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Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

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Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#131

Post by ainla »

twelvechairs wrote: post #95
gexla wrote: post #78

Four hours per day of work where you are in high focus is about normal. You will see that professionals across many creative fields only work 4 hours per day. There are a lot of posts here from developers talking about how they are more productive than their peers working less hours. Really, they probably have the same capacity for hours, but the less productive developers are carrying a lot of baggage in attempting…

> Four hours per day of work where you are in high focus is about normal. You will see that professionals across many creative fields only work 4 hours per day. OK I'll bite. What are these fields? I think it is fanciful to call 4 hours per day 'normal'.

I've worked in two big Java/.NET consulting shops. They both were OK with 60% productive work. If you performed better, you were able to get bigger bonuses. If lower, then they started to work on your productivity (tutoring etc) or fired you. I usually showed up about 50% of the time and did some work from home. Worked great for me.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#132

Post by gexla »

gedrap wrote: post #92
gexla wrote: post #78

Four hours per day of work where you are in high focus is about normal. You will see that professionals across many creative fields only work 4 hours per day. There are a lot of posts here from developers talking about how they are more productive than their peers working less hours. Really, they probably have the same capacity for hours, but the less productive developers are carrying a lot of baggage in attempting…

Totally agree. 9-5 (or 9-6) engineering jobs are a bit crazy - no one is able to work productively for 8 hours, that's a fact. Many managers understand that and are cool with people just not doing work while at work... However, I would still prefer to go home than sitting and waiting for 5 or 6pm so I could do something more meaningful, because e.g. side-projects is a gray area while at work and that's fair. Even so,…

This is difficult to quantify, but I'm guessing if we could graph productivity, it would look a lot like a sleep graph. In maybe the first 3 - 4 hours of sleep, you are deep in. That's the most productive sleep. Though you might go through a few cycles in that time, the cycles are deep. Then the cycles get less and less deep until the final hours in which you are barely sleeping. Some freaks of nature may be able to get by with less than 6 hours of sleep. Most need 7 - 8. We probably know those lazy teens who can seem to sleep all day. Some people might break up their sleep by sleeping for 4 hours, waking up to do something for a few hours and then going back down to sleep for another 4. Regardless, we all go through the same basic processes and have the same needs. Again, I think it really helps just to observe yourself and find out what works best for you. Experiment with many different ways and track that however you can. Maybe even just writing in a journal.

As for the side project, I meant working on a project for the employer. For example, if your job is X project on foobar.com then you might open up Y project on foobar.com as something you believe the site needs that you are more interested in. Again, this would most likely be after your 4 hour productivity burst. Maybe it's something you have been intersted in becoming an expert in. Perhaps one day you could jump ship and find a different employer to hire you for that expertise. Win for you, win for the employer.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#133

Post by Ramp_ »

cenhyperion wrote: post #127

My main question would be salary. You really can't reasonably expect your employer to pay you the same salary as someone working more than twice the hours. Are you comfortable making less than half the salary of a programmer working 40 hours a week instead of 16?

What if you are more effective/productive in 16 hours than they are in 40? Wouldn't this warrant a higher salary?

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#134

Post by asdfologist »

coldtea wrote: post #101
asdfologist wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if they find someone cheaper and equally productive.

You'd be surprised what stupid managers would do. They could just fire him out of spite, and hire 2 people to do his work clumsily but "keep proper hours".

Those aren't the kinds of managers you'd want to work for anyway.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#135

Post by bshimmin »

sliverstorm wrote: post #52
asdfologist wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're indispensable, you should ask for a raise, not a pay cut.

A raise and a 3/5ths reduction in expected hours would be one hard sell.

I once managed a 50% raise and a reduction to a four day working week, with one of those days remote. I patted myself on the back a lot for achieving that, but I was cheating, a bit, because I went from permanent to contract with the same company.

