Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time? • Hacker News Board

Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?

#91

Post by unrestifarian » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 9:46 PM UTC

disambiguation wrote: post #81

unrestifarian wrote: post #62

Absolutely, yes. I'm not sure why more companies don't simply reduce hours in lieu of paying out higher salaries. I'm quite sure many devs would stay at a company if they offered an effective 20-40% raise by offering them a 32 or 24hr workweek. And, to the benefit of the company, my guess is there won't be a big loss in productivity. Years ago, I was in need of a big a salary adjustment, and I offered to work for 3 d…

Are you based in the US? I think offering benefits to part-time employees is optional here. Curious about your experience with this.

Yes, I am. I believe benefits kick in at 30+ hours at most places in the U.S.

So a 30-ish hr workweek would be the most beneficial to the employee.

Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?

#92

Post by gloryjulio » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

The thing is, in the usual tech companies lots of them already do. They rest and vest. The engineers becomes much more efficient in handling the usual workload. They could choose to stay at the same level and not to get promoted.

Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?

#93

Post by taylodl » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 10:12 PM UTC

As someone who's been developing for nearly 40 years now in both startups and big engineering (not big tech) companies - yes, this is definitely something I want to do in five years. I can retire, which gives me access to affordable healthcare without having to go on medicare, and I can still work doing something I enjoy while scaling back. Ideally I'd like to work Monday-Thursday for something like 5 hours per day, so it'd still be only 20 hours per week. Doing it at 60% of my current salary would be nice. I'm actually surprised that more companies aren't starting to do this.

Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?

#94

Post by marssaxman » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 10:20 PM UTC

I would be interested in something like this, whenever I next look for work. I can't see giving up the sailboat-cruising lifestyle for another full-time office job anytime soon, but I'm too young to retire. I feel like I'll probably be looking for consulting gigs next year, but an ongoing situation with a specific team and product would certainly be preferable to gig work.

I've had a couple of ostensibly full-time jobs which worked this way in practice - smaller shops, who couldn't compete with big-tech salaries, but happily paid their full-time rate for my expertise and availability, even though they only had a couple days of actual work for me to do each week.

Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?

#95

Post by zdwolfe » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 10:24 PM UTC

Yes I would rather work 4/5 days and get paid 4/5 as much.

Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?

#96

Post by arbol » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

euph0ria wrote: post #31

Yes, I would like to work 3/5 days and would take the corresponding pay cut

I negotiated one of my previous roles to 3 days a week after I told them I was leaving. I managed about 5 months of this setup but the disconnect between myself and other employees was obvious. The lack of face to face time means that you need to work on small isolated projects to remain productive. Otherwise it's difficult to keep up to date with the various moving parts in the product.

Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?

#97

Post by svilen_dobrev » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

i am 35y+ in software, was looking for such job last 2 years, and 3-4 years before that again.. Part-time mentor/advisor/guru//you-name-it, and it's not cheap i know. i did not mind even be physicaly-with-the-team once-in-a-while, as real-team-dynamics mostly happen face-to-face. Well.. doesn't happen. Yet. Now i'm CTO'ing but it's not same at all.

Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?

#98

Post by nowherebeen » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

Yes. As long as it doesn’t require me to jump through ridiculous hoops. Part time work should start with probation and less interview rounds. It’s a win-win for both sides.

Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?

#99

Post by chriswitts » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 12:38 AM UTC

Absolutely yes. I would be pretty happy to work 20 hours a week to essentially be a consultant and advisor to a team.

Re: Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?

#100

Post by johannes1234321 » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 12:49 AM UTC

shoo wrote: post #49

johannes1234321 wrote: post #47

I 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…

That is orthogonal to part-time. Even with part-time you can agree on a common core time where such things can be handled. I also had cases where timezones were quite useful. (In the evening I sent work of the day to QA and in the morning I got a test report to work on)

My concern is around all the non-core tasks, which you can't cut away proportionally when working less time, leaving overproportionally less time for the core job.