It's not necessarily an impossible idea to live okay with 80% of a salary, especially a tech one. (Unless you live someplace really expensive, perhaps, but Sili

It's not necessarily an impossible idea to live okay with 80% of a salary, especially a tech one. (Unless you live someplace really expensive, perhaps, but Silicon Valley isn't the only place with tech jobs.) I don't really know what would be so uncomfortable about that that you'd want to avoid it altogether. As to whether it should be the same as someone else doing either hours... that shouldn't depend on the number of hours but on how much and how valuable work they get done. You probably don't pay exactly the same to everyone even at 100%. Seriously, I used to do ~30-hour weeks for a while. Got paid accordingly. Of course I'd like the total salary to reflect the fact that I was still fairly productive, but I still don't see what the problem there would be as long as I was happy and the employer was happy. Both apparently were.