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Your situation is exactly what I'm looking for. Being hired by a company but only working part time. Consulting is difficult (for me) because it is a huge time

by wasd 13y ago

Your situation is exactly what I'm looking for. Being hired by a company but only working part time. Consulting is difficult (for me) because it is a huge time investment.

acheron 13y ago
To fill my experience out a bit more, it wasn't something I was planning to do when I got hired. From a personal standpoint, I had a kid, and my wife got a higher-paying job so my salary became less important. From an office standpoint, there were a couple people already doing a similar schedule (I do three 10-hour days T-W-Th), so I wasn't going completely out on a limb. It really did fall into place pretty easily. (I work for a very large company which HN would probably scoff at, plus I work with very uncool things like Java and Oracle.) My situation has me fall in-between for a lot of HR things -- my pay has always been given in terms of a yearly salary, and usually as what it would be if I were full time. I just get 3/4ths of it. And I'm technically paid hourly, which helps keep any requests to come in on my days off to a minimum, since they actually have to pay me for it. I accrue 3/4ths of normal vacation time, but I still get all the other standard benefits. And I get to spend two extra days a week with my now two children. Really the only "bad" thing is that I know it'd be difficult to get into this situation again, so if my job stagnates, it would be hard to go out and try to find a new job, unless I am ready to go back full-time.
- jtheory 13y ago
  We have a few people working for us with similar deals -- e.g., people have kids and switch to reduced hours (this is a pretty good reason!).... We have one dev who is a theatre director for a few months every year; he lets us know well in advance when he's going to disappear for a while, and is available via email to offer advice on urgent issues. I'd have imagined this would be more common with small & flexible companies; kudos to you for sorting out an alternative setup in a big one! I imagine HR in large companies normally pushes back against any situation that will go outside their normal flow.
- SiVal 13y ago
  I work for a very large company which HN would probably scoff at, plus I work with very uncool things like Java and Oracle. Don't imagine that HN is some monolithic group of fratboys obsessed with the latest cool whatever. Some of us are dads like you, some of us work for big companies like you (I don't at the moment, but I have no objection to it), and some of us take pride in being able to use the tools we need to use to create useful stuff and don't care about hacker fads, fashion, or fame.

by wasd 13y ago

Your situation is exactly what I'm looking for. Being hired by a company but only working part time. Consulting is difficult (for me) because it is a huge time investment.

acheron 13y ago

To fill my experience out a bit more, it wasn't something I was planning to do when I got hired. From a personal standpoint, I had a kid, and my wife got a higher-paying job so my salary became less important. From an office standpoint, there were a couple people already doing a similar schedule (I do three 10-hour days T-W-Th), so I wasn't going completely out on a limb. It really did fall into place pretty easily. (I work for a very large company which HN would probably scoff at, plus I work with very uncool things like Java and Oracle.) My situation has me fall in-between for a lot of HR things -- my pay has always been given in terms of a yearly salary, and usually as what it would be if I were full time. I just get 3/4ths of it. And I'm technically paid hourly, which helps keep any requests to come in on my days off to a minimum, since they actually have to pay me for it. I accrue 3/4ths of normal vacation time, but I still get all the other standard benefits. And I get to spend two extra days a week with my now two children. Really the only "bad" thing is that I know it'd be difficult to get into this situation again, so if my job stagnates, it would be hard to go out and try to find a new job, unless I am ready to go back full-time.

jtheory 13y ago
We have a few people working for us with similar deals -- e.g., people have kids and switch to reduced hours (this is a pretty good reason!).... We have one dev who is a theatre director for a few months every year; he lets us know well in advance when he's going to disappear for a while, and is available via email to offer advice on urgent issues. I'd have imagined this would be more common with small & flexible companies; kudos to you for sorting out an alternative setup in a big one! I imagine HR in large companies normally pushes back against any situation that will go outside their normal flow.
SiVal 13y ago
I work for a very large company which HN would probably scoff at, plus I work with very uncool things like Java and Oracle. Don't imagine that HN is some monolithic group of fratboys obsessed with the latest cool whatever. Some of us are dads like you, some of us work for big companies like you (I don't at the moment, but I have no objection to it), and some of us take pride in being able to use the tools we need to use to create useful stuff and don't care about hacker fads, fashion, or fame.