Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time? | Hacker News Reader

Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?

I work for a tech company and we're trying to see if there is interest from senior engineers who want to work part time. Now that we're a remote first company, we want to know if there are engineers who are at a point in their career where they no longer want to work full time, but are still interested in working reduced hours or part time. Specifically, we're not so much looking for contractors/freelancers to work on specific projects, but for an experienced senior engineer (previously worked for different start ups, or at a larger top tech company) to join a team and essentially be a guru or advisor to the team.

What are peoples thoughts on this idea? Is this type of thing something that you've seen at other companies, or would be of interest to see at a company?

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Absolutely, yes. I'm not sure why more companies don't simply reduce hours in lieu of paying out higher salaries. I'm quite sure many devs would stay at a company if they offered an effective 20-40% raise by offering them a 32 or 24hr workweek. And, to the benefit of the company, my guess is there won't be a big loss in productivity.

Years ago, I was in need of a big a salary adjustment, and I offered to work for 3 days at the same pay, and the owner said yes. We were both very satisfied with this arrangement. He kept me and I was still productive, and I had more time to pursue other interests.

Are you based in the US?

I think offering benefits to part-time employees is optional here. Curious about your experience with this.

Yes, I am. I believe benefits kick in at 30+ hours at most places in the U.S.

So a 30-ish hr workweek would be the most beneficial to the employee.

> I'm not sure why more companies don't simply reduce hours in lieu of paying out higher salaries.

Tried it. It only really works if the developer’s tasks are very independent of the rest of the team.

Basically, if the employee already functions in the same way as an independent contractor or consultant working on an isolated project, shrinking their work hours isn’t a big deal.

But when you have someone working as part of a team and interacting with the rest of the company, it quickly becomes a huge burden for everyone else to work around their schedule. Way too many instances of needing a response or bug fix from someone but they don’t work for several more days, so the team has to do it themselves if they want to make progress. This ends up sorting all of the easier, non-urgent work to the part time person while the time-sensitive work is always stuck to other team members. Great for the reduced hours person, not great for everyone else.

If the company’s work falls into the corner category, it’s easy. If the company’s work is in the latter category (more common) then it ends up being kind of terrible for everyone other than the person who gets reduced hours.

i can see that if you work less days, but not if you work every day but less hours. at most you should wait a few hours for that person to be available. that's not unreasonable.

I work on the east coast as part of a team that is mostly on the west coast. I can fit my meetings into the latter five hours. It sucks because it tends to have little space (I’m an EM) but it works.

It works for my team as well, so it’s definitely doable.

YES YES YES.

I'm so freaking burned out. I need some time to get my life back to a comfortable pace, and I constantly consider fully quitting my job, but that seems too drastic.

More importantly, I don't want to 100% stop working because I actually do love working. I just can't figure out how to care for my family, my mental and physical health, and put in 40+ hours at my job.

(Seniority wise, I've got 18 years of experience across many aspects of the industry and I've fought to remain an IC rather than take on management roles, certainly to the detriment of my career growth)

If you're willing to accept lower pay, then come to The Netherlands. IMO it's quite normal over there.

I'm with you!

I'm already on a "reduced 30 hr/week expectation" but just submitted notice of needing leave, drastically dropping to reduced part-time hours, or parting ways.

I'd love to hear and learn more about you. You might be a fit for my current employer. Shoot me an email found in my profile if you're interested.

I also gave notice of the same thing on Monday this week. My boss was OK with working three 10 hour days which I will likely oblige at first, but I'm looking to go down to the 20 hour mark in the end.

I'm lucky to be in a flexible enough environment and proven myself as an IC who manages themselves, projects and clients reliably.

To the point of the OP: you can't take care of things in your life while working like that. I also think of quitting entirely, simply to take care of myself and others around me. Nobody can or is doing it, and nobody will be able to unless one of us gets out first and can set some kind of force in motion that builds up everyone around us.

> I just can't figure out how to care for my family, my mental and physical health, and put in 40+ hours at my job.

You might be in a bubble.

Working more than 40 hours per week is not common at typical companies across the US, no matter what the internet says. If you’re doing the hustle and grind in Silicon Valley or Seattle or NYC then you’re going to be working long hours, but there are many more jobs that don’t require anything like that.

