8 ms·

We’ve tried part time developers, but so far haven’t been able to do it successfully. The problem usually comes down to 2 things: 1) there is a constant amount

by yibg 5y ago

We’ve tried part time developers, but so far haven’t been able to do it successfully. The problem usually comes down to 2 things: 1) there is a constant amount of overhead that is always needed regardless of how long you work for in a week. Meetings and collaboration to figure out what to build, discuss issues etc. if these take up 10 hours a week a full time dev has 30 hours to do other things where as a half time dev only has 10 hours. So 2 half time dev just doesn’t get as much done as 1 full time. I guess this is also why 2 engineers don’t get twice as much done as 1, all things being equal. 2) Most part time dev candidates I’ve seen aren’t doing just a single part time job, they are doing either multiple part time jobs or a full time job + part time job. Either way the mental energy is already gone. Maybe there is a way to make part time work, I just haven’t figured it out yet.

ozim 5y ago
Yeah that 2nd point is that quite often people need "full time salary" so it is not that management somehow has backwards thinking. I have a friend that can really work 4 hours a day, but he is a special case where he does not have a family to upkeep and no mortgage. He is also a bit hard on the frugality. But finding such person is basically 1 in a million. If I post a job with 4h a day which amounts to 1/2 of a normal salary I will probably never get a candidate. If I post a job with normal salary and then start explaining that it is 1/2 hours and accordingly paid, some people will get angry.
- jpindar 5y ago
  I can live quite comfortably on half a typical salary, and I'm available.
- mberger 5y ago
  I'm in the same situation as your friend and I know of at least 3 others in my friend circle. I don't think part time availability is as low as you think.
- yibg 5y ago
  The other problem is with overhead 2 half time employees != 1 full time employee. There is the extra equipment cost, benefits (perhaps), management overhead etc. e.g. If I replace a team of 7 full time engineers with 14 half time engineers, do I keep 1 manager? That seems like a very large team for 1 person to handle, so now maybe I need another manager too. From a purely economic perspective hiring half time engineers at half the comp just doesn't seem to make sense. You can argue that half time engineers are more than half as productive as a full time engineer because as others have said full time engineers don't work a full 8 hours anyways. While theoretically that's true, as I originally posted, that's not what I've seen. Based on my anecdotal experience, half time engineers are less than half as productive as a full time engineer. So from both a productivity and economic perspective, it hasn't made sense.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I think the idea is that you replace a team of 7 full-time engineers with 7 half-time engineers, and get 80% of the benefits at 50% of the cost.
    - yibg 5y ago
      That's the theory, but like I said for us it hasn't really worked out like that. Maybe we're doing something wrong so who knows.
    - ido 5y ago
      It won’t be 50% of the cost due to overheads like said above, it may be more like 60%+. Another factor is that often the cost of developers is not the most significant factor. If a company can get say $100m of value out of $10m of salary cost on engineers, it doesn’t really make sense to instead spend $6m to get $80m of value. And just adding more people isn’t easy as each person increases communication overhead.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  Someone who's getting offered $300K+ for a full time job... Even 50% of that is already a full-time salary for many.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Not if you have a 2M mortgage
    - yowlingcat 5y ago
      This sounds like a choice made by the person who chose to get the 2M mortgage, which is broadly speaking an outlier rather than average outcome.
    - jrochkind1 5y ago
      If you need $300K to support your expenses, than that's a choice you can make -- if you have the ability to have a $300K plus income. That's of course a choice not available to 95% of the USA. (300K happens is around the 95h percentile income in the USA). That some people live in houses they couldn't pay for on $150K doesn't mean that $150K isn't possibly a "full time salary". $150K is definitely in the category of "a full time salary", many people make this much or less working full time. That a skilled engineer could possibly make $150K for working 50% time -- is a choice not available to most people, most people don't even have the choice to make $150K working full time! So a skilled engineer has that option, make would be a (healthy) full-time salary for most of the USA, working only half-time. Or anyway would, if employers would hire like this. That's the point I meant to be making. Income distribution in the US does continue to get more uneven every year.
