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What you're doing (only mentioning you want part-time after you get offer) is a good first step. More suggestions: 1. You're underselling yourself in this page

What you're doing (only mentioning you want part-time after you get offer) is a good first step. More suggestions: 1. You're underselling yourself in this page, so you might be doing that in your interviews too. E.g. "SALE! For a limited time only - 40% off!" Yes, it's a joke, but you don't want to make jokes about how you're cheap when you're looking for a job. 2. Let's say you talk to company A, they give you offer for 100% time, you say "can I have 60%?" and they say "no". Don't walk away. Instead, say "let me think about that for a week or two." Now, when the next week you get offer from company B, you can say "I have an offer from another company, but I like you more... maybe we can work something out. How about 60%?" Having that extra offer makes you seem more valuable. 3. Don't give up. Sometime this takes a while, and if you treat this as something you're practicing, every interview you do you will help you improve. (I also wrote a book about negotiating a 3-day weekend; 60% is harder, but it's the same basic advice: https://codewithoutrules.com/3dayweekend/ https://codewithoutrules.com/3dayweekend/)

gregkerzhner 7y ago
6 years ago (pretty early in my career) I was working for a small consulting company in San Fransisco and negotiated a 4 day workweek for a paycut (as well as going remote). The schedule was awesome, but I did see one big downside - you inherently start falling behind the full time employees. Everyone else is working full time, so they tend to accomplish more than you. Also, you end up missing out on important meetings that will inevitably happen on your day off. Over time, when important projects came up, they would not be given to me since I would deliver them slower and also sometimes didn't have background on them since I missed meetings where they were discussed. Eventually I quit out of boredom and career stagnation. I am curious if you experienced any of these things, how you handled them, or how you managed to avoid them. Now, I find that the model that works better for me is to work full time, but take big (many month) breaks between projects. I would still love to work 4 days a week though, just didn't work out for me in practice.
- itamarst 7y ago
  What you're describing are symptoms of not-so-great management, basically. Similar problems will occur if you're the only remote employee. And to be fair not-so-great management is fairly common. I actually think if you work less you can and often will learn to become more productive (https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/02/11/working-long-hours/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/02/11/working-long-hours/). But—a priori one would expect you to accomplish 80% of what others do, and that should be fine with a good manager. So some ideas: * You want to choose your day off so there isn't conflict with important meetings. If important meetings happen randomly, yes, this can be an issue. * Become more productive. That is, produce more within the limits of your time. A lot of this is attitude—"I have limited time, how do I get this done more efficiently?" Sometimes that means spending more time planning! I talk a bit about that here: https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/ and https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/10/10/beyond-senior-software-engineer/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/10/10/beyond-senior-softwa... and https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/05/20/staying-focused/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/05/20/staying-focused/, in a variety of different approaches. And other articles on my site. * Get a job someplace with good management. They do exist. * If there's a variety of tasks, focus on ones where you can have high impact without requirement for fast turnaround. E.g. I did this at one job where there was the "we need this tool tomorrow!!!" tasks, but also the "if we don't get this algorithm working in 6 months, all this work is wasted". So I took on the algorithm, because a lot of the work was _thinking_, instead of desperately churning out code.

gregkerzhner 7y ago

6 years ago (pretty early in my career) I was working for a small consulting company in San Fransisco and negotiated a 4 day workweek for a paycut (as well as going remote). The schedule was awesome, but I did see one big downside - you inherently start falling behind the full time employees. Everyone else is working full time, so they tend to accomplish more than you. Also, you end up missing out on important meetings that will inevitably happen on your day off. Over time, when important projects came up, they would not be given to me since I would deliver them slower and also sometimes didn't have background on them since I missed meetings where they were discussed. Eventually I quit out of boredom and career stagnation. I am curious if you experienced any of these things, how you handled them, or how you managed to avoid them. Now, I find that the model that works better for me is to work full time, but take big (many month) breaks between projects. I would still love to work 4 days a week though, just didn't work out for me in practice.

itamarst 7y ago
What you're describing are symptoms of not-so-great management, basically. Similar problems will occur if you're the only remote employee. And to be fair not-so-great management is fairly common. I actually think if you work less you can and often will learn to become more productive (https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/02/11/working-long-hours/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/02/11/working-long-hours/). But—a priori one would expect you to accomplish 80% of what others do, and that should be fine with a good manager. So some ideas: * You want to choose your day off so there isn't conflict with important meetings. If important meetings happen randomly, yes, this can be an issue. * Become more productive. That is, produce more within the limits of your time. A lot of this is attitude—"I have limited time, how do I get this done more efficiently?" Sometimes that means spending more time planning! I talk a bit about that here: https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/ and https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/10/10/beyond-senior-software-engineer/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/10/10/beyond-senior-softwa... and https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/05/20/staying-focused/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/05/20/staying-focused/, in a variety of different approaches. And other articles on my site. * Get a job someplace with good management. They do exist. * If there's a variety of tasks, focus on ones where you can have high impact without requirement for fast turnaround. E.g. I did this at one job where there was the "we need this tool tomorrow!!!" tasks, but also the "if we don't get this algorithm working in 6 months, all this work is wasted". So I took on the algorithm, because a lot of the work was _thinking_, instead of desperately churning out code.