5 ms·

In most tech companies you can negotiate a lower number of days per week for lesser pay. In the last two decades I've been in the industry, I knew very junior p

In most tech companies you can negotiate a lower number of days per week for lesser pay. In the last two decades I've been in the industry, I knew very junior people (early in their career) and very senior people doing 3-4 day workweek due to personal reasons in pretty much every company I worked in. It wasn't a big deal. Ability to take 3-6 month long unpaid breaks (sabbaticals), 4 weeks of PTOs, plus sick/carer leaves are quite standard in most good tech companies. During Covid, many companies started doing rest/reset days every quarter that is basically a forced holiday for everyone together (no FOMO, no pressure to check emails, attend calls etc). Some companies have started to do rest/reset week every quarter! (because they think its necessary given their higher stress level work). Getting time off isn't that hard. What is actually hard is getting high-quality work (where you get back as much as you give), satisfying work and a great team to do it with. Without great work and team, but have lot of PTO/perks etc it becomes very unsatisfying and not able to sustain interest. I also see many companies screwing up by not investing in talent/skill development activities (not the typical corp L&D where they organise a workshop with some random person who seems very preachy and doesn't really practice). I wish they did this better and enabled people to manage their personal time better on their own.

shostack 4y ago
Part of the challenge with these random days off is everyone rushing to get five days of work done in four (usually because of poor or insufficient planning). I always feel more stressed those weeks.
_gabe_ 4y ago
Your point on talent/skill development rings so true with me! At my company they created this required training course for all SE1 and SE2 level positions. I'd be completely ok with this, except for the fact that the few workshops I've attended so far have been hastily put together by people with maybe a half year more experience than me. In addition to this, they expect me to dedicate 4 hours a week to these courses. In my opinion, a well developed workshop should have very condensed, focused information that's targeted at specific goals. Instead what I'm getting is an engineer who studied some AWS CDK library for a few months, than threw together a PowerPoint in a couple hours teaching me stuff that has no clearly defined outcome :pain:
MDGeist 4y ago
My previous company had instituted the forced holiday once or twice a quarter and it was truly effective at getting people who never take time off to take a break. They tried to discontinue it after the pandemic receded a bit but people protested so they kept it in the end.
- dvtrn 4y ago
  They tried to discontinue it after the pandemic receded What arbitrary KPI did they point to as a reason for that decision?
  - clumpthump 4y ago
    Not the person you're replying to but I had the same experience. My company was careful to announce the extra holidays as a special pandemic related wellness thing (subtext: not permanent) whenever they did it, so the discontinuation was just not announcing new ones.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  One of my former coworkers went at least a decade without taking a single vacation day. He cashed them in every year. Eventually one year him and his wife went on a vacation and I guess he took a liking to the experience because from that point on he always used up all of his vacation time. All it took was him actually experiencing an actual vacation trip to see the value in them. It really annoyed our manager, from whose budget vacation payouts didn't come, when he no longer had one of his most productive engineers in the office all 52 weeks of the way, especially since the coworker had been with the company long enough to get six weeks per year. Though not completely due to the newly discovered fondness of using vacation days, we did end up increasing headcount around that time and I'm sure it was a contributing factor.
rr808 4y ago
Wow I've never heard of this. I'm in NYC though. Is this in SV or generic tech? I'd love to take sabbaticals every year or two.
- m-watson 4y ago
  Not really related to the thread but I worked at a think-tank in DC that had such an issue with people never taking time off they started giving sabbatic pay. After your first year you started accruing both regular vacation time and sabbatic vacation time which was 1.5X your normal pay to encourage you to take time off.
- zerkten 4y ago
  Some people negotiate 4-day weeks with the same pay across all industries, but I'd say it's overall less common than the person you replied to. People like to talk about exotic work schedules and the like, but fewer actually make demands for it. Those that try it revert for different reasons, including the rest of the team operating without reasonable consideration. Where I've seen this be successful is when the person picks up time that overlaps with a remote team. This is viewed as adding additional value because it can be hard to get other people to get up early, or stay up late to collaborate with those teams. If it's part of their deal then it can end up being a more sustainable situation. If you want a sabbatical, why not just ask for it? Use it as a filter for the organizations you want to work with. I suspect it'll be hard to negotiate because the company won't understand what value they'll get. You are a prospective hire and not a proven asset. It's only after a period that they can assess that they feel you are worthy of a sabbatical and aren't a flight risk. When it comes to academia, then sabbaticals are part of the deal. They aren't for tech companies, although some like Microsoft offer these for higher levels (people with proven value who have lots of options.)
  - BrandoElFollito 4y ago
    > I suspect [a sabbatical]'ll be hard to negotiate In France (since the question was about Europe) sabbaticals are part of the Labour Law and companies must provide them.
AlwaysRock 4y ago
> In most tech companies you can negotiate a lower number of days per week for lesser pay I don't think most companies will let you. I tried to negotiate this many times in the past for engineers and it was never successful. Even for companies that otherwise were very flexible or knew that a 4 day work week was the only way to afford someone they wanted to hire. Many tech companies will do this and its worth asking. But most is not really accurate.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  The impression I've always gotten was that you can't get this up front, but you can negotiate for it eventually. The past few places I've worked had part-time people, but they all seemed to be AAA employees that the company was happy to bend over backwards to keep.
  - plank 4y ago
    I guess my personal experience collaborates this: I started working 4 days a week for personal reasons, using a large chunk of saved vacation days (we in the Netherlands have quite more then in e.g. the US), and then just made that permanent. It helped that in that timeframe (end of previous century) more women were starting in IT, and parttime work was accepted. In my later years as a IT consultant in the public sector, several clients actually only hired for a maximum of 32 hours a week. Now no longer working through an agency, I was kindly asked if I could work for longer hours and accepted, so now working 36 instead of 32 hours a week.
pm215 4y ago
My experience is limited (couple of UK companies), but I've twice been able to negotiate down to 4 days as an existing employee without much difficulty, but found it much harder (failed) to negotiate starting at 4 days with a new employer.
- nickd2001 4y ago
  I've negotiated down to 4 days (1st time 34 hrs/wk, 2cnd time 37.5 'cos they wouldn't allow reduced hours, 3rd time 32 hours) at 3 UK employers. This was at interview time. It seems to me you're in a strong position both at interview when they need to fill a position, and once you've been there a while and shown you can deliver. BTW the 2cnd time, when I still had to do the same hours, was not fun cos the days ended up being long and tiring, although younger people with less caring responsibilities mgight not find this too bad.
  - pm215 4y ago
    At what point in the application-and-interview process did you usually bring up the 4-day-week requirement?
    - nickd2001 4y ago
      Towards the end of an interview when its going well. :) Its not the 1st thing you ask, but probably best mentioned before they make an offer. It might mean they feel they can offer slightly less pay, which to me is OK. If an employer is being slightly flexible with me, I don't necessarily want top dollar too because I always want to look like decent value. If the salary offered by that employer is not as good as some competitors, thus hurting recruitment, and they know that but can't change it, they may see flexible working as worth offering to clinch the deal. One thing in my favour, which not everyone has, is the "excuse" of extra caring responsibilities. When I give details, its clear cut to any employer that the day off would be to address that or recover from it, rather than indicating any "work-shy-ness" of any kind. These are my tactics anyway :). If anyone on here wants to challenge this I shan't be offended :)
birdyrooster 4y ago
Just find a team where you can quietly fuck off one or more days a week and no one cares. It's better than a formal 4 or 3 day work week because you don't have to ask permission. Much simpler than trying to negotiate some HR approved solution.