- deleted 5y ago
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- torgian 5y ago
  Personally, I would take that part time job at 80/90K a year, simply because that's all I need and I value my free time for other projects, cycling, whatever. However, I'm not "there" yet as a developer. Maybe in a few years after I've proven myself.
- jlokier 5y ago
  > If I post a job with 4h a day which amounts to 1/2 of a normal salary I will probably never get a candidate. I think you're mistaken about that. If you can persuade candidates that it really is 4h a day at 1/2 of a normal salary, you will get candidates who are excited by the job because it opens up their time for other opportunities for hobbies, home life, side projects, open source projects, looking after family, other consulting gigs, education, etc. However, for developer roles you might find that potential candidates don't entirely believe the ad. I think they'd imagine the employer having unrealistic expectations of what 4h reasonable output looks like, so that they'd feel pressure to work overtime, resulting in closer to 8h anyway while pretending to get it done in less, for 1/2 of a normal salary.
  - anfilt 5y ago
    This is a good point.
  - ozim 5y ago
    Persuading candidates is where it breaks. I don't have time for that, we need to hire now and if we hire someone then for next 2 years we probably won't hire anyone new, and I don't think there is enough people who would like that 4 hours. I also have to pay for ad that will get most CVs It would be much easier if I get someone CV and he writes cover letter explaining that he would like to try such an arrangement. I tried to get part time dev for Kibana/Elastic needs like 4 hours - anyone I approached was not even willing to discuss "why" they just said no. People also don't have time to listen to your persuasion, most of the time it is clear cut and goodbye.
cloogshicer 5y ago
> Meetings and collaboration to figure out what to build, discuss issues etc. if these take up 10 hours a week [...] There's your problem.
- yibg 5y ago
  Why is this a problem? You can replace meeting time with time reading specs / requirement if you’d like. Point is you need some constant amount of time to understand the problem domain. If 2 people need to do that then that’s twice the time needed.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Having a meeting involves more than 1 person spending time. Reading a spec involved only one person investing time (only those that need to know it anyway). Doing it in a meeting where everyone has different questions, tangents and other cruft that you have to sit through is extremely inefficient.
    - yibg 5y ago
      Yes but if you have 2 part time devs, that requires 2 people spending time. The discussion here isn't meetings vs doc, it's full time vs part time.
      - keerthiko 5y ago
        If you have 2 part time devs with a manager giving them the info in the meeting, that's 3 people spending time, and the two part-time devs won't have 100% overlap of information needed and questions asked and answered (and if you have two separate meetings with each PT, then they won't have access to the questions/answers discussed with the other dev _in case_ they need it). Additionally, everyone can focus on producing and consuming information in the downtime between focus-work sessions, without interrupting flow at someone else's convenience. In all cases, quality documentation is more likely to produce accurate information transfer with less time wasted by everyone involved.
jrochkind1 5y ago
Curious how part-time those part-time developers have been, as well as what schedule/how much work the person you are replying to was looking for. I have successfully gotten 80% four-day-week at a string of engagements... but I work in the non-profit academic sector, and get paid quite a bit less than that $200K+ salary. I think a four-day-week, or even a three-day-week, makes a lot more sense than tha 4-hours-a-day 5-day-week the OP was suggesting. Because, yeah, one (or certainly two) meetings could pretty much blow a 4-hour-day. But at the 4-eight-hour-day schedule I've been doing, I feel like there is still plenty of time for meetings and overhead, and I am pretty confident I end up 95% as productive working a four-day 32 hours as I would be working 40 hours. I feel like it would still work pretty well at 3-eight-hour-days too. Below that -- or trying to work four-hour days instead of fewer eight-hour days, I could definitely see problems with "overhead" or lack of commitment.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  The meeting is part of the work. Code flies from my fingertips instantly. Figuring what to code is the painfully time consuming part. Developers barely code in the enterprise.
