of the first changes, Raab MP
- a cabinet member - is on record as saying he wants all workers rights
removed (I assume he's a proponent of completely free markets but I'm just
rationalising his position because it seems abjectly immoral to me and I
daren't consider what other forces might be directing the country).

------
dbergamin
If you are paying contractor rates, then that makes sense of course.

For a permanent hire I think it would be reasonable to ask more than half.
Even working 50% hours, one does not usually completely unplug during other
half - even if not active on corporate systems it's likely they're taking
problems away and thinking them over.

I think you may be surprised by the output you get - when I have worked with
part time technical staff in the past, it often seems to help grant a laser
focus of sorts.

~~~
stepbeek
This is a really good point. I don't think I'd given enough weight to this
offline processing before.

------
cpach
_”we 're wondering if cutting the salary in half is actually what we want to
do”_

Sounds like a good plan IMHO.

By the way, lots of kudos to you for allowing your employees to work part-
time! As a dad who stays at home half-time and works half-time, I think it’s
great with companies who recognise that this is a very good benefit to offer.

------
tptacek
It's an interesting problem. A thing you might keep in mind is that rate
scaling with billable time is situational; in some fields, part time might pay
lower, but in others, especially in specialized tech fields, "part time" work
actually pays (on a billable increment basis) _more_ than full-time work.

------
ghaff
As others have written, simply scaling based on hours (assuming part-time is
somewhere between 2-4 days per week) is pretty defensible and most people
would see it as fair.

Benefits are probably the hard thing. You're UK so health insurance is
presumably not as big a deal as it would be in the US--although employers do
offer supplementary private insurance. But a lot of benefits like disability
probably don't scale with salary. So you'd have to look at those numbers or
simply take some benefits for non-fulltime (or less than X%) employees off the
table.

------
steve_adams_86
I'd personally not apply if you were trying to offer less than half. I think
bean counting at that point is a little excessive, especially given how much
more productive your part time hours should be on average. In the past when
I've contracted and had more or less part time arrangements, I've always felt
far more capable, productive, and engaged. Definitely offer half of the
compensation.

------
motohagiography
Anecdotally, of the 4 days/week people I've worked with, there was never any
thought that adding a fifth marginal day to their week would yield
commensurate productivity returns. Value for money, the 4-day week constraint
keeps people busy enough to actually get things done fast.

I don't know what their difference in comp was, but my impression each time
was they had negotiated the 4-day week against the cost of a consultant. e.g.
As an employer, maybe you want to pay an employee $120k/y salary. To replace
that employee with a contractor will cost you $220k/year. The employees pitch
was, given what it would cost and what they can make consulting, they would
take the offered $120k salary for a 4-day/week role.

It's a question of value, not scaling to hours.

------
MuffinFlavored
Take your average $120k/yr job. That's based on a 40 hour work week, right?
260 working days in a year. Couple that with roughly 9 paid holidays, and
you're looking at around 250 working days a year at 8 hours a day. 2,000 hours
worked in a year at $120k/yr = $60/hr

20 days worth of PTO seems to be about the norm in the industry for when you
start a new job. I'm not sure how to factor that in here. If you subtract it
from days worked, it means the average person would only be working 1,840
hours a year, bringing the hourly wage up to about $65.

I'd multiply some number between $60-65 by the number of hours of productivity
you want a week. 24 hour part time job? Half the PTO then, still give
benefits. Should sell like hotcakes.

~~~
mxuribe
I was about to correct you that in the U.S., the starting PTO might be more
like 10 or 15 days...but then remembered that this is all in the UK. (Man, i
really dislike the U.S.' version of capitalism.)

Otherwise, great inputs on the costs you referenced; cheers!

~~~
MuffinFlavored
I also bundled in "sick" with "personal" and "vacation" because I've seen US
companies do away with all of the distinctions and just say "here's 20 days a
year, do what you want with them. You'll get more next year."

~~~
ghaff
Unfortunately that's pretty common. Old-line companies (including in tech)
often still have the sick-time/vacation distinction but my impression is that
it's relatively uncommon in newer companies. It has to _some_ degree been
replaced with "unlimited" vacation but that comes with its own set of issues.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
What issues does that come with, in your opinion?

~~~
yoz-y
Not parent but unlimited vacation policy is often criticised as a way to bully
people into taking even less vacation. Since you can’t know how much is “okay”
you end up in a guilt trip if you take more than some colleague.

~~~
ghaff
Hence my point that there needs to be clear top-down setting of expectations.
If you have company management that looks on "unlimited" vacation as a way to
avoid having to pay out accrued vacation if an employee leaves combined with a
way to grudgingly allow a day off here and there when it's convenient for the
company... That's going to be a very bad fit with an employee who sees it as
an opportunity to take a couple months off every year.

