13 ms·

Salary is only roughly half the cost of employing someone, so while a 25% salary reduction for 25% fewer hours is fair for you, the employer is not seeing a 25%

Salary is only roughly half the cost of employing someone, so while a 25% salary reduction for 25% fewer hours is fair for you, the employer is not seeing a 25% cost reduction. They're not saving 25% on payroll taxes, benefits, workers comp, PTO, training time and management overhead. In fact, more people working fewer hours increases most of these costs.

aianus 10y ago
They're not losing 25% productivity either unless you're incorrectly assuming output is linear to butt-hours.
- justin_vanw 10y ago
  It really depends, but I could tell a story that is pretty convincing that says they will lose more than 25%. Lets say you get to work, sit down, and you veg out for 30 minutes to kindof ease into the zone. Then you get going on your project, and it takes another hour or so to get fully up to speed, track down a failing test that someone committed, whatever. Then in the afternoon, you chat with a co-worker for half an hour after lunch. Now you have 6 hours of productivity in an 8 hour day, but 4 hours in a 6 hour day. The main point being that there may be some 'fixed cost' things that don't scale up or down so much.
  - douche 10y ago
    Throw a sprinkling of strategically placed meetings, an "Agile" standup, and a smattering of impromptu "hallway chats" into either the 6 or 8 hour day, and you have 0 hours of production either way...
    - tracker1 10y ago
      This++ ... I know it's hard, but would love for anything beyond a 15-minute stand up be limited to one day a week for developers.
    - busterarm 10y ago
      We got rid of most of that but then we went ahead and moved to a new office building where we're the first tenant. Every day is just the constant sound of construction and I'm finding it more and more necessary to work from home and maybe find a new job entirely. I have fantastic noise-cancelling headphones and they don't help a damn bit.
  - stephengillie 10y ago
    This is an argument for moving to a 4x 10-hour work-week. From there, you could work backwards using the same arguments as above.
    - douche 10y ago
      4x10 is probably the optimal 40 hour work week - particularly if you can set it up so that you have alternating Mondays and Fridays off, such that you can get a four-day weekend half the time.
      - eximius 10y ago
        Perhaps we should realize that different people work differently, yes? I, for one, would quit my job if I had to work 10 hours every day. I would not be able to stand it. It isn't that I don't like what I do, but I like what I do outside of work to not want to be there all the time!
        dingaling 10y ago
        You should consider the opportunity to have an entire uninterrupted day to pursue your hobbies, whilst most other people are at work. I found myself more personally productive on that one free day than in an entire month of 5x8-delimited evenings.
        eximius 10y ago
        If I'm not careful, I just end up playing video games. It's hard to be aware from 'the grind' long enough for me to be drawn back into my productive hobbies en force.
        VLM 10y ago
        From personal experience, being at work five eights vs four tens has very little impact on time away from home, like maybe one hour per day or something like that. While the five eights are sitting in their car for an extra 30 minutes during each rush hour commute, I'm sitting at my desk working. I suppose your local traffic patterns may vary. There are downsides. Less time commuting means less time listening to audiobooks and podcasts. Like many people, once my brain is fried I'm simply done for the day, doesn't matter if that frying happened at 9am or 7pm. So statistically a three hour staff meeting causes more total lost productivity for a ten-er than an eight-er. Scheduling people make sure meetings only happen during common time (uh, thanks?) When the weather is bad (blizzard or whatever) or go home sick a half day, obviously that's more expensive for a tener than an eighter. Of course that is balanced out, I'm more likely to have a sick day on my weekend than an eighter and if there's a blizzard on my weekend I obviously don't miss any work.
  - omegaham 10y ago
    This is why we do 12-hour shifts at my workplace. It takes about two hours to get into the groove, and the other 8-9 hours of work are productive. Doing an 8-hour day means that you get 5 hours of decent work, which is not viable for the output that we need. With 12-hour shifts, we work 3-4 days a week and get more done than people who work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. And we get overtime!
