Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

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TaylorAlexander

In the past few years I’ve gone to 30 hour weeks. It really frustrated my managers at Google, but as an hourly contractor I neither needed the extra money nor wanted to be at work any more than that. Working 40 hours feels like I’m just burning my life away.

Even though the managers didn’t like it, they kept extending my contract until the two year maximum came up. Then I found a new employer who was eager to hire me. I told them if I could work four days a week and about 30 hours a week, I’d take the job.

He agreed and actually it’s working really well for both of us. He doesn’t actually need a huge amount of work done, I’m just working on some side projects he never has time for. The perpetual three day weekends give me a genuine sense of freedom on weekends that I haven’t felt before. Previously the two day weekend was stressful. With the three day weekend I have plenty of time for side projects (which I do constantly), and I’ve recently bought a mountain bike. Ive finally got time to do my weekend chores while still enjoying myself. And I work 10-30 hours a week in a really chill environment. All my bills are paid and I have time to live my life. I’m 34.

It’s hard to find this kind of situation, but let me assure you - it’s well worth pursuing and it’s life changing.

Also my managers at google didn’t like my 30 hour a week schedule and they didn’t want to hire me full time at the end of my contract, but they also didn’t let me go. If you want to explore this, make yourself useful and be a little pushy. It’s well worth it.

I'm a manager in SRE at Google, and one of my reports went to 50% time in Q4 last year.

So far this has worked quite well, and the support the company has provided to me as the manager, and to the report has been excellent.

There are some tooling issues (especially around oncall) - but otherwise it has been quite a smooth transition.

Thank you for the comment. It’s good to hear this may be possible. I actually really enjoyed alphabet in some ways, but I do not want to commit so much of my life to work.

Here’s some more context if you’re curious:

Just before I left, as FTE positions were being discussed on other projects (the role I was hired in disappeared after 6 months and they had moved me to something I didn’t like), I had a walk and talk with my skip level. I was told that the pay for engineers at X was partially because of the expectation of the quantity of work. My skip level told me that on previous projects they had worked 60 hour weeks, and that this kind of thing is necessary sometimes in the types of projects done at X. My other coworkers and friends at X told me 35 hours was normal for FTEs, but this manager seemed to clearly believe my 20-30 hour schedule had no place at X for an FTE.

I wasn’t necessarily ideal for that role, as again I did not even apply for the job they moved me to (something I appreciated versus termination when my original role got reorg’d away). But I never heard from anyone that something like 50% time would be possible. I think X is under a lot of headcount pressure, so my skip level was probably responding to that.

Anyway I’m not sure if that is relevant. I also had issues at ABC for the way they treated TVCs (I was one) and my new job is definitely what’s right for me. But I’d love to hear that more partial time roles are entertained at alphabet. Maybe in time it will become more common there.

Have you considered taking Wednesdays off? I can't remember where I saw it (probably HN), but it breaks up long work weeks so that you only have two consecutive work days in a row. I'd be eager to try that if I had a 30 hour work week.

I haven’t! The four day a week gig is relatively new, but Monday off is pretty nice!

I used to do it. It’s pretty nice.

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