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Why not hire part-time developers?

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Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#271

Post by zeepzeep »

me_me_mu_mu wrote: post #33

Don't see this working in USA. I've never been to Europe, but work with many who are from there. You get socialized healthcare, cities with easy transit, and for the most part things are close. In the US, we don't have health insurance unless we buy it ourselves ($$$$) or our company provides it ($). We don't have easy transit in most cities, and also people do live far away from the business centers. That's why in t…

> That's why in the USA, most people want full time work.

I don't think "want" is the correct term here. "are forced to get" fits better IMO.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#272

Post by cloogshicer »

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.

Silly excuses. No software team needs 10h/week of meetings, that's just insane.

Fix your management and you'll be able to hire part time easily.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#273

Post by Meph504 »

I think hiring part time developers is a horrible idea for anything not proof of concept or minimum viable. I've seen it time and time again over 20 years, and the results are pretty similar to outsourcing.

1) people don't account for all activities that aren't programming and far underestimate how much of those things take up crazy amounts of time.

2) part time generally has little to no vested interest, and generally aren't concerned with the long term prospects of employment (and I don't blame them)

I feel bad for the author of the article, if he is foolish enough to stick around a job they don't like in this climate, they are suffering for no reason. and failing to gain the experience and knowledge that will carry them through the rest of their career.

There is a difference in someone with 5 years of experience, and someone who has done the same first year experience over and over for 5 years. And that usually comes across pretty strongly during the interview process. And their tactics seem like a great way to struggle to find advanced positions later in life.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#274

Post by ozim »

jlokier wrote: post #229
ozim wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If I post a job with 4h a day which amounts to 1/2 of a normal salary I will probably never get a candidate. I think you're mistaken about that. If you can persuade candidates that it really is 4h a day at 1/2 of a normal salary, you will get candidates who are excited by the job because it opens up their time for other opportunities for hobbies, home life, side projects, open source projects, looking after family,…

Persuading candidates is where it breaks. I don't have time for that, we need to hire now and if we hire someone then for next 2 years we probably won't hire anyone new, and I don't think there is enough people who would like that 4 hours. I also have to pay for ad that will get most CVs

It would be much easier if I get someone CV and he writes cover letter explaining that he would like to try such an arrangement.

I tried to get part time dev for Kibana/Elastic needs like 4 hours - anyone I approached was not even willing to discuss "why" they just said no. People also don't have time to listen to your persuasion, most of the time it is clear cut and goodbye.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#275

Post by itslennysfault »

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…

Maybe try working through an agency?

I'm in a similar boat, and I've been doing part-time work through Toptal. You certainly get more opportunities if you're full time, but I've been able to steadily get 10-20 hours a week at a rate that would come out around $300k if I was working full time. For me that is plenty to live comfortably and I'm able to choose to have more free time and not feel "owned" by a full time salary position that would likely be more like 60 hours a week of my time.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#276

Post by ZainRiz »

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…

An alternate setup I've seen at (this was for a super, super experienced distinguished engineer (like a Google L9) who wanted to work part time) was to work full time one week and then take one week off

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#277

Post by rendall »

ghaff wrote: post #98
rendall wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Definitely. I think what matters most, to most teams, is a scheduled consistency and regular contributions, whether that's "full time except for winter" or "30% allocation" or "alternating weeks" or whatever.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#278

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

> Let me throw one more gripe into the mix: with all of the mentioned above, a lot of us don’t want to, or can’t work full-time. None of us even work full-time as it is, considering that most engineers only have about 4 hours of productive energy each day, unless they’re utterly obsessed with a project or pumped full of stimulants. Even then, going over that limit often causes more problems than it fixes.

This is a hard pill to swallow for managers, but maybe this is what being a full time developer really is all about? 4 hours of real work and 4 hours of just loafing around?

Forcing oneself to write more code just leads to bloated software. And not doing it while fretting over not giving the employer their money's worth for the last 4 hours is only going to increase stress and hurt performance for the first 4. Maybe instead going for a walk, taking a nap or chatting with other developers is just as much part of what's "real work" for a developer.

> When I’m building my own projects, this is great. I simply stop and pick it up again the next day. By being disciplined in putting in the work each day, and not overdoing it, I end up architecting solutions that are simple and elegant.

This is exactly what the industry needs. Paying for 40 hours and only getting 20 quality hours in front of the computer is probably more profitable for the company in the long run than demanding the full 40 and getting a lot of convoluted garbage.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#279

Post by cloogshicer »

xwdv wrote: post #155
cloogshicer wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would all of that time be hyper productive focus time? (rhetorical question, the answer is no) Have you worked part time? Sorry, but this is exactly how I work. When I work, I do focused work, and when I get tired, I usually finish what I was doing and then stop working. I switch off, relax, repeat. Have worked this way for a few years and I could never go back to the old way. The problem with 40 hour jobs is that…

> Have you worked part time? Sorry, but this is exactly how I work. You know how I work my full time job? Like your part time job. Only 50% of the time. > The problem with 40 hour jobs is that you're anyways only productive for like 50% of that and then the rest of the day you're stuck in a prison. You mean the prison that is my own home? Remote job and a laptop eliminate this problem. If I run errands I bring my lap…

Agreed, with a remote job, this gets much better. But still, even in many remote jobs, the expectation is that you spend 40h at your desk.
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