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Comment by GordonS | Hacker News Reader

Around 5 years back, I went from 5 days a week to 4, taking a 20% paycut in the process.

It was one of the best decisions I've ever made - it feels like I have so much more time for family, side projects and hobbies than I ever did before. And for reference, I work around 90% from home.

TBH, the company I work for has got a pretty good deal out of this, as I'm sure my productivity hasn't dropped at all. (it's a mega corp, so there is zero chance of negotiating back to equivalent of a 5-day salary)

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It's a 20% paycut, but a 50% increase in free time! I'm doing the same thing btw, taking every Wednesday off and I love it - it breaks up the week and having the whole extra day for fun projects is totally worth the money to me.

Well put – 50% increase in free time. That's a very positive take on it. Depending on who you are that'll matter more or less, but to me that phrase is heart warming. 50% more time for the family, self care, catching up around the house. That sounds peaceful.

And you pay less taxes, so the pay cut is not as high as the full sticker.

Actually, I remained in the same tax bracket.

Even in the same tax bracket, your effective tax rate will go down (because less of your income is in that bracket.)

A few years ago I seriously contemplated changing professions, so my boss allowed me to switch from full-time to 20 hours/week spread across 2-3 days. One immediate upside was that I only took a ~35% paycut due to being in a different tax bracket. As I dove deeper into my new career, I realized it wasn't for me, so I stayed at my old job... and now I can't imagine ever going back to full-time, as my quality of life has risen exponentially and I finally have enough time and energy for my never-ending list of hobbies and side-projects.

>One immediate upside was that I only took a ~35% paycut due to being in a different tax bracket.

Are you in the US? If so, you can't save money on taxes by making less; it's a progressive system.

I guess that's another quality of life perk of working outside the US :)

Well, I'd say the opposite... Here you'd be making more money.

I admit to being blissfully ignorant regarding financial matters but isn't 50% less work while earning 33% less (as opposed to 50%) a good thing?

Sorry, was only talking about the tax situation. In a progressive system each dollar is taxed at the rate of its bracket. For example (hypothetical), dollars 1-25,000 are taxed at 5%, 25,001-50,000 at 6%, 50,001-75,000 at 7%, etc. You can never gain by making less.

If you actually paid less in taxes on _every_ dollar by dropping a bracket, then you'd have been making more all along in a progressive system. Are you certain that was the case? Just curious.

You're misunderstanding what he's saying. He got a 50% cut in salary, but because all of that comes from the higher brackets, his take home is only 35% less.

I do the same thing (Australia). Worked 9 months last year and made about ~82-85% of what I would have working the full year, rather than 75%.

Incidentally this is why progressive tax is so important for a good startup culture (and thus overall tech scene). It's a negative tax on risk. The steeper your progressive ramp, the less of your geniuses are working in shit jobs creating UI form widgets with 40 managers telling them to redo it every other day.

Yes... I believe I did :)

He didn't say he saved money by working less. He said he worked 50% less but only got 35% less money.

How did you find a part time seng job? I’ve never seen one in my life. It’s all full time and contract work

I didn't, not exactly - it was a full time job for years, then I asked to reduce my hours.

In the UK, employers have to give consideration to reasonable requests for flexible working. But it also helped a lot that I work for a huge corporation, so they are better setup to deal with and permit such requests.

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