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This is not quite related to the article but it struck a chord. I started losing weight around a year and a half ago. I lost around 68kg, or 149 pounds. I’ve

• gotorazor 3y ago
  @Trufa - What are you typing this reply on?
  • Trufa 3y ago
    My phone :)
    • culi 3y ago
      If I ever got out of tech, HN would be one of the first things I'd like to kick tbh haha. What keeps you coming back? I don't use social media either but this often feels worse in some ways
      • bheadmaster 3y ago
        Not him, but I find HN a good tradeoff between Reddit and 4chan. There are no powerhungry mods that'd ban you without an explanation, but you can still have a conversation without being called homophobic names. The hivemind exists, but the opposition is strong enough that even controversial voices can be heard as long as they are well-argumented.
      • shever73 3y ago
        HN is on the more tolerable side of social for me. I kicked Instagram years ago, never had Facebook, hate the hustle mentality of LinkedIn, and deleted my Reddit account due to the constant bickering and flame wars. I find the discourse on HN to be (usually) thought-provoking and largely respectful.
        • ido 3y ago
          Same here - HN is nice enough as long as you're willing to just not react to people who vehemently disagree with you about something. As in: knock yourself out, I don't need to get into internet fights about why I think your opinion is ridiculous/oversimplified/ill-informed. If I get a whiff that the person is not going to be reacting productively I just don't reply.
  • 000ooo000 3y ago
    What was the point of this pedantry? "Ha - caught you using a computer when you said you don't really use one!". Really?
    • Trufa 3y ago
      Let us assume for now that he was just curious :) It may also be how I phrased it, I still read HN and watch some YouTube and Instagram, from my phone just with quite strict time controls.
• CMCDragonkai 3y ago
  Nice! But you can also have a good lifestyle with tech jobs too. You just need to be a financially independent founder.
  • bt4u 3y ago
    [dead]
• cssanchez 3y ago
  To your question, there’s the obvious freelance sites, but also working on open source can be rewarding in more ways than one. I found a couple companies in a conference that were looking for open source solution consultants part time / custom time. If you can’t find them online, I can check my conference swag to see if I find the name.
  • Trufa 3y ago
    Sounds interesting, I honestly think that’s one the things I’ll be going for. That would be great if you found them. If you want to contact me at my email it’s my username plus varela at the mail from the big search engine. Thank you very much!
  • ferruck 3y ago
    I'm interested in those companies too. Could you send me a mail (hn at philipp-trommler dot me) in case you find the names? Thanks!
• tayo42 3y ago
  Idk about work a few hours a week but with wfh/remote I've been able to surf at lunch breaks. It's not the 3-4 hour marathon sessions I did daily as a kid but it's still fun. Also have been able to do some digital nomad type stuff and get a place, work and surf in places like Bali, Hawaii and Puerto Rico
• nradov 3y ago
  Congratulations on your progress. But software development isn't even very high on the scale of stressful jobs. It really doesn't compare to being a trader or police officer or ER physician or social worker. We have it pretty easy.
  • bnjms 3y ago
    I don’t think that’s how stress works. If you’re prone to stressing about things then you’ll build up failure scenarios in your head relative to what you know. The ER physician becomes desensitized during residency and learns to fall back on their training; or burn out into another role. Same for the rest.
    • hnfong 3y ago
      Even worse, we’re professionally trained to consider all the edge cases, failure cases and write code defensively. I find most other professionals tending to be more “optimistic” than I am…
      • sk0g 3y ago
        Now I wonder if there's correlation to a developer's preferred language, and their outlook in life. Do Gophers live under a shroud of nihilism, while Pythonistas run about their business laissez-faire, leaving issues for others or a future them to deal with?
        • bheadmaster 3y ago
          In my experience, writing Python was often followed by dread of some random exception popping up in production because my unit tests didn't pick it up. Writing Go was a much more pleasant experience, I always felt like the code does exactly what I want.
          • sk0g 3y ago
            Writing Python is great, maintaining it is miserable. Conversely, writing Go is miserable, but maintaining it is great. Logically, the best of both worlds my work has arrived at is Python and on-call for more senior engineers... Fuck. The sheer amount of None-type, or object doesn't have member X errors is pretty ridiculous.
• ToJans 3y ago
  > btw, if anyone has any ideas of how to work very few hours a week as a pretty decent full stack web dev without too high of a financial aspirations, I’m all ears, people seem too look for all or nothing employees only. I'm starting an experiment next week with a marketeer, where she can work whenever it suits her for how long she wants for a retainer/fixed amount per month. The rate is about 1/4th of a full-time freelance, and the idea is to mutually agree on actions and/or outcomes/results each month. I plan to do something similar with a very senior dev this summer, who is training for a triathlon and has 2 small kids he needs to look after, probably at 50% of market rate... The biggest issue when setting up something like this is trust, but as I've worked with both of them before on short stints with a regular daily rate (a few days to weeks), I don't have that issue myself. For me it's a simple math equation: how much am I putting in, and what will this bring me financially (SaaS license income etc), so I can easily figure out the point where I'll be satisfied with our agreement. I have high hopes for this experiment, but low expectations. We'll see how it goes. My best bet for you would be to look for similar opportunities: find someone who pays on commitment/outcome, and doesn't care about hours worked...