- tedyoung 10y ago
  Lots of companies assume exactly this.
  - eon1 10y ago
    Yep. It's politics, too. I recently got asked to stay longer at my job - not to do more work or be more productive, but because the apparent flexibility with which I approached my schedule was causing consternation among some nearby department (who are tied to their desks 8.5 hours a day). Why that is considered my problem, I've yet to find out..
sinneduy 10y ago
It still sounds like its an interesting thing to consider though. It sounds like what you're saying is that for it to be equitable for companies, it might have to be a 25% hour reduction for a 35-40% pay cut. But that is probably a lot less appealing to most programmers
maker1138 10y ago
This is why there needs to be less taxes and mandatory benefits. Counter-intuitively, these things work together to reduce the number of jobs and reduce worker flexibility and happiness.
- MandieD 10y ago
  Or completely the reverse - all mandatory benefits as a percentage of wages. We kind of, sort of do that in Germany (up to about 50k for health insurance, 90k for retirement, I think)
  - maker1138 10y ago
    How would increased taxes and mandatory benefits reduce the cost of employees? Increased employee costs make an employer less likely to take risks and produce pressure to hire less workers. Then a few workers gain at the expense of others not having a job at all. Why do you hate workers?
    - MandieD 10y ago
      It would make benefits a more constant cost per 1k paid to employee, making the cost per hour of a 30 Hr/wk employee closer to that of a 40 Hr/wk employee. Come to think of it, that's probably why I have so many colleagues on 20-32 Hr/wk contracts... Mostly, mothers of young children. But they're doing the same sort of technical work others on full time contracts are. Yay, Germany!
- Veratyr 10y ago
  I think the money just needs to be spent better. In Australia "taxes and mandatory benefits" on a $100k USD salary cost the employee ~30% in taxes and medicare levy and the employer ~5% payroll tax + ~10% superannuation (401k). In total, 1.15x the salary is being spent and of that, 0.69x goes to the employee. If the employer pays an extra 50% salary in the US, then 1.5x the salary is being spent but the employee only gets salary after tax, which (based on my payslip) is only ~0.65x salary. So the employee only gets 0.43x the total amount being spent. If the employer has a fairly generous 401k match that results in an extra ~10% going to the employee from that extra 50%, that's still only 0.50x the expense going to the employee. As someone who's lived in both countries, I don't really get anything extra in the US thanks to that cut. The health insurance seems to be the main thing people care about but I found healthcare in Australia to be cheaper and superior to the care I've had in the US (on PPO). I think the US needs to adopt single payer healthcare like the civilised world and work out its government spending and taxes a little better.
Harkins 10y ago
This is the correct answer, and I'm speaking as someone who got a large raise last week as I was forcibly switched from part time to full time. I'm working in a generally low-profit area and the numbers stopped working. I started it because I'd repeatedly burned out of full-time jobs. Working 3 days/week was a great 4.5 years for me, far more rewarding than the added salary I passed on could have been. Aside from lower work anxiety, I had time to write two books, give three conference talks, get engaged, get married, take up several hobbies, and enjoy life thoroughly. My work has been overwhelmingly better: I stay out of rabbit holes, I recognize deep patterns, I prioritize ruthlessly, I deliver the things my users didn't realize they need. It's not magic, it's just downtime for my unconscious to noodle around with problems without pressure. I think working part time is a hugely valuable experience for anyone who doesn't have a pressing need for dollars in the door (eg to pay off US medical bills or student loans). There are plenty of blogs out there on frugal living + investing (I recommend MrMoneyMustache and Bogleheads wiki), so you can live comfortably and still save significantly towards retirement. I can't argue the financial math of why it rarely works, but I'd do 3 or 4 days a week again in a heartbeat. (15 year dev, currently Rails/Django/Haskell, Chicago/Remote, peter@valent.io if anyone's looking.)
- lfowles 10y ago
