12 ms·

The really interesting thing here is the possibility of part-time work. I recently switched from full-time work to independent contracting, and have a single pa

The really interesting thing here is the possibility of part-time work. I recently switched from full-time work to independent contracting, and have a single part-time contract while looking for a second. Honestly, part-time contracting work is really, really nice. The pay is more than enough to live on and I have a ton of free time which I am devoting to rock climbing, finally writing a bunch of blog posts, and learning physics. Plus, honestly, I doubt I was doing more than four hours of "real" work a day while full time. If I could be fully remote and work part time, I would consider eventually rejoining Microsoft. There is a lot of hand-wringing over how fully remote workers get left behind but I've never been interested in moving beyond an IC level.

SkyPuncher 6y ago
Roughly 30 hours/week is my personal sweet spot. I did it on a contract for a while. I'm not sure my productivity was significantly impacted. It's really hard to actually sit down and focus for more than 6 hours productively.
ilaksh 6y ago
Except the most common instance of "part-time" work is actually full-time, just without benefits, and the majority of those jobs are not cushy expensive contracts with large American companies. They just call it part time because they aren't monitoring hours strictly. I probably should not bother trying to describe this here because almost no comes on HN and admits they aren't highly compensated.
x87678r 6y ago
health insurance is my big wish. 20 hrs/wk with health insurance I'd work for 1/3rd my salary. EDIT: I have a family like most people. EDIT2: I'm thinking about how insurance isn't as expensive as giving up more than that in salary, but maybe I need the security of steady work on the resume, sick leave and a job to lean on if things get tough.
- ahelwer 6y ago
  If you're single and willing to pay over $500/month you can get some pretty okay health insurance. Families throw a huge wrench in that plan though. Currently I'm just using COBRA. Nothing crystalizes support for medicare-for-all faster than ten seconds looking at the public health insurance marketplace.
  - animationwill 6y ago
    How long can you use COBRA for after leaving an employer? I tried to find that answer, but the info was conflicting on the Internet. Is it 18 months?
    - nabaraz 6y ago
      18 months is the standard. It goes like: Employee's quitting, termination or reduction in hours: 18 months Employee's divorce: 36 months It can be further extended based on other events like disability, partner's illness etc.
  - tayo42 6y ago
    Thats like making payments on a luxury car and not using it
  - popotamonga 6y ago
    How come its so expensive? The top top insurance in my european country is $100 and a pretty good is 30.
    - chefkoch 6y ago
      Where is that? In Germany i pay 480€ for a top notch private plan.
    - znpy 6y ago
      You're not accounting for, uhm... freedom. /s
    - 6y ago
jgalt212 6y ago
> The really interesting thing here is the possibility of part-time work. Part-time work at a big shop, for many returning to work new moms, can be more accurately described as squeeze 5 days of work into 3 days. I'm not saying that Microsoft cannot pull it off, but many other big shops (and even those that rate highly on such magazine prizes for working moms) have been extremely disingenuous with such claims. That being said, the full time benefits for part time work has been a real thing.
- btrettel 6y ago
  In another comment I mentioned the USPTO's part-time program: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24729649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24729649 I can say unequivocally that at the USPTO as a patent examiner you would not be expected to squeeze 5 days of work into however many days you work per week. You work a certain number of "production" hours and you are expected to get a certain amount of "count" per production hour. So, as the number of production hours you have decreases, your count expectations decrease proportionally as well.
btrettel 6y ago
I've been thinking about part-time work lately too, which makes me wonder: Which US companies/organizations offer part-time jobs with benefits? I work as a patent examiner right now and I noticed that the USPTO might let you switch to part-time with full benefits (that you pay more out of pocket for) after you reach GS-11. It requires approval, they have a limited number of slots for it, and the vast majority of the slots for it require a justification like parenting or eldercare. The minimum number of hours you can work per week is 16 in the program, and you can choose which days you work. To maximize federal holidays off, pick Monday and Thursday as work days. (I think examiners need to work Thursdays from 1-2 pm due to USPTO rules, and you also get Thanksgiving this way.) You can find some information about the USPTO's part-time program here: http://www.popa.org/about/work-life-balance/part-time-program/ http://www.popa.org/about/work-life-balance/part-time-progra... (The USPTO is also well-known for their work-from-home program.)
Sytten 6y ago
I agree with this so much. I have been working part time for almost a year now to rebuild a house and it has been very nice. It always seemed weird to me that people make such high salaries in tech but just don't value time as the main commodity of our lives. The reality is that if you move to a low CoL area and work part-time you will almost certainly be happier. But this doesn't mean you are idle the rest of the time. It means you can pursue what you love. We place way to much value in jobs as an end rather than as a mean to an end IMO. I tend to believe that the work week should have been reduced decades ago.
- jjav 6y ago
  > It always seemed weird to me that people make such high salaries in tech but just don't value time as the main commodity of our lives. It's not about valuing it, the problem is that finding jobs which allow part-time work is just about impossible. I'd give anything for a job where I can work 40% time for 40% salary, but those don't exist. My wife has managed to arrange 80% time for 80% pay at the G of FAANG for a couple years, but the company absolutely hates the arrangement and tries every opportunity to sabotage it so it's not that great. Also, management demands 40 hours of work for that 80% pay with the explanation that full-time employees are expected to work for a lot more than 40 hours.
  - 0xffff2 6y ago
    Stories like this remind me that maybe my low-six-figure salary in the bay area isn't that bad after all. I may be dramatically underpaid by FANNG standards, but I'm never asked to work overtime and I'm free to take PTO whenever I want.
    - balfirevic 6y ago
      I'm not from the US so I wouldn't know first hand, but I've read plenty of comments on HN from people who claim to be working for FAANG and just work normal 40 hour work weeks.
- hintymad 6y ago
woohoo7676 6y ago
I've also switched to part time IC this year, and it has been much better for my mental health. The ability to work on side projects or pursue hobbies with the extra time is definitely worth it for me over the extra pay.
