Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why not hire part-time developers?

aklos.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 306 posts

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#91

Post by rendall »

nurettin wrote: post #86

> 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…

It sounds like you're talking about irresponsible and unreliable engineers, not part-time engineers.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#92

Post by dudul »

missizii wrote: post #14

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, cleani…

> Part time work for developers would also help women who don’t want to work full time when they have small children.

How about "parent" instead of "women"?

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#93

Post by ghaff »

vincentmarle wrote: post #17
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 t…

Totally. Circumstances differ of course. How efficient are you? What's the overall workload? To what degree can you work asynchronously?

But working remotely, the reality is that at least some people can get off without working a 9-5 day so long as they are at least somewhat available during the workday.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#94

Post by kradeelav »

mooreds wrote: post #44
hash872 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

How is this different than a full time employee who starts to slack off? Or is your point that part time employees are more likely to slack off because they are looking for other work/have other responsibilities that take precedence? Because I've definitely seen my share of fulltime employees who slacked pretty darn hard.

Not OP, but there's more tools managers have to guide slacking IC's back in line when they're full time. Loyalty to coworkers/"company culture", easier to discipline if it goes on the official performance review, more of an "official" paper trail available versus contractors and part time who may be hired even by a third party agency. Part time / contractors are sometimes, not always, but sometimes in general lower quality as far as work ethic goes.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#95

Post by scrapcode »

I have been looking for something like this recently in order to get a feel of what it is like to work as a developer on a team. I am knee deep in a stable yet unexciting career in software acquisition, but can’t help to wonder daily if I should pivot for more esteem and self-actualization reasons. I have been developing personal tools/apps/as a ‘hobby’ for most of my life, and also have an undergrad degree in CS with a focus on development, but we all know how these things can differ when it becomes a job. I could love it, I could hate it.

It would be great to have access to part-time work, or even non-traditional internship type roles for little money, to not only get an idea of if the industry-as-a-job is for me, but for me and some team to get a better idea of whether or not we’d work well together. I’m stuck in the middle of making enough in my current field to make taking on a junior dev role a large risk for my family, but don’t feel like I have the professional experience to be what anyone is looking for in periodic freelance work. I have even started responding to some recruiters trying to portray this, in case something comes up, but I don’t think that is much in their wheelhouse. I’m open to suggestions if anyone has come across something like this.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#96

Post by TrackerFF »

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…

I'll throw out a typical day for me, a data analyst:

0800 workday starts

0800-0830 daily standup

0830-0930 check and reply to emails

*0930-1100 ACTUAL WORK*

1100-1130 lunch

1130-1200 check and reply to emails

1200-1300 meeting with [some product] team over

1300-1315 coffee break with colleagues

*1315-1500 ACTUAL WORK*

1500-1600 Some meeting

1600 workday ends

As you can see, that gives me less than 4 hours of "real" work toward the product. Some days there's less meetings, other days there's much more. But in any case, I'd point out meetings as the main culprit. Lots and lots of emails, too. It's pretty much a never-ending stream.

But at least with modern meetings over Zoom/Teams/etc., you're more free to do some work in the background. Before COVID, we pretty much had 100% physical meetings. Or remote meetings in conference rooms.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#97

Post by makapuf »

the_gipsy wrote: post #81
kuboble wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I (a man) was 4/5 when my kids were small but I'm currently 9/10. Contractually it's yearly, but it ends up weekly. 9/10 tends to be difficult to distinguish from full time, since you get more focused after this mid week break.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#98

Post by ghaff »

rendall wrote: post #91
nurettin wrote: post #86

> 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…

It sounds like you're talking about irresponsible and unreliable engineers, not part-time engineers.

It depends on what "part-time" means. If part-time means I'll take Fridays off (which are often low meeting days anyway) and will (flexibly) not work 8 hours most days, it may be fine. If it means I'll take several one to two month-long vacations a year, that's something very different.

The manner in which you're working less absolutely matters.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#99

Post by PythagoRascal »

the_gipsy wrote: post #81
kuboble wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In Switzerland jobs are usually advertised in %, where 40h-45h/week is 100%. From that it is also usual to talk about 80% or 4/5days/week (and so on for other percentages).

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#100

Post by moffkalast »

scrapcode wrote: post #95

I have been looking for something like this recently in order to get a feel of what it is like to work as a developer on a team. I am knee deep in a stable yet unexciting career in software acquisition, but can’t help to wonder daily if I should pivot for more esteem and self-actualization reasons. I have been developing personal tools/apps/as a ‘hobby’ for most of my life, and also have an undergrad degree in CS wit…

The company I work at is basically all part-time devs, including myself. There are upsides and downsides with it however. I absolutely love the freedom it offers, since as long as projects have good progress you can work any time, anywhere, take any amount of days off or work any amount of hours you want without having to tell anyone anything.

On the other hand there's no paid time off or vacation bonus, your credit rating is non-existent and no bank will lend you anything, it doesn't count towards the pension period, you need to file taxes manually every month, etc. This is in Europe so as you might imagine most of the government systems in place are rigidly designed for the standard full time job which is rather infuriating in most aspects.

Post reply on HN