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Ask HN: How do you scale salary for part-time work?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you scale salary for part-time work?

#21

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: How do you scale salary for part-time work?

#22

Post by pmyteh »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #15
pmyteh wrote: post #7

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 an…

It is a sex discrimination if you offer different conditions based on sex, not on hours worked. If part time workers have the same offer no matter the sex, then it is quite bizarre to build a sex discrimination case.

In Britain, it's definitely something you need to watch out for.

> indirect discrimination - putting rules or arrangements in place that apply to everyone, but that put someone with a protected characteristic at an unfair disadvantage

(from https://www.gov.uk/discrimination-your-rights/how-you-can-be...).

There have definitely been cases around aspects of part-time working which have been held to be indirect discrimination because men are (were?) overwhelmingly full-time and women not.

It is also possible to make a justification defence for indirect discrimination, though I don't know 'how good' your justification would need to be.

Re: Ask HN: How do you scale salary for part-time work?

#23

Post by random42 »

cpach wrote: post #17
random42 wrote: post #11

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.

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 )

Thanks, Done.

Re: Ask HN: How do you scale salary for part-time work?

#25

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: How do you scale salary for part-time work?

#26

Post by purrcat259 »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #16

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…

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)

Re: Ask HN: How do you scale salary for part-time work?

#27

Post by mxuribe »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #13

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…

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!

Re: Ask HN: How do you scale salary for part-time work?

#28

Post by Someone »

As long as the UK is in the EU, the EU rules apply. https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-resources/employ...:

”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?

Re: Ask HN: How do you scale salary for part-time work?

#29

Post by XaspR8d »

brianwawok wrote: post #25

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 discu…

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

Or if you measure communication needs by number of conversational pairs, it goes from 10 to 45!

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