Have you tried listing reqs on https://4dayweek.io?

Speaking as an infosec practitioner, we’ve built functions with this model where we have infosec folks as subject matter experts (architecture, appsec, IAM) providing guidance on a 4 day work week. Great perk versus comp and benefits alone, and usually attractive to talent at later stages in life who are optimizing for QoL versus total comp.

This sounds amazing. I had no idea such a site existed. Thank you.

Let me strengthen what I just said.

I've been passively looking for a job. Job hunting is a slog for me, and I'm not interested.

But seeing this list, I've suddenly perked up. This is exciting.

Made my Friday, thanks for saying so. Find something great.

:-D

Thanks for the shoutout :)

Every darn time I can I’m going to lean on resources that helps normalize and champion a 4 day work week. As such, always happy to share your project when the context permits.

I do think the biggest obstacle to part time work in the US is that health care is tied to employment. Health insurance can easily cost $20k+ a year for a family, and it'll be hard for employees to stomach the salary cut they might have to take to make the numbers work.

You can still get health insurance while working part-time, it's just not required by law. Put it into your contract, someone going for a role like this poster seems interested in would be able to negotiate that into their contract if it wasn't there from the start.

maybe, maybe not. it's pretty common to find households where one partner has a job with a good salary and the other has a job with good benefits. cutting salary by more than proration while offering great benefits could be an attractive combo for households with this strategy.

If one is actually serious in bringing senior engineers in house under part time work hours, why would one make assumptions to limit the scope of who would find it acceptable conditions to come in under?

In the US one could offer comp for health insurance equivalent partial value, or go the other way and carry full health insurance with the part time salary reducing. Or maybe this whole situation favors a setup in nations w/ universal healthcare.

I would be interested in something like this, whenever I next look for work. I can't see giving up the sailboat-cruising lifestyle for another full-time office job anytime soon, but I'm too young to retire. I feel like I'll probably be looking for consulting gigs next year, but an ongoing situation with a specific team and product would certainly be preferable to gig work.

I've had a couple of ostensibly full-time jobs which worked this way in practice - smaller shops, who couldn't compete with big-tech salaries, but happily paid their full-time rate for my expertise and availability, even though they only had a couple days of actual work for me to do each week.

Yes, there are certainly people like that (me included). There's even a job board for it https://4dayweek.io/

Yes, I would like to work 3/5 days and would take the corresponding pay cut

I negotiated one of my previous roles to 3 days a week after I told them I was leaving. I managed about 5 months of this setup but the disconnect between myself and other employees was obvious. The lack of face to face time means that you need to work on small isolated projects to remain productive. Otherwise it's difficult to keep up to date with the various moving parts in the product.

Thanks for sharing your experience

> we're not so much looking for contractors/freelancers to work on specific projects, but for an experienced senior engineer

It may not have been intended like this, but an 'experienced senior engineer' can also be a 'freelancer/contractor'. The post doesn't make it sound like that.

You want someone to be part of a 'team' - that'll totally be up to how you interact with someone, not their tax/corp status. If you want to be paying someone senior to help on multiple projects, advise on broader topics, etc., by all means get that. But if the person doesn't want to be in a W2 relationship with you, do you pass them over because of that?

I think what OP means is that they want someone who is committed only to their company but part time. Freelancers juggle b/w various clients and frankly cannot produce the same level of output/commitment/results/care that committed employees can. Freelancers can decide their own schedule which may not work. Part time employees even though will work less hours, will still be employees with committed time etc. So the best option is to find employees but part time so that both sides commit to each other but the employee gets to work less and use that time for real work/life balance (hopefully not another job/gig)

> Freelancers juggle b/w various clients and frankly cannot produce the same level of output/commitment/results/care that committed employees can.

My own experience has shown that to be untrue. I've known plenty of contractor folks who 'care' (however you might measure that) and deliver as much as or more than many employees.

Absolutely. I'm turning 50, and kinda tired of the full-time efforts, kinda tired of coding all the time, but don't want to stop working yet either. That kind of role sounds perfect.

It would need to have a compensation package that incentivizes people to truly just be part-time for you and not seek out side contracts - decent pay and benefits, etc.