  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    Of course the meeting is part of the work, I hope I didn't suggest otherwise! I can only speak from my experience working 80% time in several different jobs, in nonprofit/academic environments. As above. (I enjoy writing code, if writing code was "barely" part of the work I wouldn't still be here. It seems like it would be impossible to get anyone who was good at writing code in a development/engineering job where coding was barely part of the work! But I'm not sure what this has to do with the feasibility of less than full time work as an engineer/developer).
- ZainRiz 5y ago
  An alternate setup I've seen at (this was for a super, super experienced distinguished engineer (like a Google L9) who wanted to work part time) was to work full time one week and then take one week off
novok 5y ago
I agree. There is too much shared state inside software dev work. I think the only time part time might work is if the person has worked for you full time for a while, is fairly established, is a low management overhead employee (low/no drama, no hand holding, self-directed, gets the point quickly when you ask/tell them in small amounts of description, doesn't need mentorship and and gets stuff done). But then what often happens with part time devs like this is their one foot out the door, so they will probably leave in a few months anyway. In other professions where the shared state isn't as big, such as medicine or therapy, you see way more part time style work happen actively in the industry. Be it working for 2-4 clinics part time or just doing half hours so they can focus more on other things in their lives. Another kind of role that I think works well part time is an advisor / consultant expert role where your hired to verify things are being done correctly in your sub field and are used to train others design wise as a 3rd party. Which is another sr / experienced type of role. Another type of part time that might work is working on your own project as a solo dev in maintenance mode once your established. But also only lasts so long as competitors get ahead of you. Part time not working well is something inherent to the job itself unfortunately.
- keerthiko 5y ago
  > But then what often happens with part time devs like this is their one foot out the door, so they will probably leave in a few months anyway. This sentiment is what GP points out is cultural, not practical or factual. If you compensate them well for the hours they work, many part time devs will have superior per-hour output to FTEs and also be grateful for the added flexibility you afford them. We hired a stellar part time dev recently (contract hire to start, we just increased his rate and verbally stated we are interested in continuing the relationship long-term if he is, and offered written agreement if he is interested), and he has been working out great. The option is open to him to work full-time whenever if/when he wants by planning it ahead of time with us, but our default expectation will remain being part-time so he can pursue his game development on the side. Finding a great part-time team member is no different than a great FTE, once you and the employee are both free of the cultural negative baggage associated wtih part-timing.
Aeolun 5y ago
> if these take up 10 hours a week Well yeah. There’s your problem.
kovac 5y ago
I might look into active, high profile opensource projects to learn a thing or two from there. I think for this to work, planning needs to be very precise: as a team you know what you are going to do, devs need to be very good at what they do and enjoy what they are doing. This is often difficult for companies as there are many things that need to be done asap, projects/teams often being managed by non-tech or non-experts. I've worked part time for a startup remotely across timezones. I personally credit the technical lead for the most part for its success. Then, the chemistry within the team was really good. When someone says something others tend to get it. And the planning. The tech lead sets up the goals for the quarter and push back on distractions from the business side except on rare occasions. The management was also very competent, they seemed to listen to the engineers.
throwaway984393 5y ago
