My dream is to come down to about 15-25 working hours per week.
I don’t mean to work part-time for all of my career. But I would like to have such an arrangement for the coming five years or so.
Has anyone tried this? If so, how did you manage to achieve your goal?
Now I’m at a multinational (a publicly listed health data company) and the arrangement continues to work well, even though I now manage a team of 8 data scientists. I’ve had colleagues who’ve dropped from 5 to 3d/wk, the company seems very flexible around this type of arrangement. At the startups I felt that I had to squeeze in 5d of work in 4d at times, whereas here the workload has felt more commensurate with the hours I have available (and my manager often checks in to make sure this is the case).
Overall I love having an extra day to the weekend (I take the kids out to places in London on Fridays when it’s considerably less busy). My colleagues with similar arrangements used this to split their working weeks in half, and that worked well for them.
Happy to answer any questions.
Having an understanding manager really helps I guess.
I also have three kids so I know the struggle :)
Out of the blue, however, a former employer reached out to me and offered to hire me for as many (or as few) hours as I could handle, which has worked out to 10-25 a week. It’s been a really nice arrangement that I’ve enjoyed. The catch is that this company is in a completely different industry, with a completely different pay scale than tech. So I’m happy with my job, but wouldn’t be able to support myself on it with part-time hours if I was the only household earner.
PS. As someone else mentioned here, and in case you find yourself on the market again: You might want to try to discuss part-time only after receiving a written offer. Then you know for sure that they want to hire you. And then you have some leverage.
I agree! Flexible work would be a huge differentiator and I was ready to bend over backwards for it. I’ve heard that many companies won’t consider it because developers are just so darn expensive - it’s not worth it to pay a huge ransom and not get someone’s full attention.
I'd typically work Monday & Tuesday, take Wednesday off for myself, then do parenting for Thursday & Friday. It was a great way to spend a few months.
Any suggestions on what kinds of assignments that would work better or worse in such a setting?
Many of the consultants I’ve seen in IT are more like regular employees except that they are employed buy the consultants. (I.e. they sit in the client’s office 40 h/week.) But I guess there are other ways to do it.
Companies hiring contractors want to pay somebody to "show up" (perhaps virtually) and do the one thing they're an expert at, not waste time getting up to speed or learning on the job.
Figure out what you're an expert in, and contact some recruiting firms that hire for contracting gigs in that area. Explain that your schedule is "half full already" but you'd like to fit something else in, if it's the right opportunity.
The company I was working for came out of a university research lab, and so had a culture of PhD students working part time for it, so this was not outside the norm there.
The downside was not getting equity, nor benefits, but I was on my parent's insurance and wasn't too keen on their equity anyway, so this was fine for me.
For example, many remote companies that operate asynchronously won't expect you to be in the office 40hrs a week, but will expect a certain level of work to be done each week. If you can get that done in 24 rather than 40, then it works out fine for you.
[0] https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-aver...
I believe it's harder to do for small companies due to legal/tax reasons (something about less than 32 hours complicates things a lot although I don't know the details why).
The "simple" solution is to be good enough that you have the bargaining leverage to propose it and make it an ultimatum. Other ideas:
* Grind in a project for some years and become indispensable and then propose it.
* Propose it as an experiment for 6 months.
* Create an "excuse" of why you need the extra time such as pursuing an M.S./PhD.
Having kids. Serves also as a pressure upon you to actually seek part-time instead of just procrastinating about it.
I believe it's harder to do for small companies due to legal/tax reasons (something about less than 32 hours complicates things a lot although I don't know the details why).
Not a US resident, but FWIW many countries because of redistribution schemes need to categorize people by whether they are a) principally employed or b) self-employed.
Hours worked for a/b are a common denominator for this. It's likely that depending on the regulatory environment smaller companies when given the chance will always opt for the candidate with less HR department overhead.
So far I have mostly worked for small companies. So I might want to consider working for larger ones.
Also, thank you for suggesting multiple strategies. All angles need to be considered (^_^)
In startups that become stressful, the main problem I have seen is an ungrounded management team that doesn't quite know what they want the business to look like in 5 years, so every other week - surprise! We've got a new client and they want X, Y and Z by tomorrow, so get working! - that never results in low-stress work.
There are no good metrics for programmer productivity, but spending < 20 hours a week actually switched-on as a full-time employee is obviously a problem, to me.
In my case, I actually work in IT rather than tech. Equity is never part of the deal. I think equity is much more common for US employees than it is for European.
1. It's easier at existing job; you have all this knowledge that's hard to replace (https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/01/25/4-day-workweek-easy-...).
2. At new jobs, apply normally. Then _after_ you get an offer, ask for shorter hours.
3. I wrote a book about the process; it's no longer public linked on my site because pandemic has lowered negotiation leverage a lot and I'm not sure how to address that, but if you're interested: https://codewithoutrules.com/3dayweekend/
I think there are multiple reasons why I was allowed to do this:
A) I'm working on a stable, long-term project. So there were no objections by colleagues that this might impede short-term progress (and, as a side note, I think I'm far more productive now than previously).
B) My manager is a reasonable and kind person. I know other managers at $BIGCO who, I'm sure, would have objected.
Are you a developer or some other role?
I ended up at a small company that had additional hours but not enough for a full time employee. I'm now part time across three DARPA contracts. It was really just luck, a friend reached out and asked if I was interested.
