No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees • Hacker News Board

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#101

Post by rwmurrayVT » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #92

jedberg wrote: post #61

In regards to the health insurance thing, there is a good middle option. I'm not affiliated but I use Savvy ( https://www.gosavvy.com/ ). They take advantage of a law that just started in 2020 that lets a company owner offer tax free insurance payments without having a health plan. Basically you set a budget, and then the employee chooses any health plan they want from any provider and pays with tax free money. If th…

If you are self employed and itemize your deductions (like everyone working for this company I assume), your health insurance premiums are already tax free. Don't need an external service for that.

This is for employees at companies that do not offer health insurance.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#102

Post by alfiedotwtf » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #83

philmcp wrote: post #44

In years to come we will look down on the 5 day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. It absolutely blows my mind that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model? I'd be more than happy to work a job for 80% salary for 4 days per week... So much so, I'm about to launch a website lis…

Some of it is a quirk of the American health care system. Your health care costs the same regardless of your work hours, and it's a significant fraction of compensation. If you were working 80% as much, they would probably only be able to pay 70% of your salary. (Assuming you were linearly productive, which it's not, but it's the same assumption you were making and is good enough for this illustration.) There are oth…

> Some of it is a quirk of the American health care system.

Probably more to do with Britain’s Factory Act of 1833 and follow up Act of 1844.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#103

Post by bing_dai » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

jacobsenscott wrote: post #85

dkdk8283 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 hrs a week @ 500 is 520k/y. you only need one client.

minus vacation, taxes, health insurance, overhead (time tracking, billing, book keeping, etc), time between gigs. 20 500 52 you are coming in way high. You can cut that in half and get a reasonable estimate for take home.

There are people who are perfectly happy with about $250K of take-home pay a year if that means they have plenty of freedom to do other things. In fact, I bet many people in the US will be happy with $30K a year, not $250K.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#104

Post by lscotte » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #37

dkdk8283 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love something like this: I loathe the bullshit factory process has become.

Process is one of those things you have whether you think about it or not. It's up to you collectively to decide if it is BS or not, too heavy, too light, etc. I'm not suggesting everyone has the influence to change process much at the place they work, but they idea that there is a single "thing" called process and some places have it and some don't is just dangerously misleading. It is true that process tends to nat…

Indeed, I agree with all this.

The trick is finding a balance, as a friend once told me the sweet spot is "as little process as possible, as much process as necessary".

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#105

Post by paxys » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

rwmurrayVT wrote: post #101

paxys wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are self employed and itemize your deductions (like everyone working for this company I assume), your health insurance premiums are already tax free. Don't need an external service for that.

This is for employees at companies that do not offer health insurance.

So is what I am talking about. If you are a contractor, your health insure premiums are a business expense and can be deducted from your taxable income, even if you are paying for them out of pocket.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#106

Post by wnoise » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

lr4444lr wrote: post #55

No deadlines? For how long does someone have to not "produce something that's better than what's on production" for you to decide he's not fit to keep getting a paycheck?

Deadlines are usually tied to specific things. "Being productive" only requires getting one of any number of things on a task list done.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#107

Post by exoque » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

philmcp wrote: post #44

In years to come we will look down on the 5 day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. It absolutely blows my mind that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model? I'd be more than happy to work a job for 80% salary for 4 days per week... So much so, I'm about to launch a website lis…

I worked 80% for one and a half years on a decent salary. In the end I decided it wasn't worth the cost.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#108

Post by tomnipotent » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

tartoran wrote: post #42

ska wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Process is one of those things you have whether you think about it or not. It's up to you collectively to decide if it is BS or not, too heavy, too light, etc. I'm not suggesting everyone has the influence to change process much at the place they work, but they idea that there is a single "thing" called process and some places have it and some don't is just dangerously misleading. It is true that process tends to nat…

It really depends how that process is adopted. If it's organically in-house grown and it does makes sense then it becomes a synergic glue. If it's imposed top down from the outside because "that company does it, lets follow suit" then it can become a pain and cause more harm than good. I liken that to goo.

> "that company does it, lets follow suit"

This is always a red flag I'm dealing with someone inexperienced, or desperate. Processes can be very unique to each company, especially the problems that they're facing, and trying to shoehorn someone else's process into your own business without understanding the problems that process is solving is a recipe for failure.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#109

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

martincmartin wrote: post #25

an open source project like Rails. Except it’s neither open source, nor unpaid. Do people still think of big, successful open source projects as unpaid? Rails, for example, was created at Basecamp/37Signals. Most Linux contributions come from companies like IBM. Or am I the one who's out of touch?

It depends on the project. Some projects (can't think of examples off the top of my head, sorry, but they have come up here on HN) do reach pretty widespread usage without anyone being paid to work on them full time, and potentially with only one unpaid developer on the project.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#110

Post by thebean11 » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #83

philmcp wrote: post #44

In years to come we will look down on the 5 day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. It absolutely blows my mind that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model? I'd be more than happy to work a job for 80% salary for 4 days per week... So much so, I'm about to launch a website lis…

Some of it is a quirk of the American health care system. Your health care costs the same regardless of your work hours, and it's a significant fraction of compensation. If you were working 80% as much, they would probably only be able to pay 70% of your salary. (Assuming you were linearly productive, which it's not, but it's the same assumption you were making and is good enough for this illustration.) There are oth…

> There are other fixed overheads, like your manager, human resources

Are these fixed costs, or would these employees also be working 80% as much? I think only the healthcare / office space for these people are fixed costs, but that would be factored in calculating their new salary.