This sounds like the XY Problem[1]. Why do you want a senior engineer, that isn't a contractor, but doesn't work as much? What country are you in? Do you want to pay this employee an hourly rate? Why do you think a contractor could only be scoped to one project? Why is this described as a "guru" role? Are you sure you aren't looking for a "consultant" instead?

[1] - https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-x...

i don't see anything in the post that says that contractors can only work on projects, just that they are not looking for that kind of contractors, but they are looking for someone who ins interested in a permanent engagement. it could still be a contractor, although if that person does not have any other clients at the same time, in some jurisdictions they legally can only be an employee.

consultant is very broad. i worked as a consultant for some clients, and it is nothing like the post describes. sure, the described position could be called a consultant, but describing it as a "guru" is much more descriptive and makes clear what they are actually looking for.

I would love to work 4 or even 3 days per week if I could still get health care with such low hours.

Part of the reason I went freelance. If I can't get 4 day weeks, then I'll work for 6-8 months then take off just as long. I need breaks and I can't work on W2 ever again because of it.

I would work part-time, but what cuts to my benefits would that entail? I already work ~20 hours per week in a job that gives me full-time benefits and pay, and I get every single goal done that I am required to achieve here. Why should the old-school butts-in-seats agenda have anything to do with my work output? I provide the same value for my company right now that I would if they cut my "hours" to half, so why would I agree to a pay cut in that case?

I know that I am very privileged to be able to work as I do in my career, and I've worked in warehouses, janitorial duties, etc. so I know how hard it can be to do those kinds of jobs where there isn't the ability to get the same job done in less hours; although I do have to say if you told a warehouse worker at the warehouse I worked at "get X number of pulls done, safely, then go home and I'll pay you for the day anyways" I would imagine they could be working for ~4 hours a day as well (there's a lot of down-time at some of those jobs, due to the fact there is no reason to be quicker). Only on the manufacturing floor where I worked do I think you'd really have to work the full 8-10 hours to get the number of units built, but in that case there was definitely room for process improvement.

> interest from senior engineers who want to work part time

This is definitely of interest. In my experience, companies generally derive significant "senior engineer" value for a handful of things but then their time winds up being consumed by a lot of other "this could have been an email/automation tool/non-senior" tasks. If you are in a position to allow a senior engineer to focus on their significant value adds to the company and the work benefits more from parallelism than what could be had from a single senior engineer (i.e. different lines of work with major context overhead) then you could probably derive more value per senior engineer via part-time work.

A side-benefit that is often not considered is that senior engineers in such a situation may choose to work multiple jobs. Assuming there are no conflicts of interest, chances are this is a net benefit for all. The engineer gets to diversity their start-up equity exposure. Their learnings from any one company can cross-pollinate to others. They can enjoy working on a wide range of problems rather than burning out against one. In this case you may get the value of far more experience than you'd get if they were siloed in one company, not dissimilar from the value that derives from other silo breaking endeavors elsewhere in the field.

> join a team and essentially be a guru or advisor to the team

Honestly, it sounds like you already know what you need: an engineer whose value is technical experience. You may already have enough junior engineers that can get "work" done but what you need is someone who understands the domain, the problem, the desired solution, and can efficiently direct that "work" towards a product while upleveling juniors along the way. Chances are you can hire explicitly for that in part-time and you'd get non-trivial interest.

I’m considering it. Gumroad is the main example I can think of where they hire for 20-25 hours per week. It’s easier to find places that hire for 32 hours per week (a 4- or 4.5-day work week). For the latter, I am concerned that the companies end up expecting basically the same output (i.e., it’s a hiring marketing gimmick) since the positions are salaried. I saw one company that said they manage their 4-day weeks by working 10 hours per day! (At least they were honest.) Another company said that they have a 4-day work week (M-Th), but then mentioned that Fridays are great for getting “focused work” done. So I guess what they really mean is that they don’t have meetings on Fridays.

In summary: Yes, I’m interested, but skeptical of many of the places that claim to offer this unless the pay is hourly.

Unlike others here, I would be fine with a pay cut. Acknowledging the pay cut makes it more likely that the reduced output expectation is honest, for one thing.

Senior dev here - switched to working 4 days in 2019 and my life has been much better for it.

The tricky part has never been finding an employer that is ok with me working 4 days, but being strict with them to not expect 5 days of work from me in 4 days.

