3 ms·

So don't hire so many people? I don't understand the problem. Why would they be hiring "extras" anyway? As backup?

tbrownaw 5y ago
Not extra as in "not needed", but extra as in "more than in the alternative" (with the alternative coming from the post title). The idea being that if everyone's part-time, you need more people to get the same work done relative to if everyone was full-time.
- prohobo 5y ago
  That's kind of my point, this is a project management problem. Maybe they should be re-considering what needs to get done in the first place. Or how long it will take. The only projects I can think of needing "a lot of work" (ie. large dev team and many hours) would be AAA games and god damn operating systems. How many part-time devs do you think I'm suggesting you need? Is hiring one person for 20-30 hours a week really so much more difficult? Most web stuff can be done with a few devs, and by the time that becomes a problem you should be rolling in money anyway. It's not like I'm saying it's wrong to hire full-time devs, most people are fine with that and if they want to let them at it. But a candidate doesn't need to be discounted just because they're only available part-time; they could be a huge boon to the team regardless.
  - WheelsAtLarge 5y ago
    The idea that if you hire SWEs for 4 hours, you'll get 4 hours straight of programming out of them is wishful thinking. The individual might go in with that mindset but long term it will take a very dedicated individual to do it. It's not sustainable by most employees. There's also the fact that a job is more than programming. A company will get at most 2 to 3ish hours of output from a programmer. So then the company will need to hire many more programmers plus the associated employees that support human resources and such. The idea that most companies over hire employees speaks to the fact that it's difficult to figure out how many people are needed for a project. Hiring a group of part time workers does nothing to fix that situation. I like the idea of working part time but for it to happen it would need to be a hard push by the workers via a union or something similar. From an employer's point of view it just doesn't make sense.

Not extra as in "not needed", but extra as in "more than in the alternative" (with the alternative coming from the post title). The idea being that if everyone's part-time, you need more people to get the same work done relative to if everyone was full-time.

prohobo 5y ago
That's kind of my point, this is a project management problem. Maybe they should be re-considering what needs to get done in the first place. Or how long it will take. The only projects I can think of needing "a lot of work" (ie. large dev team and many hours) would be AAA games and god damn operating systems. How many part-time devs do you think I'm suggesting you need? Is hiring one person for 20-30 hours a week really so much more difficult? Most web stuff can be done with a few devs, and by the time that becomes a problem you should be rolling in money anyway. It's not like I'm saying it's wrong to hire full-time devs, most people are fine with that and if they want to let them at it. But a candidate doesn't need to be discounted just because they're only available part-time; they could be a huge boon to the team regardless.
- WheelsAtLarge 5y ago
  The idea that if you hire SWEs for 4 hours, you'll get 4 hours straight of programming out of them is wishful thinking. The individual might go in with that mindset but long term it will take a very dedicated individual to do it. It's not sustainable by most employees. There's also the fact that a job is more than programming. A company will get at most 2 to 3ish hours of output from a programmer. So then the company will need to hire many more programmers plus the associated employees that support human resources and such. The idea that most companies over hire employees speaks to the fact that it's difficult to figure out how many people are needed for a project. Hiring a group of part time workers does nothing to fix that situation. I like the idea of working part time but for it to happen it would need to be a hard push by the workers via a union or something similar. From an employer's point of view it just doesn't make sense.