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Well, I think knowing the business is important on most feature work, but what if part time folks were cleaning up well-defined tech debt? Usually I know exactly what my tech debt is, I roll my eyes at it as I force myself to leave it alone. Then as I get loaded down for feature work or important bug fixes it just rots in my backlog til I notice it sometime later.

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If you were a productive fulltime dev, learned the business, knew the app, knew the tech debt, knew the right people to ask about various bits of the code, knew the stakeholders, etc?

Yeah, I think you could step back from that at some point and be a heck of a part-time asset.

1. Your knowledge of the app and organization would likely decay over time.

2. I'm not sure the the organization would love this move. It would be better than losing you entirely, but probably not as valuable as having you fulltime. From your perspective, 50% of your time is better than 100% of nothing. From their perspective, they're probably going to take the "glass half empty" view.

That would be much less valuable to the business. You'd probably be looking at 10% the salary of a full time dev who's actually solving business problems.

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