Not very strangely, the reasons that I wanted to leave my permanent position at the company in the first place - terrible, confused, and often obnoxious management - still hurt just as much even on more money and with fewer days. I quit again for good after another three months.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#136

Post by sheepmullet »

techdebt5112 wrote: post #23

People are probably willing to pay you to do this, but not advertising it so much. Most tech companies (at least in the US) are desperate for work. Less than 40 hours is a week is a tough sell because many people feel the onboarding process eats up a lot of time. Primarily, since it's the norm to work 40+ hours (and believe me, it's not difficult to do this and be actually writing code more than 50% of the time) empl…

> I really disagree with this. Have you tried before?

The problem is everybody has widely different ideas of full throttle productivity. Lets take salary as a decent proxy for productivity:

At every company I have worked the "norm" is 15-20 productive hours a week. Standard salary is ~$110-$140k/year for a senior dev working these hours.

So as a rule of thumb if you can work a consistent 40 productive hours a week you should be able to earn at least $220k+/year (and in reality closer to $300k/year).

I do know developers earning more than $250k/year. It is possible if you are top .1% or if you organize your entire life around work. However, it is not easy, and nor should it be expected as the "norm".

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#137

Post by gregpilling »

mikegillman wrote: post #43
gregpilling wrote: post #41

I offered 12 weeks vacation to my staff in exchange for lower wages (but paid during 12 weeks off). Nobody was interested, and they wanted to stay with the current two weeks paid. So as an employer, I have never had anyone interested in doing a 16 hour week. I have had many ex-employees (and an ex-partner) who were paid for 40 hours a week, but only worked 16. To answer your questions directly. 1. They are not easy t…

Interesting. If the staff thought they would have to work through those 12 weeks of vacation anyway... or that it would be impractical to actually take 3 months vacation (or every Friday off), they probably wouldn't risk taking the salary cut. In our society the money feels more valuable than the time.

its a small manufacturing business. They would not have had to work the 12 weeks.. They simply weren't interested. I was surprised, since it is a rule I wanted for myself. So I made the rule anyway.

My engineer wants to take a month off, but she is doing it as a unpaid leave. She had already saved her living expenses for the time she would be off, so it didn't matter to her.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#138

Post by gexla »

nhaehnle wrote: post #130
patio11 wrote: post #13

Many of my small business buddies [+] start with their first few programmers on this sort of schedule. It generally fits within their/our budgets, gets them continuity versus project-based freelancers, and doesn't cause them to have to compromise on their quality of life through managing you constantly. It isn't my place to mention the salaries I've heard but, anecdotally, they're a) more than anything I earned prior…

Why don't you want to talk about salaries? Lack of data is a huge problem in this space. I don't think anybody expects you to name the names of the people involved.

I think what Patio11 would typically say to this is that you shouldn't base your expectations / negotiations on "market rates." The problem with a set salary (or getting paid per hour) is that your pay is tied to a set unit no matter what value you are creating for the employer.

We only have one shot in this life. We have chosen development as our professional practice. We should be looking to take that practice to the highest level that we can reach. Basing our salary on market rates is basing our value on industry average (or the level of mediocrity if you are more the glass half empty type of person.)

Ultimately, your place is to make money for the company. This is what you should be basing your value on. There is $X on the line and you have great influence on moving that number. If you aren't in this position, then keep looking so that you can get max value out of the lifetime of your profession.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#139

Post by rpeden »

randallsquared wrote: post #122
Smudge wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practical interest for you , as the employer, is the quality of your team and of the work produced -- something you should be optimizing for regardless. Say you find a dev who nails all of your interviews, is passionate about the kind of work your team does, and intuitively gets your company's mission. And then you find out he or she is only available for 16-20 hours a week. You must decide whether hiring them fo…

> Say you find a dev who [...] is passionate about the kind of work your team does What does this mean to you? To me, being passionate about doing something means I want to do more of it, quite literally. Leaving other motivations aside, someone who is trying to negotiate less time is less passionate, right?

Or it means they recognize that passion is a finite resource that takes time to replenish.

Works too hard for too long at something you are passionate about is a good way to lose the passion for it you once felt.

So someone who is trying to negotiate less time doesn't necessarily mean they are less passionate about their work; it may just mean that they are mature and self aware enough to realize that they'd like to work at a pace that allows them to sustain that passion over the long term.

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