luxurytent 6y ago
I’d love to get into this but I’ve found the results for contracts or part time roles on job pages is quite minimal. Can you recommend how to get started?
- brainbag 6y ago
  I've done a lot of IC dev work in my career of 20+ years, and I've moved cities often, so I had to frequently "start over" with reputation and networking. What I found to work best was that any time I entered a new market, I would find a local contractor organization (that already has a lot of contacts), and do short-term high-skill jobs for them for 3-6 months (for example, spending two weeks at a bank helping optimize one of their new internal services). Contractor organizations tend to work more with mid tier developers, but they get frequent requests for high skill jobs that they don't have the people resources for. This allowed me to build up a group of very happy local references which can then be leveraged for longer, better pay contracts. Once I had some references and a budding reputation, I'd go to networking events 2-3 times a week and talk to as many people as possible about the kind of work they do and I do. It's not uncommon to have two or three potential contract leads out of every event. After doing that for a month or two, my availability and rep would spread by word-of-mouth, and people would start contacting me directly for work, and I could be more selective about the jobs.
  - wayne_skylar 6y ago
    What would be an example of a "contractor organization"? I am interested working on contract but I live in NYC and here it seems like it's always contract-to-hire situation where they want someone long-term but are using the contract as a way to limit the damage if the hire doesn't work out. I'd love to find a series of 3-6 month contracts like you mention but have had little success.
    - brainbag 6y ago
      I've worked with all kinds and sizes, often a couple at the same time. Any temp or contract-to-hire agency that is willing to work with developers should work in my experience. If they're not used to working with developers, sometimes it can take a week or two of checking in regularly for them to find something. My experience was that they want to make money from your skills (and tech tends to bring in more money than something like extra hands for doing inventory) which creates motivation for them to find work for you. Friendly persistence can go a long way. Good luck!
gregkerzhner 6y ago
I think for part time to be successful it has to be the right environment. Contract work seems perfect - you are focused and have a singular mission. I can also totally see working on a personal project 20 hours a week and being super productive. However, working part time for a large organization seems tricky. There are so many meetings, distractions, and responsibilities other than just coding that it seems like your actual focus time to do work would be pretty nonexistent in a part time scenario.
- ghaff 6y ago
  There would definitely have to be coordination at the organizational level. Say, no meetings on Mondays and Friday and individuals can choose to work individually or not on those days. But that starts to get inefficient for the people who do want to work and it reduces the flexibility of those who want to work part-time. And TBH, if I were to work fewer hours in a year, I'd probably prefer to have bigger chunks of time off, i.e. more vacation time, than having every weekend be 3 or 4 days--much less have shorter work days.
  - gregkerzhner 6y ago
    For me, personally, part time work would be the dream. I used to contract and would do year long projects and then take large multi month breaks between. Neither "mode" was optimal. Work periods are obviously stressful and its hard to find free time. But the rest periods also got a bit old after a month or so, and even when we were traveling to cool places, I would find myself grabbing the laptop and coding just for fun and to keep my skills sharp. A part time scenario seems like the perfect in between. However, I never saw a place where it could work. For one, if the rest of your team was full time and you were part time, you would automatically be less productive and useful than the rest of your peers. With your Monday / Friday scenario with no meetings, it seems like the people that only worked Tue - Thur would have their schedule disproportionally filled with meetings, and have much less time to get stuff done. This could work for a manager type role, but it wouldn't work for an IC. I feel like part time work, much like remote work, might require an all-in buy in from the whole team. I wouldn't be surprised if in the future companies go "all part time" and have their whole organization be tuned for part time productivity.
satysin 6y ago
I did this back in 2009 and it was without a doubt the best decision I have ever made in my life. I have written about this previously if anyone is interested https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23298762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23298762
elindbe2 6y ago
This is my dream! I recently moved and working from home is great but I keep thinking to myself "gosh I really don't have 8 hours a day to spend working."
agumonkey 6y ago
What I'd do to have this balance.
apexalpha 6y ago
In the Netherlands it's the law that you're always allowed to reduce your hours, while keeping the same (hourly) salary and benefits. If your employer disagrees the burden of proof is on THEM to proof that your job would not be doable part-time. This (and to be honest also fiscal policy) has resulted in the largest part-time workforce in the world. In Dutch e-mail it's very common to find the days people work in the signature at the bottom. Even though it's not mandatory most people will start by taking Wednesday and/or Friday off. So over time the work culture here became to plan meetings on Mo-Tue-Thu, along with drinks on Thursdays in stead of Fridays. As someone who works 40h still this is such a net-positive for me as well, I love that people don't really plan meetings on Wednesday and Fridays and you can just work. 73% of all women work part-time, as do 23% of the men. Only half of all working Dutch people work fulltime. Part-time is anything between 12h and 32h a week. I hope this would become the norm everywhere as it truly frees up everyone to suit their needs.
- nsgi 6y ago
  That gender gap sounds rather concerning
  - slimed 6y ago
    That so many just assume this to be the case, without understanding the preferences of the individuals involved, is concerning.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - apexalpha 6y ago
    You're getting downvoted, but you're right. Traditional family values still resonate in these numbers and many people blame women working part-time for a gender imbalance at the top of companies. So that gender imbalance is definitely on the agenda. Whether you think these numbers are concerning depends on your political stance.
    - nwienert 6y ago
brational 6y ago
do you have a write-up on how to make such a transition / do you have one or more that you read to learn about it? Mostly wondering about the nitty gritty like how to register as a business, tax considerations, simple contract stuff, etc. Seems to me that info is rarely in one place.

