Having worked with contractors, part time contractors only work if they’re working on actionable tasks and don’t require much creativity. Well documented issues which require a well defined set of changes in code.
Why not hire part-time developers?
261–270 of 306 posts
Re: Why not hire part-time developers?
#262I think part of it is overhead and parts of it is cultural, basically people dont think people who are looking for part time work are serious about that work, or that they already have some other job. Buddy of mine has been wanting to work part time for more than a decade, getting shitty jobs and ofting having to switch, or accept jobs that were full time etc. But after his first kid employeers were suddenly much more willing to take someone part time, its kinda the effective case for new parents anyways, and no one wondered about if he had a second job anymore. I dont think thats why hes had two kids in a row, but he seems very happy with it. Its not really a long term solution, and studies have long shown that kids, in particular with you as a primary caregiver, has along term negative effect on career and salary, but so does part time work. And it might be a long term solution if your kid has extra needs. Though just saying that is probably alot healthier than munchhausen by proxy^^
Re: Why not hire part-time developers?
#263Maybe companies are afraid of handing too much bargaining power to the employee: 20hr weeks basically mean you can get a whole second 20hr job. After a while of truly getting to know both jobs, you will likely leave the worse one. You could do this iteratively. (Use the 20hrs that you just freed up to find yet another job, then quit the worse one again; rinse and repeat until you have a truly great job). This would b…
On your last paragraph: It would be the people who failed at, or weren’t interested in, entrepreneurship. That might be like minded people, who just want the challenge of the job and not the company. It could be full of people who want to climb the ladder you describe but not jump to the next one.
Re: Why not hire part-time developers?
#264Maybe companies are afraid of handing too much bargaining power to the employee: 20hr weeks basically mean you can get a whole second 20hr job. After a while of truly getting to know both jobs, you will likely leave the worse one. You could do this iteratively. (Use the 20hrs that you just freed up to find yet another job, then quit the worse one again; rinse and repeat until you have a truly great job). This would b…
On your last paragraph: It would be the people who failed at, or weren’t interested in, entrepreneurship. That might be like minded people, who just want the challenge of the job and not the company. It could be full of people who want to climb the ladder you describe but not jump to the next one.
That's why I set up the thought experiment, somewhat unnaturally, by saying: Assume that this is what everyone's secret motivation is...
But I perfectly agree, that the motives could be completely non-threatening. For example, if your company is all family-minded people who just want 20hr jobs so they can spend the rest with their families, then there is no real negative selection effect. But the human psyche is hard-wired to focus on threats over opportunities, and I can see how these sorts of threats weigh in heavily in managers' decision making.
Re: Why not hire part-time developers?
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hire senior level people part time. That don’t need to spend lots of time getting context. They can figure out how to solve problems matching your team’s coding style without extra meetings.
Believe me, don't get me wrong, I would gladly trade 50% of my salary to work part time. But... That don’t need to spend lots of time getting context. They can figure out how to solve problems matching your team’s coding style without extra meetings. I've worked a variety of enterprise-y developer jobs, and I don't find that to be the case at all. I mean, that context is the job. Coding bits of functionality for an e…
Well, I think knowing the business is important on most feature work, but what if part time folks were cleaning up well-defined tech debt? Usually I know exactly what my tech debt is, I roll my eyes at it as I force myself to leave it alone. Then as I get loaded down for feature work or important bug fixes it just rots in my backlog til I notice it sometime later.
Re: Why not hire part-time developers?
#266I would never hire part-time developer once again. I did once and burned heavily. That guy had own startup. For few months it worked to some degree (because he was hungry for cash). But afterwhile, his mind and focus was back to his own startup. Hi performance dropped significantly and he just use us to fund his business and used our hardware to test his app.
Re: Why not hire part-time developers?
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Fascinating! I heard the Netherlands has a strong part-time job culture too.
Only if you consider 32/36 hours as part time - the culture is strong in the sense that those are often considered full time as well, and are therefore allowed, but getting a job with fewer hours than that (eg for a three-day work week) will be a lot more difficult.
Re: Why not hire part-time developers?
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
I experienced the same. I asked an acquaintance who runs a 1000+ dev company, why is it so difficult for devs to find part-time jobs. He replied that he had thought only admin staff could do that, he found the concept weird. Very much in line with "this is how it works" as the article mentioned.
How did this person come to run the business?
Had some academic ties and some project was spun-off. But it was a long time ago, when C++ was the shiny new thing. How I understood the business grew naturally from 3 people to 1000+ today.
Re: Why not hire part-time developers?
#269Earlier 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.
> I can't imagine spending all my time building something that I had no input on designing.
Sounds like you work at startup rather than corporate. My current job is basically building on something somebody else has already prototyped. I hate it, it makes my days dull. But then one day I realized, that if I could do it as a part time job then I'd have no qualms of not wasting my mental energy, I'd gladly do what is required, clock out and spend my creative energy outside of work or with other part time gigs.
Re: Why not hire part-time developers?
#270As much as I would love to work part-time, there's a good reason for a company to avoid this: co-ordination costs scale quadratically. Yes, good management practices can help mitigate this, but I'm sure we're all aware of how adding extra people to a team doesn't scale its productivity proportionally, and I'm convinced this is at least part of the picture.
That said, if the co-ordination costs are not prohibitive and such an arrangement allows you to get better talent than you'd otherwise have access to, it might still be a good deal. For a small team that needs a small amount of high-level expertise, but doesn't have enough for such a person to do all day, this could be the best option.