  • polalavik 3y ago
    Wait - are looking for 100% of the work to be done, but at a fraction of the cost? i.e. instead of everyone pretending to work 8 hours per day 5 times per week they are just going to do work when there is work to do? This is called "asynchronous work" or "async work"[1]. Do work when it makes sense for you, but get it all done. Async workers should not be discounted. [1] https://levels.io/async/ https://levels.io/async/]
    • zacharycohn 3y ago
      It sounds like the amount of work would be reduced to less than what a full time person could deliver.
    • nunobrito 3y ago
      Most programmers/engineers only work realistically a few hours per day, if so much. Veterans bring a wealth of experience, can likely do more in two hours than many others in two days. Like OP mentioned, it is a matter of balance and profit. When both sides of the equation are happy, isn't that what really matters?
• conductr 3y ago
  Apply for normal jobs that sound interesting. When you get a FT offer as expected, counter with “actually, I’ve reevaluated and am only able to commit X time for the foreseeable future. I’m still very interested in the company/problem space and would gladly entertain compensation relative to my availability. Let’s work something out!” Companies get creative when forced to is all.
  • thunky 3y ago
    This sounds like a bad idea. You don't want the employer to waste your time, so you should try not to waste theirs. If you want to work for them you should go in assuming they're not trying to deceive you either.
    • conductr 3y ago
      You counter offers for a dozen other things, why not time? All those other negotiables can just as easily blow the "deal" apart but aren't considered a waste of time/deceit. They often aren't pre-aligned on. Even if you pre-aligned on something, the interview process itself can change your opinion. For example, you may agree that a salary of $x would suffice. During interviews, you determine the job is going to be much more demanding than originally expected so you now say you like it but $y is the new price. It's not deceitful, it's quite normal.
      • thunky 3y ago
        I agree your example of a salary adjustment is fine, no deceit there. The deceit comes from pretending to be qualified for a fundamental job requirement that you'll never meet (the requirement to work full time). A better example is applying for a job that requires a license and after weeks of interviews you finally get an offer just to turn around and say "actually I don't have a license and I'm not willing to get one, but I hope your offer still stands?". Except it's even worse becuase at least in that case the employer can verify your license right off and avoid wasting everyone's time. Lying on a resume or application is just not a good look.
  • 3y ago
• shortcake27 3y ago
  I’ve had a very similar experience to you. Quit my job due to burnout in November, been hiking virtually every other day since then. I expected to take a year off, but recently my brain has been getting a bit itchy and working on my own stuff wasn’t cutting it. Also, I was eating into my savings a bit too much. I floated the idea of part time work with my network and a few offers came in. Some project based stuff, some actual part time work. I guess I’m lucky to have a good network, but the jobs are there. Many people want/need experienced engineers but can’t afford a full time offer. I’ve been doing two days a week for the past month. Sometimes I struggle to switch off as I’m actually pretty excited and engaged. I’m working on improving this. Other than that I’m loving the balance of 2 days on 5 days off - can see myself doing this long term.
• kfk 3y ago
  On your question, We welcome Seniors even few hours a week, especially if you are happy to work on architecture and documentation. Plus we are based out of Tenerife if you want to work from an office and there is a lot of surfing on the island.
  • thestepafter 3y ago
    I’m interested in learning more about this. Mind if I message you?
    • kfk 3y ago
      sure, feel free
  • UweSchmidt 3y ago
    Time to lean back and do a double take to witness a little pivotal moment on HN? The common theme of a tech worker looking for options, alternatives and flexibility, but finally answered casually by an employer who seems to "get it", by offering part-time and being located on a neat island? Other threads are often a pile-ons of complaints from the employee-side, and half-measures and push-backs from the employer-side. So this is neat.
• siwatanejo 3y ago
  > btw, if anyone has any ideas of how to work very few hours a week as a pretty decent full stack web dev without too high of a financial aspirations, There's almost zero part-time job offers for sw engineers, but I have one. If you're interested DM me (same username in twitter or telegram).
• gymbeaux 3y ago
  Yeah, ours is a field where we typically make multiple X what we need to survive. I took 6 months off somewhat involuntarily when COVID first hit and it kind of sucked because of the COVID lockdown, but I could see the potential. Of course resume gaps are a yellow flag at best, and the ol “just explain it was a sabbatical” is realistically not as powerful as people like to think it is. Two people. Identical except that one has a 6 month sabbatical in the work history. Most companies will hire the guy without the sabbatical on record. It’s a real bummer we can’t work 20 or 32-hour weeks (with proportionally-reduced pay). It’s “40” or nothing, you’re right. Where’s the leverage? We’re supposed to be in-demand. Why haven’t we unionized? Why haven’t we been at the forefront of advocating for workers’ rights? They need us. We’re hard to replace. Hospitality staff are easy to replace. Amazon warehouse workers are easy to replace. Apple retail employees are easy to replace.
• iamcasen 3y ago
  Count me in as a SWE who would be interested in flexible engagements. I like to push hard for a few months, and then change with the seasons. I think this is very realistic with most software engineering work. Project based, develop a rapport over time. Request hours with me for the next month and we can get shit done together. I'd honestly like to be a part of a SWE coop, where we as engineers pool our resources and develop shared assets that we can use for clients. Working almost like a law firm does.