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Yup. Did it. I'm so fortunate to have been able to afford it, and it's been awesome. When my first child was born, I dropped down to 3 days a week, at 60% pa

Yup. Did it. I'm so fortunate to have been able to afford it, and it's been awesome. When my first child was born, I dropped down to 3 days a week, at 60% pay/vesting/etc., but full medical (Google was awesome about it). After a few years, I moved to a new position that I felt really passionate about (Makani at Google[x]), and went up to 4 days a week to make that possible. After a few years there and the birth of another child, I left Alphabet and now work 2 days a week at Elemeno Health (who are hiring for a full time Lead Engineer, BTW; see https://angel.co/company/elemeno-health/jobs https://angel.co/company/elemeno-health/jobs). It's really life-changing. I've been able to be a much more involved parent than I ever could have working full time. My wife also works part-time [more like 80%] and it's such a big plus. If you want to try it, and can find a supporting company, true work-life balance is amazing. You may have to pick the right projects, that are well-suited to a reduced duty cycle, but with the right fit, it works great.

bwb 7y ago
That is awesome, thank you for sharing! Since you mentioned picking the right projects... if other people are doing 5 days a week, how do you find the right project and stay on top of it if you are out 1 or 2 days a week?
- uranium 7y ago
  The projects that worked best for me at 60% were those that involved lots of independent work. I'd find something big that the team needed doing, that was important but not urgent--the kind of stuff that always gets put off until too late. Then I'd go off for a few months and come back with a prototype for approval. When it got through review, I'd go off again and make it solid, write all the tests, develop a staging strategy to get the parts in, etc. Once it was in, I'd find another project. I did a couple of really big things that each took 10-18 months that way. The minuses of part-time work are pretty obvious: you have fewer work hours per week, but the same amount of overhead; you're harder to reach, since you've effectively got longer weekends; people aren't really sure if you're committed to the project or just slacking off. However there are also pluses. The biggest one is that you have more mulling-problems-over-in-the-shower hours per work hour, which can make your work hours a lot more productive. A similar one is that if you're ever waiting on back-and-forth with other folks for information, approval, code reviews, etc., you get more hours of those per work hour as well. Another is that you take far fewer vacation and sick days. When my usual schedule was M-W, if I or a child was sick on a Monday, I'd just work Thursday to make it up. And I never needed a vacation day to take a long weekend, get shopping done during working hours, go to the doctor, or anything like that. Communication with your coworkers is key, so that they know what to expect from you. And be sure to work within your company's culture. If you'd answer an email on the weekend, then you should on your day off. But it goes both ways: they shouldn't regularly ask you to come in on a day off if they're not asking others to come in on the weekend.
  - bwb 7y ago
    Thank you so much for sharing!
zer0sand0nes 7y ago
How does that work? Do u have to build a large reputation in that company so that they let you do whatever you want? Or do you apply for these 2 days a week jobs that offer medical and all that?
- uranium 7y ago
  For my first part-time job, I'd been there long enough to have a solid reputation; I also had a fairly-new boss during what had been a super-productive time for me, so he'd really only seen great work from me. I'm sure he was afraid that I'd quit if I wasn't allowed to go part-time, although I was very careful not to say or even imply that. It was company policy that if you worked at least 50% time, you got full medical. They had standard procedures and forms for it, but still, it was pretty rare. You needed approval up to VP level IIRC. My boss was a director, so that took care of two levels of approval to start with, and his boss [who didn't know me well] trusted his opinion, so it was approved pretty fast, on a see-how-it-goes basis. It went well, so I stayed at 60% for about 3 years, before deciding I wanted to move on. I don't know how you'd get a job at Google at that duty cycle from the outside; I did hear of one person coming in at 80%, but it's got to be a hard sell. The 40% job I'm working now was a pretty special case in a number of ways. I was already an adviser of the company before working there. I then started working at 40% for stock and minimum wage, since I didn't need paying for a while and they couldn't afford me at the time anyway. When I'd vested out the stock, just as my COBRA ran out, we negotiated that my salary would go up to maintain the same total comp, but then down by 60% of the cost of medical, and they'd cover the other 40%. You can do these things at small startups; everything's negotiable. At a big company, it's going to be a lot less flexible.

bwb 7y ago

That is awesome, thank you for sharing! Since you mentioned picking the right projects... if other people are doing 5 days a week, how do you find the right project and stay on top of it if you are out 1 or 2 days a week?

uranium 7y ago
The projects that worked best for me at 60% were those that involved lots of independent work. I'd find something big that the team needed doing, that was important but not urgent--the kind of stuff that always gets put off until too late. Then I'd go off for a few months and come back with a prototype for approval. When it got through review, I'd go off again and make it solid, write all the tests, develop a staging strategy to get the parts in, etc. Once it was in, I'd find another project. I did a couple of really big things that each took 10-18 months that way. The minuses of part-time work are pretty obvious: you have fewer work hours per week, but the same amount of overhead; you're harder to reach, since you've effectively got longer weekends; people aren't really sure if you're committed to the project or just slacking off. However there are also pluses. The biggest one is that you have more mulling-problems-over-in-the-shower hours per work hour, which can make your work hours a lot more productive. A similar one is that if you're ever waiting on back-and-forth with other folks for information, approval, code reviews, etc., you get more hours of those per work hour as well. Another is that you take far fewer vacation and sick days. When my usual schedule was M-W, if I or a child was sick on a Monday, I'd just work Thursday to make it up. And I never needed a vacation day to take a long weekend, get shopping done during working hours, go to the doctor, or anything like that. Communication with your coworkers is key, so that they know what to expect from you. And be sure to work within your company's culture. If you'd answer an email on the weekend, then you should on your day off. But it goes both ways: they shouldn't regularly ask you to come in on a day off if they're not asking others to come in on the weekend.
- bwb 7y ago
  Thank you so much for sharing!

zer0sand0nes 7y ago

How does that work? Do u have to build a large reputation in that company so that they let you do whatever you want? Or do you apply for these 2 days a week jobs that offer medical and all that?

uranium 7y ago
For my first part-time job, I'd been there long enough to have a solid reputation; I also had a fairly-new boss during what had been a super-productive time for me, so he'd really only seen great work from me. I'm sure he was afraid that I'd quit if I wasn't allowed to go part-time, although I was very careful not to say or even imply that. It was company policy that if you worked at least 50% time, you got full medical. They had standard procedures and forms for it, but still, it was pretty rare. You needed approval up to VP level IIRC. My boss was a director, so that took care of two levels of approval to start with, and his boss [who didn't know me well] trusted his opinion, so it was approved pretty fast, on a see-how-it-goes basis. It went well, so I stayed at 60% for about 3 years, before deciding I wanted to move on. I don't know how you'd get a job at Google at that duty cycle from the outside; I did hear of one person coming in at 80%, but it's got to be a hard sell. The 40% job I'm working now was a pretty special case in a number of ways. I was already an adviser of the company before working there. I then started working at 40% for stock and minimum wage, since I didn't need paying for a while and they couldn't afford me at the time anyway. When I'd vested out the stock, just as my COBRA ran out, we negotiated that my salary would go up to maintain the same total comp, but then down by 60% of the cost of medical, and they'd cover the other 40%. You can do these things at small startups; everything's negotiable. At a big company, it's going to be a lot less flexible.