> Meetings and collaboration to figure out what to build, discuss issues etc Remote-first, multi-time-zone companies simply don't do meetings. All communication is async and written down. Work gets done without a lot of hemming and hawing and meetings-with-no-agenda-to-talk-about-setting-an-agenda-for-a-future-meeting. It's much more efficient to come to a decision over 7 asynchronous back-and-forths, and people have the opportunity to do some research during the conversation so their decision is better informed. The whole Open Source world [when development is not done within a corporation] works this way. I think the problem is corporations are obsessed with a definition of productivity as "the person is constantly productive". If you're not in a meeting, or have a ticket in progress, or are doing training, clearly you are just wasting time. You can't be allowed to just ruminate, or research, or play around with an idea, or talk to other teams. They'd rather you be writing code now that will be obsolete in 6 months and take a year to replace, rather than take 2 months to come up with a plan for your code that will take 3 months to write and last for 3 years. We rush into things because we have to have something to show for our work every day, and as a result the quality is poor, and that costs more in the long run.
- jlokier 5y ago
  > Remote-first, multi-time-zone companies simply don't do meetings. Having worked for such companies, this is not true, at least in my expreience. Plenty of meetings. Very long ones sometimes, 2 hours is not unusual; 3, 4 hours sometimes on Zoom or Hangouts. > [non-remote-first companies would] rather you be writing code now that will be obsolete in 6 months and take a year to replace, rather than take 2 months to come up with a plan for your code that will take 3 months to write and last for 3 years. Hmm. I can assure you some remote-first, multi-time-zone companies would also rather you be writing code now that will be obsolete soon than take substantial time to come up with a plan for code that will last years and serve the product well. Visibility counts for a lot in some remote-first environments. Depending on the management, they may regard the best form of visibility to be regular code updates, PRs, issues filed etc, rather than taking your time over deeper design and research. If they pay more attention to quantity than effectiveness, that can mean shipping code and iterating every few days is something they are looking to see, and a high priority if you want to keep your job. Async written communication on design is sometimes seen as too much talking, not enough doing.
chiph 5y ago
> they are doing either multiple part time jobs or a full time job + part time job Have you considered older workers that are nearing retirement? They're probably looking to lean-out, and a part-time job could give them activity in their lives, while getting you someone who is highly experienced in getting things done. You wouldn't be paying benefits, but probably a higher hourly rate (for less than 40 hours) to compensate. Or job sharing, where you bring on two part-time workers. My sister did this for many years - it gave her time to raise her children while being able to pay a nanny + daycare. She worked Mon-Wed, and her job partner worked Wed-Fri. The overlap allowed them to coordinate, and they were able to call and send texts to each other at other times.
closeparen 5y ago
The communication overhead should not be constant - it should be proportional to the scope of responsibility. As a full time senior engineer I’m responsible for oversight and guidance on three separate work-streams, so I have to go to all their meetings. If I were part time then I could be involved in just one of them, and go to only those meetings.
- n8ta 5y ago
  Hr setup/issues, all company meetings, team meetings, onboarding to company specific tooling, keeping up to date with team strategic direction, manager 1on1; none of these scale with responsibility.
zackify 5y ago
If I worked somewhere with 10 hours a week needed for meetings and plannings I would quit. Who cares if they have 6 jobs, that’s not for you to worry about. If they get good work done on your project and skip the extra meetings, they’re worth keeping around.
acura 5y ago
My experience with multiple part time assignments, both personally and from other coworkers, is that the contractor gets more output for the money since the mental break of switching assignments fuels mental energy, not drains energy.
_hcuq 5y ago
10 hours of meetings a week for a dev????
joshghent 5y ago
Spending 10 hours to figure out "what to build" is madness. Having a deep customer connection should be the go to source. It sounds to me like the priority is based on momentary reckons. Sure to kill any kind of true innovation and value.

