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Why not hire part-time developers?

aklos.substack.com

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Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#201

Post by rtlfe »

tikhonj wrote: post #199
rtlfe wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the alternative? Have some PM+EM write a perfectly detailed spec for you to implement? That sounds like hell. I can't imagine spending all my time building something that I had no input on designing.

I mean, that's one direction. But we could also give the part-time engineer more autonomy so that they can quickly make decisions on their own. They'll still need to spend time talking to people, but they can figure out an effective way to do that based on context—which might start out with them spending more time during the week just talking to people, but will fall off quickly once they build an understanding of th…

The comment that started this whole thing said "Meetings and collaboration to figure out what to build, discuss issues etc". I think that covers both categories of good and bad types of collaboration you describe here.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#202

Post by [deleted] »

yibg wrote: post #167
cloogshicer wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#203

Post by yibg »

ryanSrich wrote: post #182
yibg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are you building that requires an individual dev to read hours and hours of spec? I’d like to think my company builds some pretty cool shit, and even then, I can explain an issue in less than 2 paragraphs. If you need developers to spend so much time ideating and figuring out how and what to build, you’re mismanaging those developers imo.

The time require by devs for non coding work is inversely proportional to how relatable the domain is and how specific the problem is. Tell me to build a clone of twitter and I can make a lot of autonomous decisions. Tell me to be an ERP and I'll be spending most of my time not coding. Most of software development are in domains that most people don't intuitively understand.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#204

Post by yibg »

Aeolun wrote: post #175
yibg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having a meeting involves more than 1 person spending time. Reading a spec involved only one person investing time (only those that need to know it anyway). Doing it in a meeting where everyone has different questions, tangents and other cruft that you have to sit through is extremely inefficient.

Yes but if you have 2 part time devs, that requires 2 people spending time. The discussion here isn't meetings vs doc, it's full time vs part time.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#205

Post by yibg »

keerthiko wrote: post #197
yibg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We run a 5-person dev team (1 designer, 2 technical founders, 1 dev full-time, +1 part-time dev) with 30 minutes of sync-time per week for non-founders. Our part-time dev can perfectly run with those specs thanks to our encouragement of daily documentation and written specs rather than waiting for a big meeting to ask and be asked questions.

Heavily depends on the nature of the work in question and size of team. Larger the team, and more foreign the domain the more time is needed to coordinate work.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#206

Post by yibg »

Aeolun wrote: post #180
yibg wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other problem is with overhead 2 half time employees != 1 full time employee. There is the extra equipment cost, benefits (perhaps), management overhead etc. e.g. If I replace a team of 7 full time engineers with 14 half time engineers, do I keep 1 manager? That seems like a very large team for 1 person to handle, so now maybe I need another manager too. From a purely economic perspective hiring half time enginee…

I think the idea is that you replace a team of 7 full-time engineers with 7 half-time engineers, and get 80% of the benefits at 50% of the cost.

That's the theory, but like I said for us it hasn't really worked out like that. Maybe we're doing something wrong so who knows.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#207

Post by [deleted] »

rtlfe wrote: post #195
cloogshicer wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What's the alternative? Have some PM+EM write a perfectly detailed spec for you to implement? That sounds like hell. I can't imagine spending all my time building something that I had no input on designing.

[deleted]

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#208

Post by keerthiko »

yibg wrote: post #205
keerthiko wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We run a 5-person dev team (1 designer, 2 technical founders, 1 dev full-time, +1 part-time dev) with 30 minutes of sync-time per week for non-founders. Our part-time dev can perfectly run with those specs thanks to our encouragement of daily documentation and written specs rather than waiting for a big meeting to ask and be asked questions.

Heavily depends on the nature of the work in question and size of team. Larger the team, and more foreign the domain the more time is needed to coordinate work.

Broadly, I disagree, at least when talking about any team or sub-team focused on software development.

It depends more on the personalities, values and organization of the workplace and the team — for any size, if more than 20% of people involved need to spend more than 2 hrs/week in meetings — it is an organizational/ops issue, not an inherent feature of the work.

> more foreign the domain the more time is needed to coordinate work

More foreign to who? If it is foreign to individual team members, then it is a problem of insufficient onboarding/training material and process, poor documentation, or under-qualified hire.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#209

Post by keerthiko »

yibg wrote: post #204
Aeolun wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a meeting involves more than 1 person spending time. Reading a spec involved only one person investing time (only those that need to know it anyway). Doing it in a meeting where everyone has different questions, tangents and other cruft that you have to sit through is extremely inefficient.

Yes but if you have 2 part time devs, that requires 2 people spending time. The discussion here isn't meetings vs doc, it's full time vs part time.

If you have 2 part time devs with a manager giving them the info in the meeting, that's 3 people spending time, and the two part-time devs won't have 100% overlap of information needed and questions asked and answered (and if you have two separate meetings with each PT, then they won't have access to the questions/answers discussed with the other dev _in case_ they need it).

Additionally, everyone can focus on producing and consuming information in the downtime between focus-work sessions, without interrupting flow at someone else's convenience.

In all cases, quality documentation is more likely to produce accurate information transfer with less time wasted by everyone involved.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#210

Post by [deleted] »

yibg wrote: post #205
keerthiko wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We run a 5-person dev team (1 designer, 2 technical founders, 1 dev full-time, +1 part-time dev) with 30 minutes of sync-time per week for non-founders. Our part-time dev can perfectly run with those specs thanks to our encouragement of daily documentation and written specs rather than waiting for a big meeting to ask and be asked questions.

Heavily depends on the nature of the work in question and size of team. Larger the team, and more foreign the domain the more time is needed to coordinate work.

[deleted]
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