shostack 4y ago

Part of the challenge with these random days off is everyone rushing to get five days of work done in four (usually because of poor or insufficient planning). I always feel more stressed those weeks.

_gabe_ 4y ago

Your point on talent/skill development rings so true with me! At my company they created this required training course for all SE1 and SE2 level positions. I'd be completely ok with this, except for the fact that the few workshops I've attended so far have been hastily put together by people with maybe a half year more experience than me. In addition to this, they expect me to dedicate 4 hours a week to these courses. In my opinion, a well developed workshop should have very condensed, focused information that's targeted at specific goals. Instead what I'm getting is an engineer who studied some AWS CDK library for a few months, than threw together a PowerPoint in a couple hours teaching me stuff that has no clearly defined outcome :pain:

MDGeist 4y ago

My previous company had instituted the forced holiday once or twice a quarter and it was truly effective at getting people who never take time off to take a break. They tried to discontinue it after the pandemic receded a bit but people protested so they kept it in the end.

dvtrn 4y ago
They tried to discontinue it after the pandemic receded What arbitrary KPI did they point to as a reason for that decision?
- clumpthump 4y ago
  Not the person you're replying to but I had the same experience. My company was careful to announce the extra holidays as a special pandemic related wellness thing (subtext: not permanent) whenever they did it, so the discontinuation was just not announcing new ones.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
One of my former coworkers went at least a decade without taking a single vacation day. He cashed them in every year. Eventually one year him and his wife went on a vacation and I guess he took a liking to the experience because from that point on he always used up all of his vacation time. All it took was him actually experiencing an actual vacation trip to see the value in them. It really annoyed our manager, from whose budget vacation payouts didn't come, when he no longer had one of his most productive engineers in the office all 52 weeks of the way, especially since the coworker had been with the company long enough to get six weeks per year. Though not completely due to the newly discovered fondness of using vacation days, we did end up increasing headcount around that time and I'm sure it was a contributing factor.

