Ask HN: Is there a market (both supply/demand) for half-time software engineers?
What I would like, and I feel like I can't be alone in this, is to be employed half time and get paid half of that. I'd like the flexibility of having more days to myself (at this stage of my life, i.e. starting a family, with priorities on family over work), and maybe even grow side projects into small streams of passive income to diversify my income.
I see a lot of pros on the employee side, and that there must be a pool of engineers looking for something similar.
On the employer side I see pros being that half-time employment doesn't require benefits like health insurance, so these employees are on their own, and they also probably don't get given stocks, so in total by paying 50% salary, you actually end up paying less than 50% of total cost for the employee.
The con I see for the employer is that part time employees don't count as exempt so are required to be paid for any overtime hours, meaning it's harder to get ops response type of work out of them (need to pay for OT). So definitely can't see a company running with only half time engineers, but perhaps having a subset of engineers be half time could be possible (maybe even a good cost-saving idea).
Having said all that, does HN think there actually is a market for this on either side?