51–60 of 271 posts
You just negotiate how many days you want to work on that client.
Plenty of coworkers from Italy do it to avoid paying higher taxes: they increase their hourly rate until they hit the 65k pa limit and then they just start dropping days. If they were to earn even 66k, they would start paying way more taxes and they would need to earn ~30k more to get the same salary after taxes.
I've found the majority of the companies I've spoken to over the last few years (in the UK) have been open to me working 4 days a week but I've also had the frustrating experiencing of being told this isn't an option after interviewing successfully.
At the moment people with my experience are in huge demand so having this leverage must be a big help and I'm happy to take advantage of it while it lasts.
As someone who has historically worked long hours, I wasn't expecting to enjoy the change so much. It will be very hard to move back if/when I move companies in the future.
The first time I just straight up asked my boss in a conversation and with a request in writing. I said I was unhappy in my life in general and wanted more time to spend on other things than work. There is legislation in the UK that means that employers must consider these requests and reply with an answer and explanation in a fixed time frame. They accepted and I worked it for about 4 months before other circumstances meant I had to relocate and leave that company.
The job I moved to was a start-up. After a string of executive resignations and engineering team redundancies I was left as the most experienced team member. I had another job offer in hand that I didn't really want but took it to the only remaining senior lead and asked for 4 days (at full pay this time) or I'd leave. They accepted in an informal way rather than modify my contract in this case and just called it "taking a day off when you need it". I would not recommend accepting this in general as it puts you in a vulnerable position for being punished for doing what you thought was the agreed deal. In any case, working 4 days at this job was a disaster because the company was such a mess and I had so little support that I spent my day off and my weekends obsessing about work unhealthily. I ultimately went back to 5 days in a more senior role to try to help right the ship but couldn't take the stress then either so ended up leaving.
I'm now at 5 days again. If I stick my new job out I plan to request 4 days after my probation period ends.
The decision for an employer comes down to retention - do they want to keep you enough to accept 4 days instead of the risk of you leaving? So if you have a manager who can understand your value and represent that to internal decision makers then that's the main key.
I just recently started a 32 hour a week salaried job. Here’s my story. I was at a very good job. My ultimate goal is to just go to the beach and not work at all. I realized that’s too big of a leap, so I set a shorter term more realistic goal of working 4 days a week. My employer at the time rejected the idea, so instead of ignoring recruiters like usual, I answered them. If a job wasn’t immoral, the interview proce…
> My life is so good right now despite the world being terrible. The world is overwhelmingly amazing, not terrible. For the majority of people this is one of the best times to be alive in all of human history. Rivaled only by the years prior to the pandemic.
It's been a bliss overall on my work/life balance. I've never been that healthy and my stress level has never been so low in my life. I know I'll live longer and once I am more stable financially, I'll be able to have time to contribute to my community.
The salaries are also quite good. I highly encourage people to unionize, it is the only way to get proper leverage in this highly inequitable period we live in.
The union we have is small and consists exclusively of people with at minimum university degrees. Most of them have some form of life accomplishments due to the hiring process also. Due to the conditions negotiated, the well provisioned pension fund and general job advantages, most people coming in are experienced (5+ years) except for some amount of diversity/equity hires (which the company kinda needed since everyone stays there until retirement...).
Thus, the union is well organized to have leverage, well structured and reasonable with whom they should defend when there is abuse on the side of the employer. People are mostly diligent in their work obligations.
There is some rare exceptions, some employees with too much mastery of transferring issues to others. Frankly, I've seen the same or worst in Big Corpo, mostly in middle management, the only difference here is some employees do it instead of the managers...
I just recently started a 32 hour a week salaried job. Here’s my story. I was at a very good job. My ultimate goal is to just go to the beach and not work at all. I realized that’s too big of a leap, so I set a shorter term more realistic goal of working 4 days a week. My employer at the time rejected the idea, so instead of ignoring recruiters like usual, I answered them. If a job wasn’t immoral, the interview proce…
> My life is so good right now despite the world being terrible. The world is overwhelmingly amazing, not terrible. For the majority of people this is one of the best times to be alive in all of human history. Rivaled only by the years prior to the pandemic.
I just recently started a 32 hour a week salaried job. Here’s my story. I was at a very good job. My ultimate goal is to just go to the beach and not work at all. I realized that’s too big of a leap, so I set a shorter term more realistic goal of working 4 days a week. My employer at the time rejected the idea, so instead of ignoring recruiters like usual, I answered them. If a job wasn’t immoral, the interview proce…
> My life is so good right now despite the world being terrible. The world is overwhelmingly amazing, not terrible. For the majority of people this is one of the best times to be alive in all of human history. Rivaled only by the years prior to the pandemic.
For example, one person can say “The world is terrible because fascism is on the rise in many countries.” Another person pointing out that polio infection rates are very low does not cancel out the first statement. Everybody gets to have a subjective opinion!