by yibg 5y ago

ozim 5y ago

Yeah that 2nd point is that quite often people need "full time salary" so it is not that management somehow has backwards thinking. I have a friend that can really work 4 hours a day, but he is a special case where he does not have a family to upkeep and no mortgage. He is also a bit hard on the frugality. But finding such person is basically 1 in a million. If I post a job with 4h a day which amounts to 1/2 of a normal salary I will probably never get a candidate. If I post a job with normal salary and then start explaining that it is 1/2 hours and accordingly paid, some people will get angry.

jpindar 5y ago
I can live quite comfortably on half a typical salary, and I'm available.
mberger 5y ago
I'm in the same situation as your friend and I know of at least 3 others in my friend circle. I don't think part time availability is as low as you think.
yibg 5y ago
The other problem is with overhead 2 half time employees != 1 full time employee. There is the extra equipment cost, benefits (perhaps), management overhead etc. e.g. If I replace a team of 7 full time engineers with 14 half time engineers, do I keep 1 manager? That seems like a very large team for 1 person to handle, so now maybe I need another manager too. From a purely economic perspective hiring half time engineers at half the comp just doesn't seem to make sense. You can argue that half time engineers are more than half as productive as a full time engineer because as others have said full time engineers don't work a full 8 hours anyways. While theoretically that's true, as I originally posted, that's not what I've seen. Based on my anecdotal experience, half time engineers are less than half as productive as a full time engineer. So from both a productivity and economic perspective, it hasn't made sense.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I think the idea is that you replace a team of 7 full-time engineers with 7 half-time engineers, and get 80% of the benefits at 50% of the cost.
  - yibg 5y ago
    That's the theory, but like I said for us it hasn't really worked out like that. Maybe we're doing something wrong so who knows.
  - ido 5y ago
    It won’t be 50% of the cost due to overheads like said above, it may be more like 60%+. Another factor is that often the cost of developers is not the most significant factor. If a company can get say $100m of value out of $10m of salary cost on engineers, it doesn’t really make sense to instead spend $6m to get $80m of value. And just adding more people isn’t easy as each person increases communication overhead.
jrochkind1 5y ago
Someone who's getting offered $300K+ for a full time job... Even 50% of that is already a full-time salary for many.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Not if you have a 2M mortgage
  - yowlingcat 5y ago
    This sounds like a choice made by the person who chose to get the 2M mortgage, which is broadly speaking an outlier rather than average outcome.
  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    If you need $300K to support your expenses, than that's a choice you can make -- if you have the ability to have a $300K plus income. That's of course a choice not available to 95% of the USA. (300K happens is around the 95h percentile income in the USA). That some people live in houses they couldn't pay for on $150K doesn't mean that $150K isn't possibly a "full time salary". $150K is definitely in the category of "a full time salary", many people make this much or less working full time. That a skilled engineer could possibly make $150K for working 50% time -- is a choice not available to most people, most people don't even have the choice to make $150K working full time! So a skilled engineer has that option, make would be a (healthy) full-time salary for most of the USA, working only half-time. Or anyway would, if employers would hire like this. That's the point I meant to be making. Income distribution in the US does continue to get more uneven every year.
deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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torgian 5y ago
Personally, I would take that part time job at 80/90K a year, simply because that's all I need and I value my free time for other projects, cycling, whatever. However, I'm not "there" yet as a developer. Maybe in a few years after I've proven myself.
jlokier 5y ago
> If I post a job with 4h a day which amounts to 1/2 of a normal salary I will probably never get a candidate. I think you're mistaken about that. If you can persuade candidates that it really is 4h a day at 1/2 of a normal salary, you will get candidates who are excited by the job because it opens up their time for other opportunities for hobbies, home life, side projects, open source projects, looking after family, other consulting gigs, education, etc. However, for developer roles you might find that potential candidates don't entirely believe the ad. I think they'd imagine the employer having unrealistic expectations of what 4h reasonable output looks like, so that they'd feel pressure to work overtime, resulting in closer to 8h anyway while pretending to get it done in less, for 1/2 of a normal salary.
- anfilt 5y ago
  This is a good point.
- ozim 5y ago
  Persuading candidates is where it breaks. I don't have time for that, we need to hire now and if we hire someone then for next 2 years we probably won't hire anyone new, and I don't think there is enough people who would like that 4 hours. I also have to pay for ad that will get most CVs It would be much easier if I get someone CV and he writes cover letter explaining that he would like to try such an arrangement. I tried to get part time dev for Kibana/Elastic needs like 4 hours - anyone I approached was not even willing to discuss "why" they just said no. People also don't have time to listen to your persuasion, most of the time it is clear cut and goodbye.

cloogshicer 5y ago

> Meetings and collaboration to figure out what to build, discuss issues etc. if these take up 10 hours a week [...] There's your problem.

yibg 5y ago
Why is this a problem? You can replace meeting time with time reading specs / requirement if you’d like. Point is you need some constant amount of time to understand the problem domain. If 2 people need to do that then that’s twice the time needed.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Having a meeting involves more than 1 person spending time. Reading a spec involved only one person investing time (only those that need to know it anyway). Doing it in a meeting where everyone has different questions, tangents and other cruft that you have to sit through is extremely inefficient.
  - yibg 5y ago
    Yes but if you have 2 part time devs, that requires 2 people spending time. The discussion here isn't meetings vs doc, it's full time vs part time.
    - keerthiko 5y ago
      If you have 2 part time devs with a manager giving them the info in the meeting, that's 3 people spending time, and the two part-time devs won't have 100% overlap of information needed and questions asked and answered (and if you have two separate meetings with each PT, then they won't have access to the questions/answers discussed with the other dev _in case_ they need it). Additionally, everyone can focus on producing and consuming information in the downtime between focus-work sessions, without interrupting flow at someone else's convenience. In all cases, quality documentation is more likely to produce accurate information transfer with less time wasted by everyone involved.

