Hacker News Reader

Comment by dave_sullivan | Hacker News Reader

2.5 day work week. Peak performance on those days at a decent daily rate, then I get to fuck around on whatever for the rest of the week. Wednesdays are my fridays.

View on HN

Sounds like a dream. I'd love to work in short bursts of highly productive work instead of full work weeks of mostly lingering around and wasted time to fill the hours. I wonder though, how does it work out financially?

> I wonder though, how does it work out financially?

Pretty good, how is your approach working out financially?

I currently have a full time job. There is the option of reducing to 80%, but that comes with the respective salary cut. I'm wondering if it's worth it, also the increased productivity is not accounted for from a financial perspective.

Yeah, hard to say without knowing your situation. I suppose I try to maximize my daily rate and it's sometimes hard to find projects that are a good fit. If I worked more days, I could make more money. I used to make a lot more money, and be less happy. Also I moved from SV to cheaper cities in europe, so that helps me maintain a pretty awesome lifestyle. Trade offs.

So do you work 20 hours total per week (2.5*8) or do you actually work more hours per workday to make up for it?

2.5*8

How'd you convince someone to let you?

As a consultant, you can choose the days that are open for booking, a lot of companies don't need full time help or can't afford it, and I'm highly productive when I don't hate a project. So it works out.

may I ask what kind of consulting and how you got into it? I’m a final-year in uni trying to ensure I don’t stay locked in golden handcuffs.

Eh, I started around 2010 with salesforce.com and business intelligence stuff, then python and javascript web applications, then machine learning. Started a couple companies. Worked with a lot of different types of clients, from SMB to F500. Worked too hard in my 20s and now am pretty burnt on "SV culture" and the cult of productivity.

So if you want to be like me, work like crazy for 10 years, develop crippling anxiety, and then move to europe I guess :D

Oh yea. For a month or two in the summer my hours got reduced to ~15.5 h/week and it was a blast.

It's a shame not more people get to have this without having to worry about the roof over their heads and the food on their table.

What do you do for the rest of the week? I assume you have some hobby or passion you pursue?

Kind of a mix of side projects and parties on the beach. Fewer parties this year but so it goes.

how do you handle health insurance?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com