  Sounds like my dream, how did you initially get into 3days/week? New job? Negotiated for it at an old job?
  - Harkins 10y ago
    Asked for it in the initial interview. I thought I was going to give back a day in negotiation and do 4d/w, but it didn't come up. I figured I could always come back after and ask for more hours if I need the money or couldn't fill the time. I have heard of exactly two other devs at 3d/w in the last 5 years so I wouldn't pin any hopes on that, but there's plenty of people at 4d/w.
    - ishbits 10y ago
      I'm currently doing 2 days a week on a contract. It's a fixed monthly rate contract. When summer is over I'll likely move to 3 or 4 days a week (my choice). It's a sacrifice in money, not to mention the work is for a non-profit open source project. But it's relaxing.
mdasen 10y ago
In the US, they are saving 25% on payroll taxes. With paid time off, if they give you 15 days off of 6 hours a day vs 15 days off of 8 hours a day, it's 25% less paid time off (even though it's the same number of days).
- tracker1 10y ago
  Depending on the state, a lot of employer-side expenses are capped above a certain salary, most developers are well above that cap... so 25% less for you, doesn't mean 25% less for the employer.
mrfusion 10y ago
Disagree. Payroll taxes are a percentage so they would see a reduction. The employer would obviously offer less pto if you're not full time. And they'd offer less benefits.
ruler88 10y ago
Not to mention, for most engineering jobs, the onboarding/training process is long and expensive. Generally I think an engineer has negative productivity within the first 3 months of employment. So if an employer is willing to put down so much effort upfront for you to work there, you better to willing to work 100%.
- jchrisa 10y ago
  I hear this perspective but in my experience hiring people who've been pushing an open source project forward already, it can be more like unleashing a coiled spring. They'll bring code and question the culture in productive ways.
- Yokohiii 10y ago
  This is a very valid point. But what stops both parties to agree on 40h weeks during onboarding phase and then shift to the reduced work time?
- flukus 10y ago
  Not sure about engineering in general, but I find places that expect 3 months for a programmer to become productive are a huge red flag. A programmer should be able to checkout, build, run in minutes and then to start fixing bugs on day 1.
  - hibikir 10y ago
    Companies often feel that they are moving fast when they are setting up huge tech debt pits and building custom infra that will be hard to learn quickly. Then they wonder why they are not being successful with all the new hires, given how productive the old timers are. Welcome to the midsized, pre IPO startup.
  - asveikau 10y ago
    Building, running, and nominally fixing bugs (are you tracking regressions well?) is not always the same as being productive. It's important to not treat the work as fungible units that go from developer to developer equally, without accounting for getting used to the code base, problem space, etc.
svantana 10y ago
If this was the main reason, then surely it would only be a matter of negotiation on salary? Out of experience I can tell you that this is not the case, most companies won't even discuss it. I have asked for half time at a half dozen places, and actually got it at two (those that accepted were not pleased but they really had no choice as people with my skill set are hard to find). In my experience, the real reasons are (in order of importance): 1. It would hurt morale (or so they fear) 2. It complicates booking meetings and such 3. They suspect that you're doing something creative on your "other time" and thus they don't have your "full attention"
criley2 10y ago
"They're not saving 25% on payroll taxes, benefits, workers comp, PTO, training time and management overhead. In fact, more people working fewer hours increases most of these costs." * Payroll taxes: OF COURSE they're saving the same amount on taxes! It's not like they pre-pay taxes on an assumed amount. It's a % of what they pay you. If they pay you less, they pay less taxes on your behalf. * Workers Comp: Firms play insanely low rates on workers comp for programmers, and workers comp is generally calculated at (RATE for job class) * ($100 payroll allocated to job class). If you pay the employee less, your workers comp premium decreases at the same rate. * PTO: If the company wishes to offer full time PTO benefits to a part timer, they may, but many businesses have separate PTO policies for full and part time employees, including slower accrual for part timers. Training time and management overhead are probably the real costs here. > In fact, more people working fewer hours increases most of these costs. More people working fewer hours could also increase productivity (that's the point of this discussion) thus could increase revenue and profit, as well. If you pay 10% more and make 20% more revenue, that's a GOOD DEAL