jrochkind1 5y ago

Curious how part-time those part-time developers have been, as well as what schedule/how much work the person you are replying to was looking for. I have successfully gotten 80% four-day-week at a string of engagements... but I work in the non-profit academic sector, and get paid quite a bit less than that $200K+ salary. I think a four-day-week, or even a three-day-week, makes a lot more sense than tha 4-hours-a-day 5-day-week the OP was suggesting. Because, yeah, one (or certainly two) meetings could pretty much blow a 4-hour-day. But at the 4-eight-hour-day schedule I've been doing, I feel like there is still plenty of time for meetings and overhead, and I am pretty confident I end up 95% as productive working a four-day 32 hours as I would be working 40 hours. I feel like it would still work pretty well at 3-eight-hour-days too. Below that -- or trying to work four-hour days instead of fewer eight-hour days, I could definitely see problems with "overhead" or lack of commitment.

datavirtue 5y ago
The meeting is part of the work. Code flies from my fingertips instantly. Figuring what to code is the painfully time consuming part. Developers barely code in the enterprise.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  Of course the meeting is part of the work, I hope I didn't suggest otherwise! I can only speak from my experience working 80% time in several different jobs, in nonprofit/academic environments. As above. (I enjoy writing code, if writing code was "barely" part of the work I wouldn't still be here. It seems like it would be impossible to get anyone who was good at writing code in a development/engineering job where coding was barely part of the work! But I'm not sure what this has to do with the feasibility of less than full time work as an engineer/developer).
ZainRiz 5y ago
An alternate setup I've seen at (this was for a super, super experienced distinguished engineer (like a Google L9) who wanted to work part time) was to work full time one week and then take one week off

novok 5y ago

I agree. There is too much shared state inside software dev work. I think the only time part time might work is if the person has worked for you full time for a while, is fairly established, is a low management overhead employee (low/no drama, no hand holding, self-directed, gets the point quickly when you ask/tell them in small amounts of description, doesn't need mentorship and and gets stuff done). But then what often happens with part time devs like this is their one foot out the door, so they will probably leave in a few months anyway. In other professions where the shared state isn't as big, such as medicine or therapy, you see way more part time style work happen actively in the industry. Be it working for 2-4 clinics part time or just doing half hours so they can focus more on other things in their lives. Another kind of role that I think works well part time is an advisor / consultant expert role where your hired to verify things are being done correctly in your sub field and are used to train others design wise as a 3rd party. Which is another sr / experienced type of role. Another type of part time that might work is working on your own project as a solo dev in maintenance mode once your established. But also only lasts so long as competitors get ahead of you. Part time not working well is something inherent to the job itself unfortunately.

keerthiko 5y ago
> But then what often happens with part time devs like this is their one foot out the door, so they will probably leave in a few months anyway. This sentiment is what GP points out is cultural, not practical or factual. If you compensate them well for the hours they work, many part time devs will have superior per-hour output to FTEs and also be grateful for the added flexibility you afford them. We hired a stellar part time dev recently (contract hire to start, we just increased his rate and verbally stated we are interested in continuing the relationship long-term if he is, and offered written agreement if he is interested), and he has been working out great. The option is open to him to work full-time whenever if/when he wants by planning it ahead of time with us, but our default expectation will remain being part-time so he can pursue his game development on the side. Finding a great part-time team member is no different than a great FTE, once you and the employee are both free of the cultural negative baggage associated wtih part-timing.

