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Why not hire part-time developers?

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Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#81

Post by the_gipsy »

kuboble wrote: post #76
aerosmile wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of things in this world that are not rooted in rational/pragmatic concerns. For example, in the automotive industry, a lot of the margin comes from upper-end variants of any given model, which are perhaps 10% more capable as the base model but cost disproportionally more and are a lot more desirable. Why do people go for that? Emotional reasons. Are the $2,000 vintage Nikes worth that much, especially…

In Switzerland it is extremely popular to work part-time in IT. To the point that most men I know have reduced to 4/5 when they became parents and most women to 3/5. The deal in companies is that it's relatively easy to reduce your work % but it's a one way street. To get back your manager needs to find a budget the same way as if they were hiring (but I don't know anyone who did want to increase it back). Seems to w…

Are these figures x/5 weekdays, a range of daily hours, or something else?

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#82

Post by Tyr42 »

buro9 wrote: post #45

Two big reasons off the top of my head: 1. Two people working a 20h week does not mean the same costs as a single person working a 40h week (think payroll, software licensing, pension admin, healthcare, etc). So costs rise as a result. 2. A job generally has a base load of admin and toil (communication, on-call, interviewing, PR reviews, etc) and you can't reduce or distribute the base load well enough to yield produ…

I'd also imagine you just have more communication overhead with more people. E.x. standups will take longer if you have twice as many people working half as much. And communication costs might even scale O(n^2) of people, not hours worked.

I think that makes part time workers unattractive.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#83

Post by wadefletch »

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…

When you say you made yourself available, what does that mean in practice? Targeted network outreach? A LinkedIn post?

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#84

Post by dvtrn »

kube-system wrote: post #46
dvtrn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long suspected this. Question for anyone who wants to take a stab at it: how, as someone wanting an 'in' to the consulting world, to best find and separate companies that are actual consulting firms and not just burn-and-churn MSP shops that carefully and sometimes convincingly disguise themself as such?

In my opinion, I would ask three things: 1. Ask about the makeup of a typical team. The more layers of bloat and regurgitation between the customer and the developer, the more likelihood that the people doing the actual work need a high degree of hand-holding. 2. Ask about their overall approach to customer success, and specifically, what they do before they start development. Good quality consulting firms will have…

Excellent feedback, thank you!

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#85

Post by anothernewdude »

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…

My work would have to have much more interesting problems for this to be the case.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#86

Post by nurettin »

> Why not hire part-time developers?

Because they don't show up when your teams need the most interaction. If you have the luxury of giving a developer a six month job which requires absolutely no interaction, great. Go ahead. But your part-timer won't show up at various critical times. Unless they are absolutely dedicated, they will miss weeklies and disappear especially when they release to prod and the bugs start getting reported. And you have no way of penalizing it.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#88

Post by ghaff »

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…

I do think a lot of it is "tradition" for lack of a better word. That aside--and knowing some part-time contractors (not in technical roles)--a few things.

1.) A significant percentage of cost per employee to a company is benefits. So work half-time and the breakeven to the company is probably something like 1/3 pay if you get full-time benefits.

2.) The above doesn't even count that there are a lot of other overheads (management, coordination/meetings/collaboration) to having more people doing the same work.

3.) It depends what part-time means. Many of us might be OK with 4-day workweeks or shorter days--though to some degree those may be possible in practice today with the appropriate workload and degree of synchronicity. However, if your preference is to take month+ blocks of time off on a regular basis, that's much more difficult to accommodate. (And, if you unplug during those times you lose a lot of context. Earlier in my career, I did take month long vacations now and then but it's hard to norm as a regular thing for lots of good practical reasons.)

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#89

Post by bonniemuffin »

x0x0 wrote: post #50
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…

If you think your job as an engineer is to write code, then sure -- part time makes sense. If you think your job as an engineer is to build a solution as a team, then one person hopping in and out of availability creates a hassle for an entire team. Can't have project meetings on Mon / Fri because X is never there. If a project with involvement by a part timer isn't done by eod Thursday, a fulltime person has 2 dead…

I agree that someone working fewer days per week might be hard to fit into a full-time team culture, but someone working fewer hours per day ought to be pretty easy. For the "fewer hours per day" case, it's just like working across different time zones, which many companies are already well-acclimated to doing -- e.g. you need to schedule all your meetings with this person in the morning because their 5pm is at our 11am.
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