SkyPuncher 6y ago

Roughly 30 hours/week is my personal sweet spot. I did it on a contract for a while. I'm not sure my productivity was significantly impacted. It's really hard to actually sit down and focus for more than 6 hours productively.

ilaksh 6y ago

Except the most common instance of "part-time" work is actually full-time, just without benefits, and the majority of those jobs are not cushy expensive contracts with large American companies. They just call it part time because they aren't monitoring hours strictly. I probably should not bother trying to describe this here because almost no comes on HN and admits they aren't highly compensated.

x87678r 6y ago

health insurance is my big wish. 20 hrs/wk with health insurance I'd work for 1/3rd my salary. EDIT: I have a family like most people. EDIT2: I'm thinking about how insurance isn't as expensive as giving up more than that in salary, but maybe I need the security of steady work on the resume, sick leave and a job to lean on if things get tough.

ahelwer 6y ago
If you're single and willing to pay over $500/month you can get some pretty okay health insurance. Families throw a huge wrench in that plan though. Currently I'm just using COBRA. Nothing crystalizes support for medicare-for-all faster than ten seconds looking at the public health insurance marketplace.
- animationwill 6y ago
  How long can you use COBRA for after leaving an employer? I tried to find that answer, but the info was conflicting on the Internet. Is it 18 months?
  - nabaraz 6y ago
    18 months is the standard. It goes like: Employee's quitting, termination or reduction in hours: 18 months Employee's divorce: 36 months It can be further extended based on other events like disability, partner's illness etc.
- tayo42 6y ago
  Thats like making payments on a luxury car and not using it
- popotamonga 6y ago
  How come its so expensive? The top top insurance in my european country is $100 and a pretty good is 30.
  - chefkoch 6y ago
    Where is that? In Germany i pay 480€ for a top notch private plan.
  - znpy 6y ago
    You're not accounting for, uhm... freedom. /s
  - 6y ago

jgalt212 6y ago

> The really interesting thing here is the possibility of part-time work. Part-time work at a big shop, for many returning to work new moms, can be more accurately described as squeeze 5 days of work into 3 days. I'm not saying that Microsoft cannot pull it off, but many other big shops (and even those that rate highly on such magazine prizes for working moms) have been extremely disingenuous with such claims. That being said, the full time benefits for part time work has been a real thing.

