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Why not hire part-time developers?

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Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#161

Post by scarecrowbob »

Ive been doing 6-ish hours/day 5ish days/week for the last 6 years.

That's really what's kept me at my job.

Sometimes it gets really wonky, especially when there is a crunch time. Or, lately I've been cleaning up AWS accounts for other companies and handed unreliable AWS instances that page me at bad hours.

I have to be pretty aggressive about counting how much I am working and not working more than what I've agreed to work.

But to be honest, I'm quite a bit more productive than some folks at the business (my boss is ostensibly selling my labor for ~$170/hr, at least). I'm pretty sure if my boss wanted to raise my pay by 30% to bring me up to 40h, I wouldn't be 30% more productive.

I'm occasionally not stoked on things like how much vacation time I get or my pay in general (it's low for my position, but high is you account for the reduced hours).

But on the whole, I do so much other crap in my life that I really don;t wanna sell another 10h of my time a week. And holy hell I never want to work in an office that doesn't have a mixing console and a bunch of vintage mics.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#162

Post by datavirtue »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #145
yibg wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve tried part time developers, but so far haven’t been able to do it successfully. The problem usually comes down to 2 things: 1) there is a constant amount of overhead that is always needed regardless of how long you work for in a week. Meetings and collaboration to figure out what to build, discuss issues etc. if these take up 10 hours a week a full time dev has 30 hours to do other things where as a half time d…

Curious how part-time those part-time developers have been, as well as what schedule/how much work the person you are replying to was looking for. I have successfully gotten 80% four-day-week at a string of engagements... but I work in the non-profit academic sector, and get paid quite a bit less than that $200K+ salary. I think a four-day-week, or even a three-day-week, makes a lot more sense than tha 4-hours-a-day…

The meeting is part of the work. Code flies from my fingertips instantly. Figuring what to code is the painfully time consuming part. Developers barely code in the enterprise.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#163

Post by [deleted] »

ozim wrote: post #124
yibg wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve tried part time developers, but so far haven’t been able to do it successfully. The problem usually comes down to 2 things: 1) there is a constant amount of overhead that is always needed regardless of how long you work for in a week. Meetings and collaboration to figure out what to build, discuss issues etc. if these take up 10 hours a week a full time dev has 30 hours to do other things where as a half time d…

Yeah that 2nd point is that quite often people need "full time salary" so it is not that management somehow has backwards thinking. I have a friend that can really work 4 hours a day, but he is a special case where he does not have a family to upkeep and no mortgage. He is also a bit hard on the frugality. But finding such person is basically 1 in a million. If I post a job with 4h a day which amounts to 1/2 of a nor…

[deleted]

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#164

Post by scarecrowbob »

urthor wrote: post #160

I don't see how part-time developers will ever work. As a developer we are not paid for the time in a chair. We're paid to have the "code base, and all the business context" in our brain. Then solve problems. If you're a part time developer, what you're not doing is devoting less time to output . What you're doing is devoting less time to meetings and knowing the codebase . Aka input. And everyone knows, the better y…

Serious question for you: why stop at 40 hours a week?

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#165

Post by lupire »

Tyr42 wrote: post #82
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.

Easy solution is to not have standups, which are wholly unnecessary.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#166

Post by jrochkind1 »

datavirtue wrote: post #162
jrochkind1 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious how part-time those part-time developers have been, as well as what schedule/how much work the person you are replying to was looking for. I have successfully gotten 80% four-day-week at a string of engagements... but I work in the non-profit academic sector, and get paid quite a bit less than that $200K+ salary. I think a four-day-week, or even a three-day-week, makes a lot more sense than tha 4-hours-a-day…

The meeting is part of the work. Code flies from my fingertips instantly. Figuring what to code is the painfully time consuming part. Developers barely code in the enterprise.

Of course the meeting is part of the work, I hope I didn't suggest otherwise!

I can only speak from my experience working 80% time in several different jobs, in nonprofit/academic environments. As above.

(I enjoy writing code, if writing code was "barely" part of the work I wouldn't still be here. It seems like it would be impossible to get anyone who was good at writing code in a development/engineering job where coding was barely part of the work! But I'm not sure what this has to do with the feasibility of less than full time work as an engineer/developer).

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#167

Post by yibg »

cloogshicer wrote: post #144
yibg wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve tried part time developers, but so far haven’t been able to do it successfully. The problem usually comes down to 2 things: 1) there is a constant amount of overhead that is always needed regardless of how long you work for in a week. Meetings and collaboration to figure out what to build, discuss issues etc. if these take up 10 hours a week a full time dev has 30 hours to do other things where as a half time d…

> Meetings and collaboration to figure out what to build, discuss issues etc. if these take up 10 hours a week [...] There's your problem.

Why is this a problem? You can replace meeting time with time reading specs / requirement if you’d like. Point is you need some constant amount of time to understand the problem domain. If 2 people need to do that then that’s twice the time needed.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#168

Post by datavirtue »

TrackerFF wrote: post #96
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" w…

Where do work where all these people are sending emails? I haven't communicated via email for at least five years. I used to and then gave up because everyone else stopped. It's all in slack or meetings now.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#169

Post by hn_go_brrrrr »

wpietri wrote: post #150
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 a developer, I agree there's a cultural issue, but think there are pragmatic issues. I have done both part-time consulting and part-time contract development. Pure consulting (when one's output is advice) is doable part time, because you're not a blocker and generally don't have to keep up with the day to day. But I would only do part-time contract development under pretty specific circumstances: 1) I'm the only d…

Even your pragmatic issues have a strong cultural component. There are quite a few important projects that on my team that we could afford to have take 20% longer. It's more important they have a good result than they arrive as soon as possible. We also have some projects we need done ASAP, which would naturally fall to a full-timer.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#170

Post by [deleted] »

ozim wrote: post #124
yibg wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve tried part time developers, but so far haven’t been able to do it successfully. The problem usually comes down to 2 things: 1) there is a constant amount of overhead that is always needed regardless of how long you work for in a week. Meetings and collaboration to figure out what to build, discuss issues etc. if these take up 10 hours a week a full time dev has 30 hours to do other things where as a half time d…

Yeah that 2nd point is that quite often people need "full time salary" so it is not that management somehow has backwards thinking. I have a friend that can really work 4 hours a day, but he is a special case where he does not have a family to upkeep and no mortgage. He is also a bit hard on the frugality. But finding such person is basically 1 in a million. If I post a job with 4h a day which amounts to 1/2 of a nor…

[deleted]
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