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > > They're not saving 25% on payroll taxes, benefits, workers comp, PTO, training time and management overhead. In fact, more people working fewer hours increases most of these costs." > Payroll taxes: OF COURSE they're saving the same amount on taxes! No, they aren't, in the US. > It's a % of what they pay you. Not a flat percentage; the social security portion of payroll tax has an income cap (the smaller Medicare portion does not), which is less than what most programmers make, so payroll taxes do not go down proportional to income for workers who are above the cap to start with.
  - criley2 10y ago
    Are you being serious? The cap is $118,500, you think most programmers make more than $118,500 per year?
    - fennecfoxen 10y ago
      In California? I'd hope that a typical developer makes around that much.
epicureanideal 10y ago
So why don't they hire fewer people for more hours (at higher pay)?
- Spooky23 10y ago
  They do. Minus the pay. It's called downsizing. The current trend is to have a strategy/build/run model. The "run" people keep the lights on and run as lean as possible. Builders build stuff -- code and infrastructure. Code is high value, off the shelf stuff is going cloud. Strategy is architecture and mapping back to business needs and dollars. You pay as little as possible to run. You pay whatever it takes to build. As cloud tools mature and standardize, costs will drop here. Strategy is the governance process -- light in a startup, heavy in a bank.
  - hueving 10y ago
    >You pay as little as possible to run If that were the case people wouldn't be using 'the cloud'. For any non trivial size of compute load that isn't on demand, paying aws or gce is flushing money down the toilet.
    - Spooky23 10y ago
      Depends on lots of stuff. Companies think short term, and will perceive savings if they can avoid making capital investments in datacenters or long term leases.
keefe 10y ago
it shouldn't be about the hours you put in, it should be the product you produce
jasonkester 10y ago
Indeed. This is another of the myriad reasons why developers should always negotiate employment as a 1099 contract. It takes this rationalization off the table. If they're paying for the hours you work and nothing else, it makes it a lot easier to quantify the value of "4 days of you" vs. "5 days of you each week". And of course, the laws that caused all that trouble for Microsoft in the 90s around the distinction between contractor and employee help a bit, since it now needs to be the contractor rather than the employee who decides when and how the actual work takes place.
jondubois 10y ago
I guess that's why contracting is a win-win situation since contractors have to take care of their own taxes and they typically get paid double or more (which usually more than offsets the taxes for the contractor). Contracting feels like you're only selling your time. With full-time work, you're also selling a big chunk of your freedom (which you don't get paid for unless you get % equity in the company).
- kspaans 10y ago
  Contractors don't get holiday or sick leave though.
  - jondubois 10y ago
    Meh, that's peanuts. You could take 5 months of holidays each year as a contractor and still earn more at the end of the year. Especially in places like London (UK) or Sydney (Australia). Senior software dev contractors in London can easily earn USD $800 per day. Also, when working full time, if you take a sick day, your boss might look down on you and ask probing questions like "Are you feeling better?" to try to check that you were really sick (and to discourage you from taking more sick leave in the future). If you're a contractor and you take a day off (for whatever reason), nobody will say anything - It's your business - You didn't get paid. It feels a lot more natural and it eases a lot of tensions in the workplace.
subhobroto 10y ago
Unless the work product is directly related to the number of hours put in (say cutting trees), the concept of fairness is a bit skewed. I wrote a very long comment expanding on this : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12168363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12168363