btrettel 6y ago
In another comment I mentioned the USPTO's part-time program: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24729649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24729649 I can say unequivocally that at the USPTO as a patent examiner you would not be expected to squeeze 5 days of work into however many days you work per week. You work a certain number of "production" hours and you are expected to get a certain amount of "count" per production hour. So, as the number of production hours you have decreases, your count expectations decrease proportionally as well.

btrettel 6y ago

I've been thinking about part-time work lately too, which makes me wonder: Which US companies/organizations offer part-time jobs with benefits? I work as a patent examiner right now and I noticed that the USPTO might let you switch to part-time with full benefits (that you pay more out of pocket for) after you reach GS-11. It requires approval, they have a limited number of slots for it, and the vast majority of the slots for it require a justification like parenting or eldercare. The minimum number of hours you can work per week is 16 in the program, and you can choose which days you work. To maximize federal holidays off, pick Monday and Thursday as work days. (I think examiners need to work Thursdays from 1-2 pm due to USPTO rules, and you also get Thanksgiving this way.) You can find some information about the USPTO's part-time program here: http://www.popa.org/about/work-life-balance/part-time-program/ http://www.popa.org/about/work-life-balance/part-time-progra... (The USPTO is also well-known for their work-from-home program.)

Sytten 6y ago

I agree with this so much. I have been working part time for almost a year now to rebuild a house and it has been very nice. It always seemed weird to me that people make such high salaries in tech but just don't value time as the main commodity of our lives. The reality is that if you move to a low CoL area and work part-time you will almost certainly be happier. But this doesn't mean you are idle the rest of the time. It means you can pursue what you love. We place way to much value in jobs as an end rather than as a mean to an end IMO. I tend to believe that the work week should have been reduced decades ago.

jjav 6y ago
> It always seemed weird to me that people make such high salaries in tech but just don't value time as the main commodity of our lives. It's not about valuing it, the problem is that finding jobs which allow part-time work is just about impossible. I'd give anything for a job where I can work 40% time for 40% salary, but those don't exist. My wife has managed to arrange 80% time for 80% pay at the G of FAANG for a couple years, but the company absolutely hates the arrangement and tries every opportunity to sabotage it so it's not that great. Also, management demands 40 hours of work for that 80% pay with the explanation that full-time employees are expected to work for a lot more than 40 hours.
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  Stories like this remind me that maybe my low-six-figure salary in the bay area isn't that bad after all. I may be dramatically underpaid by FANNG standards, but I'm never asked to work overtime and I'm free to take PTO whenever I want.
  - balfirevic 6y ago
    I'm not from the US so I wouldn't know first hand, but I've read plenty of comments on HN from people who claim to be working for FAANG and just work normal 40 hour work weeks.
hintymad 6y ago

woohoo7676 6y ago

I've also switched to part time IC this year, and it has been much better for my mental health. The ability to work on side projects or pursue hobbies with the extra time is definitely worth it for me over the extra pay.

luxurytent 6y ago

I’d love to get into this but I’ve found the results for contracts or part time roles on job pages is quite minimal. Can you recommend how to get started?

brainbag 6y ago
I've done a lot of IC dev work in my career of 20+ years, and I've moved cities often, so I had to frequently "start over" with reputation and networking. What I found to work best was that any time I entered a new market, I would find a local contractor organization (that already has a lot of contacts), and do short-term high-skill jobs for them for 3-6 months (for example, spending two weeks at a bank helping optimize one of their new internal services). Contractor organizations tend to work more with mid tier developers, but they get frequent requests for high skill jobs that they don't have the people resources for. This allowed me to build up a group of very happy local references which can then be leveraged for longer, better pay contracts. Once I had some references and a budding reputation, I'd go to networking events 2-3 times a week and talk to as many people as possible about the kind of work they do and I do. It's not uncommon to have two or three potential contract leads out of every event. After doing that for a month or two, my availability and rep would spread by word-of-mouth, and people would start contacting me directly for work, and I could be more selective about the jobs.
- wayne_skylar 6y ago
  What would be an example of a "contractor organization"? I am interested working on contract but I live in NYC and here it seems like it's always contract-to-hire situation where they want someone long-term but are using the contract as a way to limit the damage if the hire doesn't work out. I'd love to find a series of 3-6 month contracts like you mention but have had little success.
  - brainbag 6y ago
    I've worked with all kinds and sizes, often a couple at the same time. Any temp or contract-to-hire agency that is willing to work with developers should work in my experience. If they're not used to working with developers, sometimes it can take a week or two of checking in regularly for them to find something. My experience was that they want to make money from your skills (and tech tends to bring in more money than something like extra hands for doing inventory) which creates motivation for them to find work for you. Friendly persistence can go a long way. Good luck!

