11 ms·

As someone who's hired part-time developers off and on for years.... the issue is that they typically start out working the agreed-upon number of hours, then be

As someone who's hired part-time developers off and on for years.... the issue is that they typically start out working the agreed-upon number of hours, then begin to work less & less over time. There's no feasible way to make someone work more hours remotely, and they're usually sharp enough to get partway into a project before flaking out so that it's difficult to just replace them- you'd have to hire an entirely new developer to understand what they've done to date. From the developers' point of view I think they're just constantly looking for new work, better-paying work, or at least lining up a project for the future- then they get overloaded and choose to flake out on the client. In theory hiring freelancers part-time should be a great solution for everyone involved, in practice the issue is flakiness

throwaway98727 5y ago
More money per hour is a buffer for finding work after your project ends.
prohobo 5y ago
I agree this is a real problem for freelancers, but for part-time employees? It might be that someone needs to make a better system for remote work that gives some options for enforcement.
mooreds 5y ago
How is this different than a full time employee who starts to slack off? Or is your point that part time employees are more likely to slack off because they are looking for other work/have other responsibilities that take precedence? Because I've definitely seen my share of fulltime employees who slacked pretty darn hard.
- kradeelav 5y ago
  Not OP, but there's more tools managers have to guide slacking IC's back in line when they're full time. Loyalty to coworkers/"company culture", easier to discipline if it goes on the official performance review, more of an "official" paper trail available versus contractors and part time who may be hired even by a third party agency. Part time / contractors are sometimes, not always, but sometimes in general lower quality as far as work ethic goes.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Contractor <> part-time You can have actual employees working only 24 hours a week.
    - gkop 5y ago
      Great, more performance reviews I have to write.
ars 5y ago
Are you hiring them per/hour? Why not do a part time salary position? They are expected to spend an agreed number of hours per week (or maybe do it by the day) and the salary is proportional to that. If they want to change the hours then renegotiate time and salary.
- hash872 5y ago
  I think the pool of developers who are not freelancers, are OK with part-time work, don't need more salary than you're paying them for part-time work (like they have a cheap lifestyle or are already well-off?), and won't continuously keep looking for more work is in practice just a very small number of people. Sure, there's some people that meet that description, but just not very many. There's a reason the labor market has evolved to the binary of either being a full-time employee or a freelancer on project-based assignments
  - aiisjustanif 5y ago
    This seems like an assumption. We have people secretly working two jobs, and openly in cases like Microsoft’s company policy. Even companies that have 20% of time for other work in the company like Google. A part timed salaried position should be fine. Their are European and Scandinavian countries that half it established.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
carlsborg 5y ago
The other issue is flow. Flow is vital for execution, and distributing your attention amongst multiple projects means your flow breaks. Also part time devs might not commit to daily meetings, or being on call for downtime incidents.
- aiisjustanif 5y ago
  This seems like a non issue and “Flow” is hard to quantify. Devs shouldn’t have many daily meetings period.
- nextaccountic 5y ago
  > Also part time devs might not commit to daily meetings Daily meetings kill flow
  - wpietri 5y ago
    They don't have to! I've worked at places with very low meeting load. A first-thing, 15-minute daily standup (with the team actually standing in a circle and going over how to share the day's work) can be lively and energizing, which helps me get into a flow state once I sit down to code.
    - lupire 5y ago
      What happens to everyone who doesn't start work at exactly the same minute you do? > 15 minute standup. It's literally called a "standup" to enforce the most important rule: it should be much shorter than 15 minutes.
      - wpietri 5y ago
        Normally I'm an early arriver, so in those conditions I generally take care of non-coding stuff. If I run out of that, I start in on the coding work. Thanks, I'm familiar with why it's called a stand-up. On my teams the go-through-the-kanban-board phase of the meeting is generally faster than that. But that phase also tends to spark post-standup discussions. "Oh, you want to work on that subsystem too? Let's talk a bit about where we want to take it." I think it's better if people allocate time for that, which is why, especially in places like this, I'll talk about it as I did.
jrochkind1 5y ago
Do you have this problem with people working full-time too? If not what's the difference, do you think? I'd say it would probably be important to have a set schedule for the less-than-full-time workers. Or at least as set as the full-timers.

throwaway98727 5y ago

More money per hour is a buffer for finding work after your project ends.

prohobo 5y ago

I agree this is a real problem for freelancers, but for part-time employees? It might be that someone needs to make a better system for remote work that gives some options for enforcement.

mooreds 5y ago

How is this different than a full time employee who starts to slack off? Or is your point that part time employees are more likely to slack off because they are looking for other work/have other responsibilities that take precedence? Because I've definitely seen my share of fulltime employees who slacked pretty darn hard.

kradeelav 5y ago
Not OP, but there's more tools managers have to guide slacking IC's back in line when they're full time. Loyalty to coworkers/"company culture", easier to discipline if it goes on the official performance review, more of an "official" paper trail available versus contractors and part time who may be hired even by a third party agency. Part time / contractors are sometimes, not always, but sometimes in general lower quality as far as work ethic goes.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Contractor <> part-time You can have actual employees working only 24 hours a week.
  - gkop 5y ago
    Great, more performance reviews I have to write.

ars 5y ago

Are you hiring them per/hour? Why not do a part time salary position? They are expected to spend an agreed number of hours per week (or maybe do it by the day) and the salary is proportional to that. If they want to change the hours then renegotiate time and salary.

hash872 5y ago
I think the pool of developers who are not freelancers, are OK with part-time work, don't need more salary than you're paying them for part-time work (like they have a cheap lifestyle or are already well-off?), and won't continuously keep looking for more work is in practice just a very small number of people. Sure, there's some people that meet that description, but just not very many. There's a reason the labor market has evolved to the binary of either being a full-time employee or a freelancer on project-based assignments
- aiisjustanif 5y ago
  This seems like an assumption. We have people secretly working two jobs, and openly in cases like Microsoft’s company policy. Even companies that have 20% of time for other work in the company like Google. A part timed salaried position should be fine. Their are European and Scandinavian countries that half it established.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

carlsborg 5y ago

The other issue is flow. Flow is vital for execution, and distributing your attention amongst multiple projects means your flow breaks. Also part time devs might not commit to daily meetings, or being on call for downtime incidents.

aiisjustanif 5y ago
This seems like a non issue and “Flow” is hard to quantify. Devs shouldn’t have many daily meetings period.
nextaccountic 5y ago
> Also part time devs might not commit to daily meetings Daily meetings kill flow
- wpietri 5y ago
  They don't have to! I've worked at places with very low meeting load. A first-thing, 15-minute daily standup (with the team actually standing in a circle and going over how to share the day's work) can be lively and energizing, which helps me get into a flow state once I sit down to code.
  - lupire 5y ago
    What happens to everyone who doesn't start work at exactly the same minute you do? > 15 minute standup. It's literally called a "standup" to enforce the most important rule: it should be much shorter than 15 minutes.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      Normally I'm an early arriver, so in those conditions I generally take care of non-coding stuff. If I run out of that, I start in on the coding work. Thanks, I'm familiar with why it's called a stand-up. On my teams the go-through-the-kanban-board phase of the meeting is generally faster than that. But that phase also tends to spark post-standup discussions. "Oh, you want to work on that subsystem too? Let's talk a bit about where we want to take it." I think it's better if people allocate time for that, which is why, especially in places like this, I'll talk about it as I did.

jrochkind1 5y ago

Do you have this problem with people working full-time too? If not what's the difference, do you think? I'd say it would probably be important to have a set schedule for the less-than-full-time workers. Or at least as set as the full-timers.