Aeolun 5y ago

> if these take up 10 hours a week Well yeah. There’s your problem.

kovac 5y ago

I might look into active, high profile opensource projects to learn a thing or two from there. I think for this to work, planning needs to be very precise: as a team you know what you are going to do, devs need to be very good at what they do and enjoy what they are doing. This is often difficult for companies as there are many things that need to be done asap, projects/teams often being managed by non-tech or non-experts. I've worked part time for a startup remotely across timezones. I personally credit the technical lead for the most part for its success. Then, the chemistry within the team was really good. When someone says something others tend to get it. And the planning. The tech lead sets up the goals for the quarter and push back on distractions from the business side except on rare occasions. The management was also very competent, they seemed to listen to the engineers.

throwaway984393 5y ago

> Meetings and collaboration to figure out what to build, discuss issues etc Remote-first, multi-time-zone companies simply don't do meetings. All communication is async and written down. Work gets done without a lot of hemming and hawing and meetings-with-no-agenda-to-talk-about-setting-an-agenda-for-a-future-meeting. It's much more efficient to come to a decision over 7 asynchronous back-and-forths, and people have the opportunity to do some research during the conversation so their decision is better informed. The whole Open Source world [when development is not done within a corporation] works this way. I think the problem is corporations are obsessed with a definition of productivity as "the person is constantly productive". If you're not in a meeting, or have a ticket in progress, or are doing training, clearly you are just wasting time. You can't be allowed to just ruminate, or research, or play around with an idea, or talk to other teams. They'd rather you be writing code now that will be obsolete in 6 months and take a year to replace, rather than take 2 months to come up with a plan for your code that will take 3 months to write and last for 3 years. We rush into things because we have to have something to show for our work every day, and as a result the quality is poor, and that costs more in the long run.

jlokier 5y ago
> Remote-first, multi-time-zone companies simply don't do meetings. Having worked for such companies, this is not true, at least in my expreience. Plenty of meetings. Very long ones sometimes, 2 hours is not unusual; 3, 4 hours sometimes on Zoom or Hangouts. > [non-remote-first companies would] rather you be writing code now that will be obsolete in 6 months and take a year to replace, rather than take 2 months to come up with a plan for your code that will take 3 months to write and last for 3 years. Hmm. I can assure you some remote-first, multi-time-zone companies would also rather you be writing code now that will be obsolete soon than take substantial time to come up with a plan for code that will last years and serve the product well. Visibility counts for a lot in some remote-first environments. Depending on the management, they may regard the best form of visibility to be regular code updates, PRs, issues filed etc, rather than taking your time over deeper design and research. If they pay more attention to quantity than effectiveness, that can mean shipping code and iterating every few days is something they are looking to see, and a high priority if you want to keep your job. Async written communication on design is sometimes seen as too much talking, not enough doing.

chiph 5y ago

> they are doing either multiple part time jobs or a full time job + part time job Have you considered older workers that are nearing retirement? They're probably looking to lean-out, and a part-time job could give them activity in their lives, while getting you someone who is highly experienced in getting things done. You wouldn't be paying benefits, but probably a higher hourly rate (for less than 40 hours) to compensate. Or job sharing, where you bring on two part-time workers. My sister did this for many years - it gave her time to raise her children while being able to pay a nanny + daycare. She worked Mon-Wed, and her job partner worked Wed-Fri. The overlap allowed them to coordinate, and they were able to call and send texts to each other at other times.

closeparen 5y ago

The communication overhead should not be constant - it should be proportional to the scope of responsibility. As a full time senior engineer I’m responsible for oversight and guidance on three separate work-streams, so I have to go to all their meetings. If I were part time then I could be involved in just one of them, and go to only those meetings.

n8ta 5y ago
Hr setup/issues, all company meetings, team meetings, onboarding to company specific tooling, keeping up to date with team strategic direction, manager 1on1; none of these scale with responsibility.

zackify 5y ago

If I worked somewhere with 10 hours a week needed for meetings and plannings I would quit. Who cares if they have 6 jobs, that’s not for you to worry about. If they get good work done on your project and skip the extra meetings, they’re worth keeping around.

acura 5y ago

My experience with multiple part time assignments, both personally and from other coworkers, is that the contractor gets more output for the money since the mental break of switching assignments fuels mental energy, not drains energy.

_hcuq 5y ago

10 hours of meetings a week for a dev????

joshghent 5y ago

Spending 10 hours to figure out "what to build" is madness. Having a deep customer connection should be the go to source. It sounds to me like the priority is based on momentary reckons. Sure to kill any kind of true innovation and value.