aianus 10y ago

They're not losing 25% productivity either unless you're incorrectly assuming output is linear to butt-hours.

justin_vanw 10y ago
It really depends, but I could tell a story that is pretty convincing that says they will lose more than 25%. Lets say you get to work, sit down, and you veg out for 30 minutes to kindof ease into the zone. Then you get going on your project, and it takes another hour or so to get fully up to speed, track down a failing test that someone committed, whatever. Then in the afternoon, you chat with a co-worker for half an hour after lunch. Now you have 6 hours of productivity in an 8 hour day, but 4 hours in a 6 hour day. The main point being that there may be some 'fixed cost' things that don't scale up or down so much.
- douche 10y ago
  Throw a sprinkling of strategically placed meetings, an "Agile" standup, and a smattering of impromptu "hallway chats" into either the 6 or 8 hour day, and you have 0 hours of production either way...
  - tracker1 10y ago
    This++ ... I know it's hard, but would love for anything beyond a 15-minute stand up be limited to one day a week for developers.
  - busterarm 10y ago
    We got rid of most of that but then we went ahead and moved to a new office building where we're the first tenant. Every day is just the constant sound of construction and I'm finding it more and more necessary to work from home and maybe find a new job entirely. I have fantastic noise-cancelling headphones and they don't help a damn bit.
- stephengillie 10y ago
  This is an argument for moving to a 4x 10-hour work-week. From there, you could work backwards using the same arguments as above.
  - douche 10y ago
    4x10 is probably the optimal 40 hour work week - particularly if you can set it up so that you have alternating Mondays and Fridays off, such that you can get a four-day weekend half the time.
    - eximius 10y ago
      Perhaps we should realize that different people work differently, yes? I, for one, would quit my job if I had to work 10 hours every day. I would not be able to stand it. It isn't that I don't like what I do, but I like what I do outside of work to not want to be there all the time!
      - dingaling 10y ago
        You should consider the opportunity to have an entire uninterrupted day to pursue your hobbies, whilst most other people are at work. I found myself more personally productive on that one free day than in an entire month of 5x8-delimited evenings.
        eximius 10y ago
        If I'm not careful, I just end up playing video games. It's hard to be aware from 'the grind' long enough for me to be drawn back into my productive hobbies en force.
      - VLM 10y ago
        From personal experience, being at work five eights vs four tens has very little impact on time away from home, like maybe one hour per day or something like that. While the five eights are sitting in their car for an extra 30 minutes during each rush hour commute, I'm sitting at my desk working. I suppose your local traffic patterns may vary. There are downsides. Less time commuting means less time listening to audiobooks and podcasts. Like many people, once my brain is fried I'm simply done for the day, doesn't matter if that frying happened at 9am or 7pm. So statistically a three hour staff meeting causes more total lost productivity for a ten-er than an eight-er. Scheduling people make sure meetings only happen during common time (uh, thanks?) When the weather is bad (blizzard or whatever) or go home sick a half day, obviously that's more expensive for a tener than an eighter. Of course that is balanced out, I'm more likely to have a sick day on my weekend than an eighter and if there's a blizzard on my weekend I obviously don't miss any work.
- omegaham 10y ago
  This is why we do 12-hour shifts at my workplace. It takes about two hours to get into the groove, and the other 8-9 hours of work are productive. Doing an 8-hour day means that you get 5 hours of decent work, which is not viable for the output that we need. With 12-hour shifts, we work 3-4 days a week and get more done than people who work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. And we get overtime!
tedyoung 10y ago
Lots of companies assume exactly this.
- eon1 10y ago
  Yep. It's politics, too. I recently got asked to stay longer at my job - not to do more work or be more productive, but because the apparent flexibility with which I approached my schedule was causing consternation among some nearby department (who are tied to their desks 8.5 hours a day). Why that is considered my problem, I've yet to find out..

sinneduy 10y ago

It still sounds like its an interesting thing to consider though. It sounds like what you're saying is that for it to be equitable for companies, it might have to be a 25% hour reduction for a 35-40% pay cut. But that is probably a lot less appealing to most programmers

maker1138 10y ago

This is why there needs to be less taxes and mandatory benefits. Counter-intuitively, these things work together to reduce the number of jobs and reduce worker flexibility and happiness.

MandieD 10y ago
Or completely the reverse - all mandatory benefits as a percentage of wages. We kind of, sort of do that in Germany (up to about 50k for health insurance, 90k for retirement, I think)
- maker1138 10y ago
  How would increased taxes and mandatory benefits reduce the cost of employees? Increased employee costs make an employer less likely to take risks and produce pressure to hire less workers. Then a few workers gain at the expense of others not having a job at all. Why do you hate workers?
  - MandieD 10y ago
    It would make benefits a more constant cost per 1k paid to employee, making the cost per hour of a 30 Hr/wk employee closer to that of a 40 Hr/wk employee. Come to think of it, that's probably why I have so many colleagues on 20-32 Hr/wk contracts... Mostly, mothers of young children. But they're doing the same sort of technical work others on full time contracts are. Yay, Germany!
Veratyr 10y ago
I think the money just needs to be spent better. In Australia "taxes and mandatory benefits" on a $100k USD salary cost the employee ~30% in taxes and medicare levy and the employer ~5% payroll tax + ~10% superannuation (401k). In total, 1.15x the salary is being spent and of that, 0.69x goes to the employee. If the employer pays an extra 50% salary in the US, then 1.5x the salary is being spent but the employee only gets salary after tax, which (based on my payslip) is only ~0.65x salary. So the employee only gets 0.43x the total amount being spent. If the employer has a fairly generous 401k match that results in an extra ~10% going to the employee from that extra 50%, that's still only 0.50x the expense going to the employee. As someone who's lived in both countries, I don't really get anything extra in the US thanks to that cut. The health insurance seems to be the main thing people care about but I found healthcare in Australia to be cheaper and superior to the care I've had in the US (on PPO). I think the US needs to adopt single payer healthcare like the civilised world and work out its government spending and taxes a little better.

