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What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

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Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#71

Post by adetrest »

bradleyjg wrote: post #69
adetrest wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could never understand why would someone accept these jobs. What's so great about becoming a manager and work 60h/week? How's that better than 40 a week as a subordinate and letting someone else worry about all the office drama?

Let's say things are humming along swimmingly in your career. You find yourself in a very decent position in a company that has a nice IC ladder. A decade later, you are an expert in the technologies that company uses, are paid well, and have good working conditions. But a recession comes, the company has a couple of bad years, and is taken over by a private equity firm. They decide you are too expensive and you're l…

> You have 15 years experience as an IC

I really hope that by the time I get there and get laid off in a recession or restructuring, I'll be retiring. I love software, but not enough to do it for longer than I have to and for someone else.

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#72

Post by gamblor956 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #39
toomuchtodo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest not working for employers who attempt to dictate how you use your PTO without a legal leg to stand on.

> without a legal leg to stand on What makes you think they have no legal leg to stand on to dictate when you take your holiday? My understanding is unless you have some contract saying otherwise, they can tell you to take your holiday whenever they want to, and you have no inherent right to take it whenever you want and for whatever length you want. That's not even just the US - even in countries with stronger emplo…

Following up: Vacation time isn't a required benefit (in the US), so as long as your employer doesn't prevent you from taking accrued vacation time without compensation before it expires, they can otherwise control when you take vacation. An employer that prevents an employee from using expiring PTO must either compensate them for it or they violate state and federal DOL rules regarding (contractually guaranteed) benefits. Generally the punishment is that the have to compensate the employee, any legal counsel, and pay a rather hefty fine to the appropriate DOL, so it's never worth it to prevent an employee from using expiring PTO. (And if the employee is so valuable that the employer can't afford for them to take PTO, that should have been negotiated into the contract.)

However, if the employee "chooses" not to use up all their accrued vacation time before it expires, generally compensation is not required...

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#73

Post by bradleyjg »

adetrest wrote: post #71
bradleyjg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say things are humming along swimmingly in your career. You find yourself in a very decent position in a company that has a nice IC ladder. A decade later, you are an expert in the technologies that company uses, are paid well, and have good working conditions. But a recession comes, the company has a couple of bad years, and is taken over by a private equity firm. They decide you are too expensive and you're l…

> You have 15 years experience as an IC I really hope that by the time I get there and get laid off in a recession or restructuring, I'll be retiring. I love software, but not enough to do it for longer than I have to and for someone else.

If extreme early retirement appeals to you, that's great. But given that this discussion started with "I could never understand ..." you can see that EER isn't for everyone, right?

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#74

Post by guitarbill »

ggurgone wrote: post #56
guitarbill wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "the reason why they want you full time" is usually because they can (very few people push back) and/or they are in roles where more time put in equals more work done. For example, as a manager doing 1:1 is still tiring, but if you aren't paying 100% attention, that doesn't cost money unlike bugs in code. Almost nobody can do more than 3 hours of heavy concentration/flow work regularly. Add another two or thr…

> they are in roles where more time put in equals more work done This is partially true if: 1) you only hire young folks 2) you don't care about long term health of your team Based on this philosophy I could work 90h/week and get even more done i.e. there is always work to be done but IMHO this way of working is unhealthy and not sustainable. Personally for me it takes more time than the average to recharge so having…

I'm saying managers or clients aren't always technical, and for some of these non-technical roles, time is correlated to amount of work done, so they assume technical work is also like that.

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#75

Post by useful »

adetrest wrote: post #40
YayamiOmate wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what i notced with my friend in the managerial position. He can spend most of the time in Work From Home mode, has really good pay grade, and can't rest. He's looks like he's on a wrist band leash getting mails every 2-3 minutes and needs to somehow react on 10%. He doesnt do much other than be available 12-16h 6-7days a week. It's taking more toll than one would expect.

I could never understand why would someone accept these jobs. What's so great about becoming a manager and work 60h/week? How's that better than 40 a week as a subordinate and letting someone else worry about all the office drama?

For me it was protecting my people from bullshit drama. Making it so everyone could be effective and fulfilled in their job is a real thing. Most mid and junior level employees think it's bullshit, I did when I was young, but so much happens because people don't know what they want or someone doesn't have budget that is solved by asking people to work late, be on call, or work on weekends because no one said no.

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#76

Post by duckworthd »

My $0.02.

I've been working a 4 day/week schedule for 1.5 years now. Initially, I took the time off to lead a nonprofit volunteering project but quickly got burned out (4 days work, 1.5~2 days nonprofit work = 5.5~6 days/week). I've since reallocated the extra day to hobbies and am quite happy with the setup. As I've explicitly taken an independent contributor role at work, I feel no need to be 100% available, and my colleagues respect that.

Overall, I'm very happy with my current schedule and will fight tooth and nail to keep it. If you can afford it and have the drive to do something with your extra free time, I highly recommend it.

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#77

Post by teekert »

seanalltogether wrote: post #14

I've often felt that a 5 day work week is about availability , not raw productivity. I could easily compress all of my weeks work into 30 hours or less, but that's not what my managers and clients value. What they value is the fact that I'm making progress on my tasks, and that my reachability is not preventing anyone else (people above me or below me) from making progress on their tasks

Wow, you really put in words what I have unconsciously felt for a long time. This is very true in my job as well. Btw, 32 hours is almost the norm in my country but you have the same issues ;)

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#78

Post by sokoloff »

adetrest wrote: post #67
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing it is something to do with money in most cases.

1.5x the pay for double the hours isn't a trade-up though.

If you're paid 100 units [after-tax] and your expenses are 80 units, you're left with a (higher than average) savings rate of 20% or 20 units of currency.

If you double your hours, raise your pay to 150 units and inflate your lifestyle by 25% (from 80 units to 100 units), you are now making 150, spending 100 (with more luxury), and saving 50 units (250% of what you were saving before).

That might be considered a trade-up (and is more or less the path I chose).

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#79

Post by sixstringtheory »

zuminator wrote: post #53
chrisseaton wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some employers ask you to take holiday in longer blocks because they want people to be able to properly relax and recharge and they think you can't do that in just blocks of one day. (Not saying I agree, but that's what they say.)

There's also the theory that if you are doing something illegal, improper, or incompetent, having your assignment covered by another individual for a bloc of time increases the likelihood of revealing any problematic issues.

That sounds like a grotesque lack of trust and set of priorities. If I ever found out an employer used my absence in such ways, I’d immediately start looking for new work.

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#80

Post by nraynaud »

ggurgone wrote: post #33
seanalltogether wrote: post #14

I've often felt that a 5 day work week is about availability , not raw productivity. I could easily compress all of my weeks work into 30 hours or less, but that's not what my managers and clients value. What they value is the fact that I'm making progress on my tasks, and that my reachability is not preventing anyone else (people above me or below me) from making progress on their tasks

This is a valid point, managers and clients value availability and that's mainly the reason why they want you full time. In fact IMHO many prefer availability to productivity. Being available 40-50h a week is rather tiring though and it can affect productivity. For example I found that I perform better on a 32h/week. The availability problem can be solved by having the team cover the full week (different shifts with…

that's an interesting twist of thing. What about making it explicit, like: "I can answer the company chat quickly, but I'm painting a mountain with my friend Bob right now".

I guess it can only go so far because some social time with family and friends have to be focused.

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