The problem for me is that there seems to be a lot of overhead in getting to do productive work (ramping up, accumulating knowledge and experience to be productive in solving a problem). It might make more sense for part time to mean 6 months a year vs. 3 days a week, but that has its own drawback.

I'm not really sure how to reduce time in work without falling off a cliff given that problems at the senior level tend to require so much focus.

It should mean 3/5 the effort on average over a year. That could be 5 hour days, 3 days per week or some 48 hour weeks then take a few weeks off afterwards.

You get much greater value out of the employee.

There are quite a large segment of engineers later in their careers who would be interested in this kind of arrangement, especially some engineers who are parents of young children. I suspect the demand for these kind of part-time working conditions outstrips the supply.

My experience is from the labour market in Australia, the situation here is a bit different than the US as our healthcare & health insurance is decoupled from employment.

There are some very sharp and experienced engineers out there who are not willing to work full time roles any more, and this eliminates them from the running of the vast majority of advertised roles at companies that will only consider people available full time. It's not uncommon to see senior engineers negotiate part-time arrangements after being at a company for a few years.

Healthcare being tied to employment in the US is what keeps this from being more popular. If your employer is going to pay a fixed amount of premium every month, they will want as many hours as they can get out of you.

Untying healthcare from employment will have a HUGE positive impact on work life balance.

I guess there are many who would like to work part time, however that requires a different working structure.

Often there is a specific amount of meetings happening, especially in senior staff. Whether or not you work part-time that number typically stays constant (weekly manager 1-1, product meetings, daily scrum, whatever) also the amount of general company spam and administrative topics one has to keep an eye on is constant.

Thus if one goes from fulltime to part time, the only thing one can reduce is the part where the "actual" work happens, in consequence going part-time means doing even less actual work in a day, which can make one feel even worse.

The way out is to really strip down meetings and all those things to the required amount, which helps any organisation, but often isn't easy.

I agree. But it also depends on the type of work. If someone is acting in some kind of project delivery lead function, it is often necessary to be in the loop of many coordinating conversations. This kind of role might not be a good fit for part time, unless the rest of the team is also part time with a similar schedule.

For other kinds of work that can be performed independently with less regular check ins, it doesn't matter as much.

There are ways to structure a company to make varying schedules more or less feasible. If one piece of work is shattered into a large number of small tasks and scattered between teams with a number of maker/checker review points, then it might not be possible to complete a single item of work without e.g. 3 people in different teams reviewing it and approving it. If the content of the work is e.g. a trivial configuration change that takes 1 minute to author, then you end up with a situation where the process will become exponentially inefficient if some of the people involved work in part time schedules or inconsistent timezones. If instead work is structured into larger chunks that can be done by individuals with infrequent synchronisation points, e.g. deeper analysis / design / implementation tasks, then maybe varying schedules or timezones does not impact efficiency as much.

That is orthogonal to part-time. Even with part-time you can agree on a common core time where such things can be handled. I also had cases where timezones were quite useful. (In the evening I sent work of the day to QA and in the morning I got a test report to work on)

My concern is around all the non-core tasks, which you can't cut away proportionally when working less time, leaving overproportionally less time for the core job.

As someone who's been developing for nearly 40 years now in both startups and big engineering (not big tech) companies - yes, this is definitely something I want to do in five years. I can retire, which gives me access to affordable healthcare without having to go on medicare, and I can still work doing something I enjoy while scaling back. Ideally I'd like to work Monday-Thursday for something like 5 hours per day, so it'd still be only 20 hours per week. Doing it at 60% of my current salary would be nice. I'm actually surprised that more companies aren't starting to do this.

I'm nominally a senior (though only 8 years experience), and I work thirty hours per week. This is a small place where I still code most of the time, but I'm also responsible for a lot of code review (man, we need more code review), architecture, and planning of features that others then implement. Mostly it just means short days, I'm still there for every stand-up and available for follow ups after. My pay is a chunk less than it would be full time, but comparable to what I was making just a few years ago. I have small kids and a bunch of synthesizers that I need the extra time with.

I came across a few people on the internet who had convinced their employers to hire them as contractors when they started to realize their work could be done on a part time capacity.

Interestingly, they all worked in the insurance industry.