------
marmaduke
I recently dropped from full to half time (due to small kids). I dont think my
output has dropped by half though, especially since I come back to the office
well rested, instead of needing a half dozen cups of coffee before being able
to read code. Given that, I wouldn't accept being paid less than 50% for half
time work.

I would echo, though, other commenters that for the same hours two people
require communication that one wouldn't. On the other hand, that can encourage
good practices (docs, sane style, passing tests) instead of 10x syndrome.

I forgot to add: part time remote is my dream work arrangement so I would
definitely apply if it was sufficiently well paid, stable proposition (not a 6
month contractor towards full timer thing)

------
random42
Note: Please let me know if this is not suitable for this thread, and I'll
delete this.

If you are open to BE devs in GMT +0530, I am currently on a break to take
care of my aging/sick family, and looking for a parttime remote role.

Contact information on my profile page.

~~~
cpach
FYI: Your about page is empty, so no contact info is displayed. E-mail
addresses on HN are not public. If you want to display contact info, you need
to put it in the about field. (To see what it looks like to others, start
incognito mode in your browser and surf to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=random42](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=random42))

~~~
random42
Thanks, Done.

------
joeflesh
I think that part-time is very attractive to a lot of potential employees and
you are dipping into an under-utilized talent pool. As with any role, you just
have to find the right people. I had a 50% time engineer for a while who was
more productive than the full-timer whom he replaced. In another role I had a
full-timer who was measurably less productive than someone at 60% time.

Scale the salaries pro-rata. At around 60-70% time this works out very well
for employers as you have a very focused worker who appreciates the
flexibility.

------
antoinevg
Yeah, if you're not offering me 75% pay for 50% work I'm not interested. My
peak productivity is 3 days a week. The gains from working more than that are
marginal at best.

~~~
ghaff
Are you offline for the other two days? It may not affect you much but "You
can't schedule meetings with me or get answers to questions on Monday or
Friday" tends to have an impact on other people in most jobs.

Do you get 75% pay for 50% work? Based on no particular experience, it seems
that would be difficult to sell.

~~~
antoinevg
I've found that folk ask better questions if I reduce my availability.

I get paid considerably more than 75% for 50% _time_. [1] Mainly because I'm
in a position where I get paid by the value of my work rather than by the
amount of time I waste behind a computer monitor.

[1] My bad. I should have said time instead of work.

------
a-saleh
Talk to your accountant.

I would say, that for people wanting i.e. 3 day weekend, or 6 hour days,
agreeing on the 4/5 or 3/4 salary is reasonably simple (I even managed to use
this in my salary negotiation, where they offered me X$ for full time, and I
managed to negotiate 85% X for 4/5 part-time)

The extra day/two hours are not as big of a difference in productivity anyway
:)

I would say there is bigger difference in below 3/5 part-time, and in
companies I have been at, there is assumption that people with less than 3/5
part-times are sort-of on extended trainig? I.e. summer project -> internship
-> part-time -> full time progression was expected over ~2 years.

If you can, and your regulatory environment allows it, look for other means of
employment.

You could help your new highers become self-employed and then have just an
agreement for billable-hours, but you can easily break the regulations for
social security payments this way.

In my country we have 'agreement about commisioned work', that is somewhere in
the middle between being fully employed, and being self employed, but with
some aditional constraints on maximum billable-hours per month? I don't
remember, do consult your accountant responsible for payroll :-)

------
Spooky23
My employer does this in an unusual way that has some benefits.

Full time workers are able to reduce as low as 50%, but you basically buy
leave credits with the prorata salary reduction. So if it was ok from an
operational standpoint, you could work 85% and take the summer off. Or you
could flex days as appropriate.

Below 50% is a transition to part-time which has other complexities.

Personally, I’d look to make a part time professional in the US a contractor,
as the benefits of being a 1099 are probably better.

------
esotericn
Not a company, but I think direct scaling based on time is about as fair as
you can get.

An employee that works 4 days is likely to produce more than 80% of the output
of someone who works 5 days, all else being equal, so even though fixed costs
may not scale down, payment per "unit work" should remain constant.

This may not hold if you went down to, say, 1 day per week.

------
dwb
You're seriously considering paying part-time employees less per hour than
full-time employees? Am I really reading that right?

~~~
stepbeek
Sorry, I was a little ambiguous. We're not considering paying less per unit
time. This is fully illegal in the UK even if we did consider it.

What we _are_ considering is whether a part-time employee is significantly
more productive per unit time to such an extent that pro-rated pay would be
considered unfair.

~~~
planetburgess
Pro rata is considered fair. On the same way that overtime pay is considered
fair if you have to work extra hours.

------
sansnomme
If you could get this to work, pivot and build a recruitment/jobs startup.

------
wheelerwj
just pay hourly, it scales perfectly..

