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Why not hire part-time developers?

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Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#11

Post by tomrod »

qrohlf wrote: post #10

I experienced this in the extreme recently. I'm a very experienced dev in a very in-demand field. Money is not a huge priority for me in my career. Flexibility is. I have a proven track record of success in part-time roles after converting to part time at my previous company (after 2 years of full-time, of course). I spent 3+ months trying to get part-time engagements, and was willing to consider both consulting and…

Taking it to first principles, I don't see part time as feasible until documentation has negligible marginal cost. It takes time to get people up to speed.

Another blocker is the inane requirement in employment agreements by many large corps in the US that they own your IP while you work for them, regardless how it was developed or what the topic is (one place I worked at owned children's books if you published them, despite being a software developer). Until that is unacceptable, either legally or culturally, working part-time presents a conflict of interest. Rather than valuing the breadth a part-timer might bring, it's viewed as a liability.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#13

Post by drewcoo »

issa wrote: post #2

I think your basic premise might not be correct. If you only are getting 4 productive hours of work done per day, then something is wrong. I would say you probably only get 4 productive hours of WRITING CODE (maybe much less), but during that long lunch break, or bike ride, or whatever, you are probably thinking about the problem (consciously or not). If you work part time on two different projects, you simply won't…

That may be true, but if companies don't pay me for passive "work" I do for them during that downtime, then why worry about its effectiveness?

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#14

Post by missizii »

Part time work for developers would also help women who don’t want to work full time when they have small children. If I had a part time option when my children were small, I would have embraced it. My career was thriving, but there was no “step back” option for me. If you want more women in tech, recognize that the first shift of daycare & school prep, the second shift of work, and the third shift of cooking, cleaning, and caring, is exhausting and unpleasant, even when both parents try to share the burden.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#15

Post by hash872 »

qrohlf wrote: post #10

I experienced this in the extreme recently. I'm a very experienced dev in a very in-demand field. Money is not a huge priority for me in my career. Flexibility is. I have a proven track record of success in part-time roles after converting to part time at my previous company (after 2 years of full-time, of course). I spent 3+ months trying to get part-time engagements, and was willing to consider both consulting and…

As someone who's hired part-time developers off and on for years.... the issue is that they typically start out working the agreed-upon number of hours, then begin to work less & less over time. There's no feasible way to make someone work more hours remotely, and they're usually sharp enough to get partway into a project before flaking out so that it's difficult to just replace them- you'd have to hire an entirely new developer to understand what they've done to date. From the developers' point of view I think they're just constantly looking for new work, better-paying work, or at least lining up a project for the future- then they get overloaded and choose to flake out on the client.

In theory hiring freelancers part-time should be a great solution for everyone involved, in practice the issue is flakiness

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#16

Post by Minor49er »

prohobo wrote: post #8
rr808 wrote: post #5

Working as a developer means you have to write docs, investigate designs, talk to users, interview people, go to meetings, do support, do corporate BS, training. Sure a few people can skip this stuff but usually its the most junior grades who can concentrate code only.

What the hell is investigating a design? Also, no company I've worked for ever bothered with proper documentation, and I've never seen anyone lower than tech lead ever do any of those kinds of things more than once or twice a month (besides meetings). I'll concede these kinds of responsibilities might be more common in larger companies or different fields, but I'm thinking more about smaller startups.

I think by "investigating a design" he means looking at how a component or system is structured to understand how it works. This is pretty common as a lot of developers will get called to work on a piece of infrastructure that they aren't familiar with. They have to understand what they're working on so they apply an effective change

Also, documentation is huge. I've worked with a lot of small companies and startups that have adopted it to share knowledge and to ease troubleshooting/onboarding. If you aren't doing it at work, consider it. There are a lot of approaches to it, such as self-documenting code, writing knowledgebase articles, recording demo videos, leaving contextual details in PRs, and even simply linking these pieces together so they're easy to find

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#17

Post by vincentmarle »

qrohlf wrote: post #10

I experienced this in the extreme recently. I'm a very experienced dev in a very in-demand field. Money is not a huge priority for me in my career. Flexibility is. I have a proven track record of success in part-time roles after converting to part time at my previous company (after 2 years of full-time, of course). I spent 3+ months trying to get part-time engagements, and was willing to consider both consulting and…

> Contrast that with when I gave up and decided to make myself available for full-time (remote) work. In the span of about 5 weeks, I got over 200 recruiter emails, interviewed at 10 companies, and received 10 offers, mostly in the upper end of the $200k-400k range.

The secret is to take a full time job and then only work 20-30 hours a week. Pre-pandemic I was only really productive 4 hours a day anyways, but I had to sit in an office the entire day. With remote work, it’s much easier to do “full-time” work.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#19

Post by prohobo »

brailsafe wrote: post #6
prohobo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really feel the difference between planning/coding. It's all the same to me in terms of problem solving. Also, I already do this as a consultant, and clients are usually mostly focused on speed and quality. So I give them 4 hours a day, I take a couple hours off then I plug away at my own projects for a few more hours. The context switch plus the long break makes it work for me, but everyone is different. Dep…

What amount of time are you billing for, and how do you track it?

I bill for every hour I spend actively engaging with the work. Usually I max out at about 4 hours, but sometimes go to 8 hours when there are other roles involved (graphics design, devops, meetings, etc.)

Tracking depends on the client and project, but usually I input my work on HourStack.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#20

Post by AQuantized »

qrohlf wrote: post #10

I experienced this in the extreme recently. I'm a very experienced dev in a very in-demand field. Money is not a huge priority for me in my career. Flexibility is. I have a proven track record of success in part-time roles after converting to part time at my previous company (after 2 years of full-time, of course). I spent 3+ months trying to get part-time engagements, and was willing to consider both consulting and…

The way many people I've known seem to achieve flexibility is to accept a role somewhere relatively laid back, typically at a large but non-tech corporation. If they're coming from a much more intense environment and working remotely, it often requires only a couple of hours work a day to over perform, if that.

It seems like it's almost impossible to get a role that's explicitly part time (as you've experienced) but plenty of companies are willing to offer lower salaries while turning a blind eye to enforcing the supposedly 40 hour work week.

The other ways seem to involve some combination of working for yourself, consulting, and short periods of full time employment interspersed with not formally working.

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