Comment by pmyteh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmyteh | Hacker News Reader

I've mostly worked in public-sector bureaucracies, not software companies, so my experiences won't line up exactly. In each case, the rule has been strictly pro-rata.

I've generally felt that the company has had the good end of that deal, especially for the higher fractions (0.6/0.8 of full time): productivity seems to me to be non-linear, and trading off the end-of-the-week burnout for a little more payroll admin and management sounds great. Where the fraction is much smaller, the increase in coordination costs probably means that it's more finely balanced.

The other point I'd make is that less than pro-rata will sound unfair to your part-timers, whether the intentions and justification are good or not. And defending that isn't a hill I'd die on: in skilled jobs staff goodwill is a precious commodity not to be squandered.

There may also be legal issues: I suspect that lower rates for part-timers would be unlawful indirect sex discrimination in the UK (the part-time workforce being female to a much greater extent) but that may well not be true where you are.

I mostly agree, although it's worth noting that there are probably some fixed overheads of being employed that eat up some of the otherwise expected benefits. Let's consider a scenario where there are 4h average fixed overhead for working at a company. Now let's run the 0.6 time vs. 1.0 time scenarios.

1.0 time. 40h - 4h overhead = 36h. Pay = 1. Work-to-pay ratio is 36h:1p.

0.6 time. 24h - 4h overhead = 20h. Pay = 0.6. Work to pay ratio is 33h:1p. You'd have to suppose that the 0.6 time worker is at least 1.1x as productive per hour just to break even. If you provide benefits that don't scale with fractional work you need even more of a productivity edge to justify it.

The corollary of this is that you'd really better make sure you have little fixed overhead time for your workers if they are working fractional time.

> The corollary of this is that you'd really better make sure you have little fixed overhead time for your workers if they are working fractional time.

That was one of the big things that me working part-time on a team helped with: they significantly cut down on the mandatory meeting overhead; early on a significant fraction of my time (40%?) was spent in meetings. We cut that down and everyone on the team benefited.

Not enough people are brave enough to just walk out of non-useful meetings.

By demanding an agenda upfront, attendees can decide if it's really useful to attend, and sending out notes afterwards means people who didn't attend can catch up. As a bonus, send the agenda beforehand with collaborative editing, and lots of things end up getting resolved before the meeting even happens.

>You'd have to suppose that the 0.6 time worker is at least 1.1x as productive per hour just to break even.

IMO that is easily achievable. Probably an underestimation. People who work for 6 hours, 4 days a week are going to be vastly more concentrated and rested. Physical labor might be different, but jobs that require mainly mental effort/creativity will benefit a lot from being rested.

Wasn't there a company that tried 30 hour work weeks for everyone and production stayed almost equal?

Who says they will rest in the downtime?

We're in the UK. I think the lower bound of this from our perspective is 50%, though wondered whether it would be perceived as willfully ignoring that productivity is non-linear.

To be honest, I hadn't really considered the legal ramifications: I'm hoping if I behave fairly then I can avoid having to think too hard.

Citizen's Advice lists requiring all employees to work full time as an example of indirect sex discrimination, so by advertising part time jobs you may be protecting yourself.

Interesting, could you link to that and/or explain it, against whom is it sex discrimination.

I know that in the UK the "wage gap" favours women in part-time work according to the National Statistics Office .

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discriminat... Under "Indirect sex discrimination"

Thanksatron.

Having read that now, I'm still not sure who it's supposed to be discriminating against?

If a parent, say, gets refused part-time hours, how does their sex alter the effect of that refusal?

Women are more likely to desire part time hours because they are always the ones who are getting pregnant and typically the ones raising small children.

Isn't it a private matter for a woman to decide whether to raise a child or not - regardless of the common good child rearing brings - assuming women raise children is wrong, and sexist too.

There's statutory parental leave to cover pregnancy already.

To mimic your response: men are the ones with the muscles, they are _typically_ stronger therefore we should discriminate.

Seems wrong.

(I'm just returning to my former work as my last child enters institutional schooling, and am male. There's a lot of discrimination here.)

> assuming women raise children is wrong, and sexist too.

I have no need to assume this because this is actually the case. This is reality today. When women stop being the primary ones raising the children then there will no longer be a need to be protections aiding them in finding part time work, but that is for some hypothetical future.

I think you mean "requiring all employees to work full time..."

Yes, edited.

I agree. I work 0.8 time (4 days a week) in the UK and am paid pro rata.

I think it balances out well, even aside from the fairness question.

It costs my employer benefits and admin, but they probably get quite close to the same amount of work as 1.0 because many people working 1.0 waste 0.2 of their time anyway.

Not familiar with UK employment practices, but: do the businesses pay any benefits to part-time employees?

Benefits are a much smaller part of the package. Health coverage, for example, is nationally provided. For most of my employers, the main benefits would be vacation (which would be pro-rata), pension (ditto), and sick leave (effectively ditto, as it pays out based on actual salary). There are some much smaller fringe benefits (gym discounts, say) which would be given regardless of hours worked, but I'm not sure that would make a material difference.

For high-end jobs you might get private health coverage (or, under earlier tax regimes, a company car). I'm not sure how they are normally handled.

One interesting thing about pro-rata vacation for anyone thinking about going to part time: you still get exactly the same number of weeks off regardless.

The trick to that I will leave as an exercise to the reader. It's something I was thrilled to discover by accident.

> The trick to that I will leave as an exercise to the reader.

Huh? Sorry, I'm not following.

Sorry. Didn't mean to be coy. But, to make the math easier, imagine a full timer 25 days of vacation per year = five weeks. Great.

Now let's say that person goes down to 80% time, working four days a week. Now they only earn 25 days * 80% = 20 days of vacation per year. But this person only works four days a week. So to spend a full week away only requires using up four vacation days. (20 days of vacation) / (4 days/week) = five weeks. Great.

Ah, thanks. This only works if you work fewer days per week as opposed to fewer hours per day.

don't know about you but my vacation days are calculated per hour. hence people sometimes take half a day off

Our benefits are all things that wouldn't make sense to take away from a part-time employee to be honest.

We don't offer private health care currently, and every other benefit is a pretty direct link to how productive that employee is - technical books, better work environment etc.

For instance, we do a "wonder week" once a quarter to work on side projects/learning etc. To me, not letting a part-time employee do this would be to treat it as a kind of bonus, when instead we view it as an opportunity to explore ideas and skill up.

It is a sex discrimination if you offer different conditions based on sex, not on hours worked. If part time workers have the same offer no matter the sex, then it is quite bizarre to build a sex discrimination case.

In Britain, it's definitely something you need to watch out for.

> indirect discrimination - putting rules or arrangements in place that apply to everyone, but that put someone with a protected characteristic at an unfair disadvantage

(from https://www.gov.uk/discrimination-your-rights/how-you-can-be...).

There have definitely been cases around aspects of part-time working which have been held to be indirect discrimination because men are (were?) overwhelmingly full-time and women not.

It is also possible to make a justification defence for indirect discrimination, though I don't know 'how good' your justification would need to be.

The same thing exists in the US, we call it "disparate impact".

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