rr808 4y ago

Wow I've never heard of this. I'm in NYC though. Is this in SV or generic tech? I'd love to take sabbaticals every year or two.

m-watson 4y ago
Not really related to the thread but I worked at a think-tank in DC that had such an issue with people never taking time off they started giving sabbatic pay. After your first year you started accruing both regular vacation time and sabbatic vacation time which was 1.5X your normal pay to encourage you to take time off.
zerkten 4y ago
Some people negotiate 4-day weeks with the same pay across all industries, but I'd say it's overall less common than the person you replied to. People like to talk about exotic work schedules and the like, but fewer actually make demands for it. Those that try it revert for different reasons, including the rest of the team operating without reasonable consideration. Where I've seen this be successful is when the person picks up time that overlaps with a remote team. This is viewed as adding additional value because it can be hard to get other people to get up early, or stay up late to collaborate with those teams. If it's part of their deal then it can end up being a more sustainable situation. If you want a sabbatical, why not just ask for it? Use it as a filter for the organizations you want to work with. I suspect it'll be hard to negotiate because the company won't understand what value they'll get. You are a prospective hire and not a proven asset. It's only after a period that they can assess that they feel you are worthy of a sabbatical and aren't a flight risk. When it comes to academia, then sabbaticals are part of the deal. They aren't for tech companies, although some like Microsoft offer these for higher levels (people with proven value who have lots of options.)
- BrandoElFollito 4y ago
  > I suspect [a sabbatical]'ll be hard to negotiate In France (since the question was about Europe) sabbaticals are part of the Labour Law and companies must provide them.

AlwaysRock 4y ago

> In most tech companies you can negotiate a lower number of days per week for lesser pay I don't think most companies will let you. I tried to negotiate this many times in the past for engineers and it was never successful. Even for companies that otherwise were very flexible or knew that a 4 day work week was the only way to afford someone they wanted to hire. Many tech companies will do this and its worth asking. But most is not really accurate.

mywittyname 4y ago
The impression I've always gotten was that you can't get this up front, but you can negotiate for it eventually. The past few places I've worked had part-time people, but they all seemed to be AAA employees that the company was happy to bend over backwards to keep.
- plank 4y ago
  I guess my personal experience collaborates this: I started working 4 days a week for personal reasons, using a large chunk of saved vacation days (we in the Netherlands have quite more then in e.g. the US), and then just made that permanent. It helped that in that timeframe (end of previous century) more women were starting in IT, and parttime work was accepted. In my later years as a IT consultant in the public sector, several clients actually only hired for a maximum of 32 hours a week. Now no longer working through an agency, I was kindly asked if I could work for longer hours and accepted, so now working 36 instead of 32 hours a week.

pm215 4y ago

My experience is limited (couple of UK companies), but I've twice been able to negotiate down to 4 days as an existing employee without much difficulty, but found it much harder (failed) to negotiate starting at 4 days with a new employer.

nickd2001 4y ago
I've negotiated down to 4 days (1st time 34 hrs/wk, 2cnd time 37.5 'cos they wouldn't allow reduced hours, 3rd time 32 hours) at 3 UK employers. This was at interview time. It seems to me you're in a strong position both at interview when they need to fill a position, and once you've been there a while and shown you can deliver. BTW the 2cnd time, when I still had to do the same hours, was not fun cos the days ended up being long and tiring, although younger people with less caring responsibilities mgight not find this too bad.
- pm215 4y ago
  At what point in the application-and-interview process did you usually bring up the 4-day-week requirement?
  - nickd2001 4y ago
    Towards the end of an interview when its going well. :) Its not the 1st thing you ask, but probably best mentioned before they make an offer. It might mean they feel they can offer slightly less pay, which to me is OK. If an employer is being slightly flexible with me, I don't necessarily want top dollar too because I always want to look like decent value. If the salary offered by that employer is not as good as some competitors, thus hurting recruitment, and they know that but can't change it, they may see flexible working as worth offering to clinch the deal. One thing in my favour, which not everyone has, is the "excuse" of extra caring responsibilities. When I give details, its clear cut to any employer that the day off would be to address that or recover from it, rather than indicating any "work-shy-ness" of any kind. These are my tactics anyway :). If anyone on here wants to challenge this I shan't be offended :)

birdyrooster 4y ago

Just find a team where you can quietly fuck off one or more days a week and no one cares. It's better than a formal 4 or 3 day work week because you don't have to ask permission. Much simpler than trying to negotiate some HR approved solution.