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

291–300 of 306 posts

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#291

Post by lupire »

Aeolun wrote: post #196
x0x0 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think your job as an engineer is to write code, then sure -- part time makes sense. If you think your job as an engineer is to build a solution as a team, then one person hopping in and out of availability creates a hassle for an entire team. Can't have project meetings on Mon / Fri because X is never there. If a project with involvement by a part timer isn't done by eod Thursday, a fulltime person has 2 dead…

But this is great . If your company culture doesn’t depend on everyone always being there, it has a million benefits unrelated to productivity. Working becomes so much more relaxing.

But also less profitable per hour. Doing "line" work where you have no unique contribution means you have less negotiating power and so get paid less.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#292

Post by lupire »

jdsleppy wrote: post #26

I'm working hourly on a contract where I advised the company I could only work 15-20 hours a week. It can be a win-win I believe, but with tradeoffs for both sides. I'm able to make the 3-4 hours of work a day be extremely productive. I always deliver in fewer hours than were budgeted for the work. As a contractor, there are no extraneous meetings to slow me down. But I'm still involved in client meetings as needed,…

Nutshell: part time is full time but you don't get paid to feel guilty when you're not working.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#293

Post by berkes »

city17 wrote: post #281
berkes wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from the Netherlands, which is parttime king of the world. I haven't worked in a fulltime software development job for almost two decades now. Never has it been a problem. Never was my parttime requirement the reason to not hire me. I don't even consider fulltime an option. I'm very surprised at how people here react to this idea. Untill you pointed out it may be cultural thing. Another reason for me to not even…

Just curious, how many hours have you been working mostly? 32 or even less? I'm also looking for a part-time dev role in the Netherlands and having some trouble finding anything under 32 hours. I could've signed several jobs already if I were willing to go full time.

to be clear: I've been "working" 40+ hours. But tried to keep 16hours "for myself": Hours in which I work on personal projects, on private customers (freelance, consultancy etc) and open source.

So I mostly had upwards of 24 and at most 32 hour employment contracts.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#294

Post by atleta »

ebiester wrote: post #234
mattm wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some engineers that would be bliss. They just want to churn through tickets and not have to talk to anyone (or very little).

And I can get someone for a quarter of the price who can do that on Upwork. (That isn’t to degrade anyone on upwork, but to point out that the code itself is a fraction of the job.) It might be more work to develop a specification that requires no context to complete than to do it myself. I too would crave a part time programming job, mind you, but I think that only works on a team that is completely part time.

I agree, writing the code is usually just a fraction of the work but I've yet to see someone who is good at it, costs a quarter and doesn't care about the rest of the job. (Even without the costs quarter condition.)

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#295

Post by rtlfe »

kodah wrote: post #265
JohnBooty wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would be much less valuable to the business. You'd probably be looking at 10% the salary of a full time dev who's actually solving business problems.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#296

Post by wpietri »

hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #248
twblalock wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, it makes sense to hire part-time people when the timelines can slip and they aren't on the critical path? That's not a very good sales pitch.

I'm getting downvoted, but I really don't see the problem? Not all of our projects even have a timeline to slip.

I can believe they don't have explicit timelines. But I'd bet there are implicit ones. Or are you saying that if you just never do them, nobody will notice?

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#297

Post by xwdv »

cloogshicer wrote: post #279
xwdv wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They can expect all they want but no one is really checking.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#298

Post by deterministic »

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.

In the last 10 years, I have been in maybe one or two meetings each year. Everything else is done online. And I spend about 20 min a day max communicating online. And we are working on complex enterprise applications used by international airlines, airports and national rail companies. It works great. Spending 10+ hours a week in meetings is crazy.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#299

Post by JohnBooty »

kodah wrote: post #265
JohnBooty wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you were a productive fulltime dev, learned the business, knew the app, knew the tech debt, knew the right people to ask about various bits of the code, knew the stakeholders, etc?

Yeah, I think you could step back from that at some point and be a heck of a part-time asset.

1. Your knowledge of the app and organization would likely decay over time.

2. I'm not sure the the organization would love this move. It would be better than losing you entirely, but probably not as valuable as having you fulltime. From your perspective, 50% of your time is better than 100% of nothing. From their perspective, they're probably going to take the "glass half empty" view.

Re: Why not hire part-time developers?

#300

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

keerthiko wrote: post #69
ciphol wrote: post #25

Question for those who have or have considered part-time work - how does your employer/manager look at this? Do they view you as a regular worker who wants to strike a different work/money balance, or as a slacker who isn't committed to the company or their own career growth and can't be relied upon for any serious project? When it comes to the experiences of people I know, my impression is that it's accepted for wom…

As a cofounder of a very small company (8 FT, 2 part-time, 2-10 contractors varying by season), but one with a longer life than many startups newer than us (10+ years since our first revenue), I have been trying to normalize long-term part-time hires in all critical roles for some time now at our org. Yet, it is hard to overcome the cultural energy around the implications "part time = low impact", "part time = tempor…

> I want to live in a world where people can passionately work on something as part of a team, long-term, while being fairly compensated for that work, for less than 30 hours a week.

Thanks for that.

I appreciate and applaud your ethos.

Post reply on HN