Yes, there are certainly people like that (me included). There's even a job board for it https://4dayweek.io/
Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?
41–50 of 127 posts
Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?
#42I’m considering it. Gumroad is the main example I can think of where they hire for 20-25 hours per week. It’s easier to find places that hire for 32 hours per week (a 4- or 4.5-day work week). For the latter, I am concerned that the companies end up expecting basically the same output (i.e., it’s a hiring marketing gimmick) since the positions are salaried. I saw one company that said they manage their 4-day weeks by…
Unlike others here, I would be fine with a pay cut. Acknowledging the pay cut makes it more likely that the reduced output expectation is honest, for one thing.
Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?
#43I do think the biggest obstacle to part time work in the US is that health care is tied to employment. Health insurance can easily cost $20k+ a year for a family, and it'll be hard for employees to stomach the salary cut they might have to take to make the numbers work.
maybe, maybe not. it's pretty common to find households where one partner has a job with a good salary and the other has a job with good benefits. cutting salary by more than proration while offering great benefits could be an attractive combo for households with this strategy.
Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?
#44There are quite a large segment of engineers later in their careers who would be interested in this kind of arrangement, especially some engineers who are parents of young children. I suspect the demand for these kind of part-time working conditions outstrips the supply.
My experience is from the labour market in Australia, the situation here is a bit different than the US as our healthcare & health insurance is decoupled from employment.
There are some very sharp and experienced engineers out there who are not willing to work full time roles any more, and this eliminates them from the running of the vast majority of advertised roles at companies that will only consider people available full time. It's not uncommon to see senior engineers negotiate part-time arrangements after being at a company for a few years.
Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?
#45100% yes. I’ve worked at Amazon & 3 other tech companies, would love this.
Needs to include health care.
Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?
#46I would be open to this. I've always imagined my retirement would be owning a coffee shop and picking up some code here and there.
Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?
#47I guess there are many who would like to work part time, however that requires a different working structure.
Often there is a specific amount of meetings happening, especially in senior staff. Whether or not you work part-time that number typically stays constant (weekly manager 1-1, product meetings, daily scrum, whatever) also the amount of general company spam and administrative topics one has to keep an eye on is constant.
Thus if one goes from fulltime to part time, the only thing one can reduce is the part where the "actual" work happens, in consequence going part-time means doing even less actual work in a day, which can make one feel even worse.
The way out is to really strip down meetings and all those things to the required amount, which helps any organisation, but often isn't easy.
Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?
#48Absolutely. I'm turning 50, and kinda tired of the full-time efforts, kinda tired of coding all the time, but don't want to stop working yet either. That kind of role sounds perfect.
It would need to have a compensation package that incentivizes people to truly just be part-time for you and not seek out side contracts - decent pay and benefits, etc.
Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?
#49I guess there are many who would like to work part time, however that requires a different working structure. Often there is a specific amount of meetings happening, especially in senior staff. Whether or not you work part-time that number typically stays constant (weekly manager 1-1, product meetings, daily scrum, whatever) also the amount of general company spam and administrative topics one has to keep an eye on i…
I agree. But it also depends on the type of work. If someone is acting in some kind of project delivery lead function, it is often necessary to be in the loop of many coordinating conversations. This kind of role might not be a good fit for part time, unless the rest of the team is also part time with a similar schedule.
For other kinds of work that can be performed independently with less regular check ins, it doesn't matter as much.
There are ways to structure a company to make varying schedules more or less feasible. If one piece of work is shattered into a large number of small tasks and scattered between teams with a number of maker/checker review points, then it might not be possible to complete a single item of work without e.g. 3 people in different teams reviewing it and approving it. If the content of the work is e.g. a trivial configuration change that takes 1 minute to author, then you end up with a situation where the process will become exponentially inefficient if some of the people involved work in part time schedules or inconsistent timezones. If instead work is structured into larger chunks that can be done by individuals with infrequent synchronisation points, e.g. deeper analysis / design / implementation tasks, then maybe varying schedules or timezones does not impact efficiency as much.
Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?
#50I'm nominally a senior (though only 8 years experience), and I work thirty hours per week. This is a small place where I still code most of the time, but I'm also responsible for a lot of code review (man, we need more code review), architecture, and planning of features that others then implement. Mostly it just means short days, I'm still there for every stand-up and available for follow ups after. My pay is a chunk less than it would be full time, but comparable to what I was making just a few years ago. I have small kids and a bunch of synthesizers that I need the extra time with.