I think working less than 100% time, even as low as 50% time, is sort of a holy grail for software engineers, and can be well worth the reduction in pay. Any of

I think working less than 100% time, even as low as 50% time, is sort of a holy grail for software engineers, and can be well worth the reduction in pay. Any of your extra time you choose to spend on education will pay dividends in the future. I've managed to pull this off on occasion. I'm a freelancer and not an employee, so you'd think it would be easy to negotiate such. However, I keep running into the same issue: few people need just a little software engineering. If someone needs some software engineering, they usually need a lot of it. Several times, I've been hired by customers with the promise of "we just need 10 hours a week", but somehow get talked into working full time pretty quickly.