gregkerzhner 6y ago

I think for part time to be successful it has to be the right environment. Contract work seems perfect - you are focused and have a singular mission. I can also totally see working on a personal project 20 hours a week and being super productive. However, working part time for a large organization seems tricky. There are so many meetings, distractions, and responsibilities other than just coding that it seems like your actual focus time to do work would be pretty nonexistent in a part time scenario.

ghaff 6y ago
There would definitely have to be coordination at the organizational level. Say, no meetings on Mondays and Friday and individuals can choose to work individually or not on those days. But that starts to get inefficient for the people who do want to work and it reduces the flexibility of those who want to work part-time. And TBH, if I were to work fewer hours in a year, I'd probably prefer to have bigger chunks of time off, i.e. more vacation time, than having every weekend be 3 or 4 days--much less have shorter work days.
- gregkerzhner 6y ago
  For me, personally, part time work would be the dream. I used to contract and would do year long projects and then take large multi month breaks between. Neither "mode" was optimal. Work periods are obviously stressful and its hard to find free time. But the rest periods also got a bit old after a month or so, and even when we were traveling to cool places, I would find myself grabbing the laptop and coding just for fun and to keep my skills sharp. A part time scenario seems like the perfect in between. However, I never saw a place where it could work. For one, if the rest of your team was full time and you were part time, you would automatically be less productive and useful than the rest of your peers. With your Monday / Friday scenario with no meetings, it seems like the people that only worked Tue - Thur would have their schedule disproportionally filled with meetings, and have much less time to get stuff done. This could work for a manager type role, but it wouldn't work for an IC. I feel like part time work, much like remote work, might require an all-in buy in from the whole team. I wouldn't be surprised if in the future companies go "all part time" and have their whole organization be tuned for part time productivity.

satysin 6y ago

I did this back in 2009 and it was without a doubt the best decision I have ever made in my life. I have written about this previously if anyone is interested https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23298762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23298762

elindbe2 6y ago

This is my dream! I recently moved and working from home is great but I keep thinking to myself "gosh I really don't have 8 hours a day to spend working."

agumonkey 6y ago

What I'd do to have this balance.

apexalpha 6y ago

In the Netherlands it's the law that you're always allowed to reduce your hours, while keeping the same (hourly) salary and benefits. If your employer disagrees the burden of proof is on THEM to proof that your job would not be doable part-time. This (and to be honest also fiscal policy) has resulted in the largest part-time workforce in the world. In Dutch e-mail it's very common to find the days people work in the signature at the bottom. Even though it's not mandatory most people will start by taking Wednesday and/or Friday off. So over time the work culture here became to plan meetings on Mo-Tue-Thu, along with drinks on Thursdays in stead of Fridays. As someone who works 40h still this is such a net-positive for me as well, I love that people don't really plan meetings on Wednesday and Fridays and you can just work. 73% of all women work part-time, as do 23% of the men. Only half of all working Dutch people work fulltime. Part-time is anything between 12h and 32h a week. I hope this would become the norm everywhere as it truly frees up everyone to suit their needs.

nsgi 6y ago
That gender gap sounds rather concerning
- slimed 6y ago
  That so many just assume this to be the case, without understanding the preferences of the individuals involved, is concerning.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- apexalpha 6y ago
  You're getting downvoted, but you're right. Traditional family values still resonate in these numbers and many people blame women working part-time for a gender imbalance at the top of companies. So that gender imbalance is definitely on the agenda. Whether you think these numbers are concerning depends on your political stance.
  - nwienert 6y ago

brational 6y ago

do you have a write-up on how to make such a transition / do you have one or more that you read to learn about it? Mostly wondering about the nitty gritty like how to register as a business, tax considerations, simple contract stuff, etc. Seems to me that info is rarely in one place.