I am meeting all my targets so it's fine.
Easy-peasy.
However actual freedom came through building my own things. Before I build something I always ask myself if I could leave this project for a month without it suffering, so I plan my freedom in with automations. Many many projects later some worked out.
It's really common, it's so common that the average work week here is 35/h.
Most people I know work the default 40h, but as people get older they typically opt-in to work part-time.
So if you aren't from Germany, one thing you can consider is moving here. It has a good/stable tech job market. Salaries are nowhere as close to the US, but I'm sure you'll be a more interesting person after a few years here, living a more cultural diverse experience.
“You must offer your part‑time staff the same employment conditions as full-time workers, including pay, leave, notice periods and other rights and benefits linked to their employment. The employment conditions should be applied on a pro-rata basis compared to full time workers. For example, if a part-time worker works half the hours of a full-time worker, they should receive half the amount of annual leave.
[…]
Whenever possible, you should try to accommodate requests from your employees if they want to change their working schedules, such as:
- transferring from full-time to part-time
- transferring from part-time to full-time
- increasing their working hours
You cannot dismiss an employee if they refuse to transfer from part-time to full-time work or vice versa.“*
I initially dropped to 4 days/week in lieu of a payrise (comp remained the same). Did that for a while and since then I've been working 2-4 days/week (3 right now)
It helped that it was a small company and I had been working there for 5+ years, not sure how I'd go about finding a part time software job otherwise. Everything is negotiable though.
In the US there are likely medical benefit and retirement account requirements for working X hours per week, I think its 32 typically but check with HR or if your place has an employee manual it should be clearly spelled out. To phrase that another way - you may lose medical coverage and/or 401k match depending on the "hours" you work. Scary quotes is because you are likely still salary and not hourly.
and being over 40?
For the past 7 years I’ve worked around 1200 hours per year on average
If you have been in FAANG or part of startup that exploded or went through IPO, then you value time.
This is unfortunate but this is the truth.
Many of my own life choices have been to minimize monthly costs in order to invest time and money to build more freedom for myself (i.e. own things that make money). I never had savings back then, but I had just enough for my 'simple' life. Instead of saving money I invested time.
It sure depends where you are. But I am sure most young people in tech , before family, before children, could easily afford working a day less when they optimize something else.
2. Gaps between jobs.
I am looking into how I cam earn $200 plus/h consulting (double if I need to market to find work).
Then 20h/w is enough.
* Increase your skills. I spend a lot of time writing ambitious personal software. I have learned to measure things and challenge common assumptions from that personal software. Time and effort are different on personal projects because you aren’t getting paid, so you learn to minimize tech debt and time waste to maximize for learning and experimentation. At the day job you just do the tasks assigned how they want you to do them. I always try to hide my personal resourcefulness and criticality and just fit in, but given enough time employers will always see that you struggle less and are severely under utilized.
* Be extremely gifted at written communication and detail orientation. Nothing increases your free time like pushing back on incomplete ideas and assumption elimination.
The bottom line is that if you want to spend 7 hours of your work day watching television or playing games then you need to get all your work done in less time, ensure clarity around your assignments, and ensure management values you enough to provide you increased flexibility.
