Ask HN: First hire offered to work part-time – what should I do?

Fellow founder here. I think I agree with the gist of what you write, but I disagree that a part-time commitment is a good indicator of the level of emotional commitment.

Passion is important, and there's a huge spectrum between "passion as an excuse to get people to work many hours without compensating them" and the bill-by-the-hour contractor attitude. You don't want your first employees to be anywhere near the right of that spectrum. Basically, you want them to proudly wear the company logo t-shirt. But this is perfectly possible without driving yourself into a burnout.

While I agree with many commenters here that way too many startups work their team too hard for absolutely no benefit to anybody, I do think that employees of small startups can be expected to have said startup at top thing on their minds, bordering family etc.

This information is missing from the OP's question. There's a world of difference between an applicant going "oh, hm yeah I can do some work for you but only 3 days a week because I'm actually focused on my side project and I hope it becomes a proper startup someday" and "woa that sounds awesome, I'm all in! but I don't want to work more than 3 days because I've a couple of hobbies / open source projects / whatever that I like to keep time for". In the first scenario, the engineer might be writing hours for you, but actually thinking about their other thing at the same time. They won't be super productive, and they'd especially not be all too creative.

Like you, I'd never recommend that a startup hire someone who doesn't have the success of said startup at top of their mind (again, possibly bordering family matters). But I disagree with your suggestion that the amount of hours/days committed is a good indicator of that. Part-time is the future, folks, accept it, embrace it.

> I wouldn't want to just assume that when so many good companies use that word as well.

Name three.

I'm yet to see a single company expecting "passion" that would be doing something worthwhile, or even something one can actually be passionate about.

Just a quick thought, since I thoroughly recognize myself in your former workfriend. You may have negociated his pay below the level where he can comfortably cover mortgage and current expenses.

Like many others commented, asking for an employee to be passionate is a real problem.

You mentioned thinking with heads over hearts. Very good idea, I would say follow through on it and ask for professionalism instead of passion. Offer a higher hourly rate during the first 2-3 weeks, on condition that the person work full-time and that everything should be automated to the hilt and documented thoroughly. Starting on the fourth week, show your new potential hires how tight of a ship you are running, some will be excited to join and at that point you can better negociate their pay because you have something to offer that most developers want.

As a side note, the way I have solved on my end the problem your former workfriend is having, was by making the hourly rate a sliding scale (145 in exchange for working 45 hours a week, 125 when working 25 hrs/wk, you get the idea). I am personally convinced this kind of system will work for you as well since is makes transparent the tradeoff between high development velocity and judicious budgeting.

One last thing I want to point out that most developers intuitively recognize: having worked in a large number of environments, huge and small, with distinct engineering approaches / team dynamics is a huge boost to most developer profiles. Working on more than one project every week and being exposed to all that variety is worthwhile, for me at least, when I can't charge my full rate.

I don't think you're giving enough neccessary information here. Is his role just chunk out the code, help with backlog and fix some bugs? Or he's going to be responsible for making strategic tech decisions and then communicating with entire future tech team about them? Obviously the latter is a much worse fit for a part-time, low-commitment employee.

What about these features he'll have to compete - are they well-defined? Has he done similar things dozens of times before, or will he have to research it as he goes together with everybody else?

I can understand why you guys are worried about this but what is the problem with trying it and seeing how it goes - you could also negotiate with him about different time schedules and maybe a small amount of time on his days off should it be necessary.

I have no problem with the word passionate but in the end will you be happy with this person's contribution for what you are paying them. If not you need to let them go during their probation/as soon as possible.

You really have nothing to lose and you probably get a well rested developer who can work hard for the 3 days. I would go for it but set boundaries and expectations - for example I would prefer to have him in full time for the first 3 weeks of every month say rather than this odd schedule.