Harkins 10y ago

This is the correct answer, and I'm speaking as someone who got a large raise last week as I was forcibly switched from part time to full time. I'm working in a generally low-profit area and the numbers stopped working. I started it because I'd repeatedly burned out of full-time jobs. Working 3 days/week was a great 4.5 years for me, far more rewarding than the added salary I passed on could have been. Aside from lower work anxiety, I had time to write two books, give three conference talks, get engaged, get married, take up several hobbies, and enjoy life thoroughly. My work has been overwhelmingly better: I stay out of rabbit holes, I recognize deep patterns, I prioritize ruthlessly, I deliver the things my users didn't realize they need. It's not magic, it's just downtime for my unconscious to noodle around with problems without pressure. I think working part time is a hugely valuable experience for anyone who doesn't have a pressing need for dollars in the door (eg to pay off US medical bills or student loans). There are plenty of blogs out there on frugal living + investing (I recommend MrMoneyMustache and Bogleheads wiki), so you can live comfortably and still save significantly towards retirement. I can't argue the financial math of why it rarely works, but I'd do 3 or 4 days a week again in a heartbeat. (15 year dev, currently Rails/Django/Haskell, Chicago/Remote, peter@valent.io if anyone's looking.)

lfowles 10y ago
Sounds like my dream, how did you initially get into 3days/week? New job? Negotiated for it at an old job?
- Harkins 10y ago
  Asked for it in the initial interview. I thought I was going to give back a day in negotiation and do 4d/w, but it didn't come up. I figured I could always come back after and ask for more hours if I need the money or couldn't fill the time. I have heard of exactly two other devs at 3d/w in the last 5 years so I wouldn't pin any hopes on that, but there's plenty of people at 4d/w.
  - ishbits 10y ago
    I'm currently doing 2 days a week on a contract. It's a fixed monthly rate contract. When summer is over I'll likely move to 3 or 4 days a week (my choice). It's a sacrifice in money, not to mention the work is for a non-profit open source project. But it's relaxing.

mdasen 10y ago

In the US, they are saving 25% on payroll taxes. With paid time off, if they give you 15 days off of 6 hours a day vs 15 days off of 8 hours a day, it's 25% less paid time off (even though it's the same number of days).

tracker1 10y ago
Depending on the state, a lot of employer-side expenses are capped above a certain salary, most developers are well above that cap... so 25% less for you, doesn't mean 25% less for the employer.

mrfusion 10y ago

Disagree. Payroll taxes are a percentage so they would see a reduction. The employer would obviously offer less pto if you're not full time. And they'd offer less benefits.

ruler88 10y ago

Not to mention, for most engineering jobs, the onboarding/training process is long and expensive. Generally I think an engineer has negative productivity within the first 3 months of employment. So if an employer is willing to put down so much effort upfront for you to work there, you better to willing to work 100%.

jchrisa 10y ago
I hear this perspective but in my experience hiring people who've been pushing an open source project forward already, it can be more like unleashing a coiled spring. They'll bring code and question the culture in productive ways.
Yokohiii 10y ago
This is a very valid point. But what stops both parties to agree on 40h weeks during onboarding phase and then shift to the reduced work time?
flukus 10y ago
Not sure about engineering in general, but I find places that expect 3 months for a programmer to become productive are a huge red flag. A programmer should be able to checkout, build, run in minutes and then to start fixing bugs on day 1.
- hibikir 10y ago
  Companies often feel that they are moving fast when they are setting up huge tech debt pits and building custom infra that will be hard to learn quickly. Then they wonder why they are not being successful with all the new hires, given how productive the old timers are. Welcome to the midsized, pre IPO startup.
- asveikau 10y ago
  Building, running, and nominally fixing bugs (are you tracking regressions well?) is not always the same as being productive. It's important to not treat the work as fungible units that go from developer to developer equally, without accounting for getting used to the code base, problem space, etc.