Everywhere else I was talking to was just pushing unlimited PTO policies. I wanted explicit acknowledgement about how much vacation I'd take and that was hard to get.
I know people at Google went to part time. You probably just need to ask. My route was definitely finding a place that needed a worker but didn't have enough work for full time.
I work 16 hours / week and am on a support rotation (albeit 3rd tier). I only cover unplanned work on weekends. I took a 60% pay cut but keep all my pre-existing benefits.
So far it has been wonderful for my mental health, although with social distancing and the pandy it certainly has been difficult to keep busy some days. I am passively looking for supplemental work as I don't make enough to deposit into my savings. I imagine as winter rolls in this will be a necessity to stay busy/sane.
In the meantime, though, I have picked up lots of cooking, baking, and work on some personal coding projects. I have also been focusing much more of my time on art, which is really awesome! It's too early to tell but this might end up a more permanent situation for me (if not at the current company then maybe at the next one?).
I think this has also made me more productive at my job. I have 16 hours this week - what NEEDS to get done? What is a nice to have? Constraints are wonderful for productivity.
Was it hard to negotiate or was your employer positive to the idea from the beginning?
I set my own hours + fully remote. Typically about 2-3h of team meetings (sprint kickoff, retro, grooming etc) a week. Rest of time is off on your own dev work.
Bill by the hour. As long as you work predictable amount of hours, you can do 20h or 60h week.
If you go this route, make sure when you calculate your rate that you build-in the benefits such as paid leave, health insurance, lunch break, and company holidays. The number might seem high but you can justify it.
We arranged a deal where I work between 0 and 40 hours per week, with the option to work more hours with approval.
Also you might enjoy The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
I’ve heard about Ferriss book but haven’t read it. Is it good?
Good luck!
For EU/UK market: Contracting. You can get small gigs (but on a low pay) on places like Upwork, or you can get a proper contract with a company that needs hands for 3-6-12 months on a larger project. Some of the Big4 also do contracting work on which you are the back-end (think Service Center) for large IT projects (and/or compliance etc.)
I've gotten to this stage from two different directions:
1. Developing a relationship with a 'principal' consultant who handles client relationships themselves (shielding me from weird hours and stress) but outsources the tech to me (+ other technical freelancers). When this principal consultant has no clients, they still have hours available for their own in-house, entrepreneurial products.
2. Bootstrapping a passive-income web business. I coded a Ruby on Rails application to sell law notes following my law degree. By following the advice here, I figured out how to market it with SEO and AdWords. Much to my amazement, it ended up providing for all my financial needs for over 7 years, sometimes with as little as 4 hours work a month. (Obviously there was a huge upfront investment in getting to that stage.) I've got a YouTube video where I talk more about how I came up with the MVP and what the first few months were like, in case this is a path you're considering too
Your employer can block you but only if they have a really solid reason, and "we have to hire another person to make up the difference" won't fly. If you want to go the other way (back to full-time) your employer can say no.
So -- if this is your long-term plan and you want to be employed you might consider going to such a country, and doing a year or so of full-time first.
Anecdotally, I was seriously considering switching to half time pre-plague so I could do a PhD. Would have been trivial to get it approved, but I have a lot of seniority; you might have to fight for it if you're new. But at least in Germany, it's your right as a worker, not a privilege from your employer. I would expect it's like that in much of the EU.
Sometimes you have to ask: https://twitter.com/shl/status/1300848723182776322
Ended up divorcing my wife after spending 4 days a week at home with her, so wouldn't recommend it, but no professional problems.
It's not unheard of just uncommon.
The biggest drawback is that you feel less belonging and you aren't always there for all the decisions. At certain times I am OK with that.
Has been no issue at all. Never has been.
What I do see with my 3on/4off colleagues (usually students) is that they lack any sort of continuity in their work. Not enough time to tackle larger problems in one go and always missing out on how the smaller pieces fit together. On top of that a lot off friction when handing things off, etc.
Surely it can be done better, etc etc.
Look for small companies. Startups, small businesses, anyone who needs a developer but can't afford a full time employee. This can especially work out if you are a senior developer whose 20 hours are often more valuable than 40 hours of a junior dev.
When I brought it up to my manager, I told her very specifically _why_ I wanted to reduce my hours - I wanted to spend more time on other projects (specifically musical projects) - and she was totally open to it. If you really feel like you need more time for other pursuits, and you are lucky enough to work at a good company where your manager has your best interests at heart, it shouldn’t be an issue.
Plus, hiring and training new employees is an expensive pain in the ass.
In other countries I'm aware of it's probably not that common, except when you're really senior in your domain and have unique skills.
The employee handbook lays out opportunity to take x% of your current hours for x% of your current pay. If you'd be happy working 4x8s and 80% salary + 80% bonus works for you? As long as your manager doesn't object, go for it.
I think this is a great benefit to offer. Abstractly, I imagine that the system means that once you hit an income threshold you're happy with, a 10% raise immediately gets converted into 10% less hours per week. You never retire, just get asymptotically close to doing so.
Wife has been working nominally 4 days a week at the G of FAANG for several years. Prorated to 80% of the salary. Management has repeatedly stated that they expect far more than 40hrs/week from a full-timer, so an 80%-timer better turn in at least 40+ hours. Which largely defeats the intended benefit of doing a 4 days week.
