Comment by ACow_Adonis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ACow_Adonis | Hacker News Reader

As an economist, you'd expect them to have trouble attracting highly skilled people seeking only wages.

On the other hand, also as an economist and from my own personal experience, there's a whole host of non-monetary benefits a flexible business can provide (which other businesses and corporates seem to balk at), and there's also the little talked about preference of some people wanting a negative correlation between pay and hours the job at the margin.

I've got my own stories. Issues I've had at previous employers include remote working, flexible hours, leave, intellectual property disputes over my own work, or non compete/ non publication issues.

When I left my previous job at banking, I actually interviewed for a lower paid position at uni of Melb. We got to the stage where we were all happy, only I said "I'll work for you if I can do 4 days a week, because I want to send time with my family and working on my own projects".

The bureaucracy said no.

I walked away and I'm back in a higher paying job again...(but with better hours and conditions than my previous ones).

Its always amazing to me the lengths businesses will go to in order to not hire the right staff...

In the Netherlands, if you have a child under 9 years old (it could be 8), your company is required, by law, to let you work 4 days a week if your want. It's actually really common with something like 28% of working men taking a "papadag" ("Daddy day" in English).

I wouldn't even consider a job that didn't allow me time to spend with my kids. Money is definitely not the primary driver for a lot of people.

Had never heard of this. Wow.

It's one of the reasons why the Dutch are world champions at part-time work. Most women work part-time, and quite a lot of men do too. Not even just for kids; my brother is single and has never worked more than 4 days a week. Gives him more time for his hobbies.

Do you accept a lower salary if you opt to work four days a week?

I would hope not. This article suggests that this is not the case (sorry about the adblocker modal): https://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2016/06/professor-aims-to-...

If that's the case, why do only 28% of working men opt-in for that benefit?

Also, it's pretty wild that you are effectively entitled by law to a 25% increase in salary if you have a child under 9.

>Also, it's pretty wild that you are effectively entitled by law to a 25% increase in salary if you have a child under 9.

That's incorrect. It's at a reduced salary.

If you're on a permanent contract and if your full-time function isn't in some way demonstrably critical to the business, you're also entitled to work fewer hours if you want, unrelated to children.

> That's incorrect. It's at a reduced salary.

So I presumed, which is why I responded with disbelief to a commenter that sad (in response to a question whether salary is reduced):

> I would hope not. This article suggests that this is not the case

No, there’s some confusion here. There are two distinct benefits you are entitled to when you become a father.

One is that you get exactly 1 week of paid leave.

The other is the right to take 26 weeks of unpaid ‘parental leave’ during the first 9 years, which is often used to e.g. start working 4 days a week (the leave is used at a rate of 1 day per week then; you could also use it for taking half a year off at once).

So "only" 2.5 years of 4-day weeks, with reduced pay.

My wife's job pays 75% percent for parental leave days, but that's not a requirement.

Personally, I only apply for jobs that let me work 4 day weeks permanently; I hate having to count how many days I've got left for whatever. (It's the main advantage of being a freelancer to me: no limit on how many vacation days I take.)

Yes, you only get paid 80% of your former salary.

80% of a good salary is still good. I have rejected one job recently because it turned out they were talking about a full-time salary while I assumed it was for my normal 4-day work week, so in the late stages of the talks, salary suddenly dropped 20% from my perspective. It wasn't the only problem with the job (it was a bit further away than I'd like), but it was the drop that made me look elsewhere. (I'm now doing something similar that's closer and pays better.)

I don't think a 4 day work week is 20% less productive than a 5 day one, but generally 80% of a full-time salary in this line of work is still more than enough.

I was thinking the same-- I wonder if they compensate the more market-desirable engineers by giving them more freedom / spare-time than support people get.

The article justifies the higher-than-market wage their support folks get, because it helps retention and their support people do a lot more than support. That's fair justification for paying over-market for support people, but it still doesn't seem like justification for a salary that's exactly the same.

And I agree that it's silly how companies won't offer 4-day or more-time-off as part of an employment agreement. I'd be seriously interested in a job that allowed me to take extra unpaid vacation time.

With the average labor-leisure curves of most people being an inverted c-shaped, I would be more surprised if it wasn't beneficial for most people to choose improved life over pay.

All I want is the ability to get compensated for benefits I decline, particularly the company health plan. I've never been able to negotiate this successfully.

Do you really care if you get paid $190K + $10K because you didn't take the medical plan vs just getting paid $200K whether or not you take the plan?

That's a false dichotomy; outlays per employee depend on the benefits each employee draws.

That said, dudul's comment on this thread indicate why this often is not (financially speaking) an option.

All the more reason to negotiate for the thing that you care about (that my W-2 box 5 says $200K at the end of a full year) and not whether you'd get more because you skip a given benefit or less because we notice that you really hit those Friday donuts pretty hard.

IMO, it's more productive to negotiate for what than for why.

Often times $10k is the difference between me accepting job A vs job B. So it would be better for the potential employer to offer that flexibility.

I also have an "icky" moral feeling about being tied to my employer via something like healthcare. So all other things being equal I would choose the company that offers this option over one that doesn't.

Considering how benefits are usually financed by employers I doubt that you will ever be able to get this. It's not as simple as "oh we won't need to pay $10k for your BCBS? Well, sure, let's give it to you".

Employers usually pay insurance ("stop loss") instead of health plans.

I believe that this is not possible in America. I'm a founder and we just started offering health benefits earlier this year. I tried really hard to figure out a way to let employees effectively pay 100% of their premium (either by paying them more if they opt out or just having the company share be 0%). I talked to a number of people, looked into different types of plans (HRAs, etc) and at the end of the day, I couldn't figure out legal way to do what you're suggesting.

I think the closest possible thing to this is for the company to offer to pay 50% of the cheapest plan possible and then let employees opt-in to better plans, add dependents, etc. at their own expense. That way the majority of the expense is "optional" to the employee, but whatever the company pays still isn't.

Note: this only applies to health benefits. We do compensate employees who decline other benefits e.g. a parking pass

Why did you want to not pay for health insurance?

Even if you had found a legal loophole to do this, just about everybody is going to want health insurance and I’m pretty sure if the company pays then it’s not taxed, plus you can get better rates that way as you get bigger. So it’s more expensive overall for the same plans if you make employees pay.

The tax benefits and better rates (which I think is a myth btw, but it shouldn't effect the argument either way) would be there regardless of who pays. It's still a group plan, the question is just about who is paying for it.

So given that, the difference between "we offer free health insurance" and "we pay you extra and let you opt in to health insurance" is purely academic for someone who wants to be on the group plan. Both the company and the employee end up with the same amount of money in the end, and the insurance is the same.

The reason I'd prefer letting people opt in is because it gives employees more choice. Maybe they want to use a different carrier. Or they get free insurance through their spouse's work. Or they're on Medicare. At the end of the day, it seems really paternalistic for a company to say to its employees "here are the things we want you to have, and instead of letting you choose, we're just going to buy it for you." All else being equal, I prefer a world where employees get money and spend it how they want.

Having said that, since there's no way to do that while also getting the convenience and tax benefits of a group plan, we decided to compromise and go with the employer-subsidized group plan rather than giving employees total freedom.

I was not able to negotiate cash for this, but I was able to negotiate more PTO in lieu of health benefits. Maybe try softer comp methods.

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