If the thought is you work fewer hours so now I can cut your pay, then I think realistic the answer is hell no. Unless I'm already checked out from stock options or something, a senior engineer's pay is more related to their knowledge than for their time. A senior engineer can save you way more money just by keeping you from doing things than you'll make from a more junior dev working more hours in their place. I'd bet for most senior programmers, if you just cut their meetings out of the equation, you're going to find out they are already working part time.

I've spoken to a number of folks over the years with kids or elderly parents that wished they could get part time scheduled so they could maintain a career and deal with the personal challenges they faced.

Yes, totally! I retired a few months ago because I'm sick of the 9-5, 48+ weeks/year endless grind and (almost) "always on" mentality (and well able to provide for my household w/o W2 income). Casual Google jobs search "surfing" post-retirement reveals no significant number of part-time SW engineering job openings, which I assume reflects the drive to "amortize per employee overhead over the maximum amount of per employee working hours" that I assume drives this "all employees are full-time" mentality.

Absolutely.

The received (mostly uninspected) consensus that the "full time" schedule is immutable and needs to be an all but universal norm, is past is expiration date.

I am to glad to see a rising tide of push back (e.g .for a 4-day week) but we still have only a few variant of FT and most are considered degenerate, often in an almost moral sense that smacks of received Puritan work ethic, especially in the US.

There is a real antiwork sense in which this is a cultural construct which receives in inordinate amount of upkeep on the part of those who require it to benefit from it.

Kudos to your co. for progress!!!

Very much so! i have been trying to promote pretty much exactly that on my "who wants to be hired posts"

I don't even expect a commitment for a fixed number of hours or fixed monthly pay (although a fixed monthly retainer would make accounting easier), but i am happy to come in on demand as needed (up to a limit)

what i am looking for is a company where i can join a team and make a meaningful contribution that takes advantage of my experience.

i particularly enjoy working with junior developers and want to help them grow.

I started doing exactly this at the start of the year.

I'm now working 25% less than my full-time colleagues over 4 days (ie: I work one less day a week, and a slightly shorter work day). I absolutely love it and would never go back.

Of course it helps that I'm lucky enough to be in an industry where a 25% reduction in salary is still more than enough to be able to pay the mortgage and support my family.

I'm actually hoping to ultimately go down to three days a week, just need to make sure it will still work financially.

Working fewer hours for pay that meets my needs is the number one thing a company could do to attract me, with #2 being more vacation days, and #3 being more pay.

I wouldn't consider myself a "senior" engineer (what are the criteria?), but I'm going back to school after working for a few years. I am interested in finding a part-time job during my studies, but for the moment companies don't seem quite interested. I understand people in my situation are not a majority, but it would be great if more companies offered part-time work for already experienced programmers.

Yep, I'm planning to try for some sort of semi-retirement before retiring completely. If there are such positions, I would be interested at that point.

I would do it in a heartbeat. (Lead Architect at US FinTech startup, 20 years of experience and several startups under my belt).

The twist is this: I live out of the US (CT TZ) and am currently paid a good competitive (for the US) salary in USD. Even if I was paid about half of that, it would be really good for me. If you tell me that in addition I was going to only work part time? Sign me up.

No, but I'd like to have more control over the hours I do work. I'm most functional between 12pm-7pm (we don't have kids and aren't planning to) but most places start their core hours at 9am with more enterprise-y clients starting at 8am sometimes (most do have kids, and this timing works better for picking them up from school and such).

This is sort of what we're trying with our Technologist in Residence job for senior engineers at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab -- not exactly part time, but we work library hours that really are limited to 35 hours a week, with a negotiable portion of your 35 going to your own open-knowledge research rather than to our existing projects.

A 3x8 work week would be ideal for me. I would take a 40% pay cut in a heartbeat and live more modestly, so long as I still had decent health care and could afford the basics to support my family. It's interesting how time has become increasingly important as I've gotten older.

Perhaps become a freelancer? Getting clients in the beginning might be tough but other than that, it's easier to get a 3x8 gig.

100% Yes. As long as I'm getting enough money to pay my rent I will absolutely trade money for time.

Next year I’m taking a sabbatical, and I really wish I could go on part-time, later on. Right now I like my job, but my interests are much more on the outside. But I am very very lucky because money is not a big problem. I worked for 21 years, and always loved it - still loving it.

Absolutely.