svantana 10y ago

If this was the main reason, then surely it would only be a matter of negotiation on salary? Out of experience I can tell you that this is not the case, most companies won't even discuss it. I have asked for half time at a half dozen places, and actually got it at two (those that accepted were not pleased but they really had no choice as people with my skill set are hard to find). In my experience, the real reasons are (in order of importance): 1. It would hurt morale (or so they fear) 2. It complicates booking meetings and such 3. They suspect that you're doing something creative on your "other time" and thus they don't have your "full attention"

criley2 10y ago

"They're not saving 25% on payroll taxes, benefits, workers comp, PTO, training time and management overhead. In fact, more people working fewer hours increases most of these costs." * Payroll taxes: OF COURSE they're saving the same amount on taxes! It's not like they pre-pay taxes on an assumed amount. It's a % of what they pay you. If they pay you less, they pay less taxes on your behalf. * Workers Comp: Firms play insanely low rates on workers comp for programmers, and workers comp is generally calculated at (RATE for job class) * ($100 payroll allocated to job class). If you pay the employee less, your workers comp premium decreases at the same rate. * PTO: If the company wishes to offer full time PTO benefits to a part timer, they may, but many businesses have separate PTO policies for full and part time employees, including slower accrual for part timers. Training time and management overhead are probably the real costs here. > In fact, more people working fewer hours increases most of these costs. More people working fewer hours could also increase productivity (that's the point of this discussion) thus could increase revenue and profit, as well. If you pay 10% more and make 20% more revenue, that's a GOOD DEAL

dragonwriter 10y ago
> > They're not saving 25% on payroll taxes, benefits, workers comp, PTO, training time and management overhead. In fact, more people working fewer hours increases most of these costs." > Payroll taxes: OF COURSE they're saving the same amount on taxes! No, they aren't, in the US. > It's a % of what they pay you. Not a flat percentage; the social security portion of payroll tax has an income cap (the smaller Medicare portion does not), which is less than what most programmers make, so payroll taxes do not go down proportional to income for workers who are above the cap to start with.
- criley2 10y ago
  Are you being serious? The cap is $118,500, you think most programmers make more than $118,500 per year?
  - fennecfoxen 10y ago
    In California? I'd hope that a typical developer makes around that much.

epicureanideal 10y ago

So why don't they hire fewer people for more hours (at higher pay)?

Spooky23 10y ago
They do. Minus the pay. It's called downsizing. The current trend is to have a strategy/build/run model. The "run" people keep the lights on and run as lean as possible. Builders build stuff -- code and infrastructure. Code is high value, off the shelf stuff is going cloud. Strategy is architecture and mapping back to business needs and dollars. You pay as little as possible to run. You pay whatever it takes to build. As cloud tools mature and standardize, costs will drop here. Strategy is the governance process -- light in a startup, heavy in a bank.
- hueving 10y ago
  >You pay as little as possible to run If that were the case people wouldn't be using 'the cloud'. For any non trivial size of compute load that isn't on demand, paying aws or gce is flushing money down the toilet.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    Depends on lots of stuff. Companies think short term, and will perceive savings if they can avoid making capital investments in datacenters or long term leases.

keefe 10y ago

it shouldn't be about the hours you put in, it should be the product you produce

jasonkester 10y ago

Indeed. This is another of the myriad reasons why developers should always negotiate employment as a 1099 contract. It takes this rationalization off the table. If they're paying for the hours you work and nothing else, it makes it a lot easier to quantify the value of "4 days of you" vs. "5 days of you each week". And of course, the laws that caused all that trouble for Microsoft in the 90s around the distinction between contractor and employee help a bit, since it now needs to be the contractor rather than the employee who decides when and how the actual work takes place.

jondubois 10y ago

I guess that's why contracting is a win-win situation since contractors have to take care of their own taxes and they typically get paid double or more (which usually more than offsets the taxes for the contractor). Contracting feels like you're only selling your time. With full-time work, you're also selling a big chunk of your freedom (which you don't get paid for unless you get % equity in the company).

kspaans 10y ago
Contractors don't get holiday or sick leave though.
- jondubois 10y ago
  Meh, that's peanuts. You could take 5 months of holidays each year as a contractor and still earn more at the end of the year. Especially in places like London (UK) or Sydney (Australia). Senior software dev contractors in London can easily earn USD $800 per day. Also, when working full time, if you take a sick day, your boss might look down on you and ask probing questions like "Are you feeling better?" to try to check that you were really sick (and to discourage you from taking more sick leave in the future). If you're a contractor and you take a day off (for whatever reason), nobody will say anything - It's your business - You didn't get paid. It feels a lot more natural and it eases a lot of tensions in the workplace.

subhobroto 10y ago

Unless the work product is directly related to the number of hours put in (say cutting trees), the concept of fairness is a bit skewed. I wrote a very long comment expanding on this : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12168363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12168363