Ask HN: I don't want higher salary, I need more freetime

Took a 30% pay cut to do software for less demanding but more rewarding company.

You work remote or in office on this less demanding company?

If freedom is your actual target, you might see that differently.

Many of my own life choices have been to minimize monthly costs in order to invest time and money to build more freedom for myself (i.e. own things that make money). I never had savings back then, but I had just enough for my 'simple' life. Instead of saving money I invested time.

It sure depends where you are. But I am sure most young people in tech , before family, before children, could easily afford working a day less when they optimize something else.

* Increase your value. In my case I have decades in senior management in a part time job managing up to 30 people. There were many times the stress of the part time job absolutely dwarfed that of the full time job. These experiences supremely advanced my communication skills, public speaking, and administrative capabilities generations beyond that of my developer peers. This means my employer knows I am capable in ways others are not and will provide me wide latitude of free time in case something critical comes in.

* Increase your skills. I spend a lot of time writing ambitious personal software. I have learned to measure things and challenge common assumptions from that personal software. Time and effort are different on personal projects because you aren’t getting paid, so you learn to minimize tech debt and time waste to maximize for learning and experimentation. At the day job you just do the tasks assigned how they want you to do them. I always try to hide my personal resourcefulness and criticality and just fit in, but given enough time employers will always see that you struggle less and are severely under utilized.

* Be extremely gifted at written communication and detail orientation. Nothing increases your free time like pushing back on incomplete ideas and assumption elimination.

The bottom line is that if you want to spend 7 hours of your work day watching television or playing games then you need to get all your work done in less time, ensure clarity around your assignments, and ensure management values you enough to provide you increased flexibility.

Part time work is possible.

I initially dropped to 4 days/week in lieu of a payrise (comp remained the same). Did that for a while and since then I've been working 2-4 days/week (3 right now)

It helped that it was a small company and I had been working there for 5+ years, not sure how I'd go about finding a part time software job otherwise. Everything is negotiable though.