Lately I’ve been thinking about what it would be to work every other week.

Half of the year, getting full weeks of just living life. Amazing. The plus side for the employer is that you get a full week of my attention on a very reliable schedule. This would be the pinnacle of work life balance for me.

I like this idea. In an "agile" and "sprinty" environment a team can work and deliver then "rest" while product/user feedback metrics are collected for a week to determine if the delivered solution is a "success" and achieved desired outcomes or needs to be iterated on again.

i have been working like this. we didn't plan it that way but effectively we let things accumulate until there was enough for a few days of work and then we picked a week where the client or me wasn't busy with other things and we sat down and worked through those issues.

I think you would find very many people interested. You should maybe put up some contact information.

I'm a development/engineering manager now, so I don't do real work anymore ;)

...but yeah I'm at a point in my career where I value work/life balance more than money. Would definitely consider less pay for fewer hours per week and fewer weeks per year.

Yes, in fact, I'm switching off W2 as of April and am planning a 2 month sabbatical EOY. I'm thinking small contracts, otherwise strict 4 day weeks, but gone are the days of making 100k+ only to just suffer every Friday and not really work...

100% yes. I’ve worked at Amazon & 3 other tech companies, would love this.

Needs to include health care.

Yes! I'm a senior engineer working part time right now, exactly the way I want it.

The thing is, in the usual tech companies lots of them already do. They rest and vest. The engineers becomes much more efficient in handling the usual workload. They could choose to stay at the same level and not to get promoted.

I’m considering quitting engineering altogether due to chronic burnout. I suspect I’m not the only one. I would love a part time position that gives me recovery time, and I would happily take the reduced pay that comes with it.

Do you know what you'll be doing instead?

Quite honestly, if I had figured it out, I would probably already be doing it. Technician type work has a certain appeal to me, but it’s intimidating to be two feet into a career, supporting dependents and trying to decide with certainty what is a better option.

I wish I had more insights to offer, because I personally know quite a few people struggling with burnout as well. Their solutions and mine so far have been just to switch jobs and hope to find a more favorable environment.

To be honest most "full-time" IT jobs I've held were already never full-time, effectively only requiring 15-32 hours a week.

Why take reduced pay for reduced hours when I'm already getting full pay for reduced hours.

Yes, absolutely. Provided that health insurance benefits are still provided at the same benefits/cost.

Selling 5 out of 7 days of my week is not something I'd ever choose. It's something we're all forced into.

> we're not so much looking for contractors/freelancers to work on specific projects, but for an experienced senior engineer .. to join a team and essentially be a guru or advisor to the team.

So, a consultant?

Consultants in technical work are quite often cannon fodder, this is not the case here.

I could be the perfect person for such a position depending on the specifics. Anyone interested in finding a person for a similar kind of role, please see my profile for more info and contact details.

100% yes. I have a friend who averages about 3 hours a day of work (which is less than I'd personally prefer) and his productivity and flexibility is exactly what I'm looking for.

I would absolutely work reduced hours, assuming I had good healthcare.

I have thought about it, but I think working 4 hours a day probably would cause similar low-level but constant anxiety about deadlines, bugs, etc.

I rather work a few months and then take a month off.

I'm 55 and that is my current retirement plan in ten years. I can't imagine going from working full-time to not working at all. Just got to get kids through college first.

I currently work part-time only (20hrs/wk) at my current company, with a corresponding pay cut. If I were looking for a new job I would primarily be looking for similar roles.

Yes. As long as it doesn’t require me to jump through ridiculous hoops. Part time work should start with probation and less interview rounds. It’s a win-win for both sides.

Yes, 4 day work weeks are amazing. So is ending your day at 2pm.

Very yes. I'm doing a lot of self-development work in to prepare become a team lead someday. This takes enough of my time that I would love to have a part-time role.

Yes, My last Job was part time about 30hs a week, I had every friday off, I was more productive than ever. I'm a Ic with 15 years of experience in the industry

i am 35y+ in software, was looking for such job last 2 years, and 3-4 years before that again.. Part-time mentor/advisor/guru/<playing trainer>/you-name-it, and it's not cheap i know. i did not mind even be physicaly-with-the-team once-in-a-while, as real-team-dynamics mostly happen face-to-face. Well.. doesn't happen. Yet. Now i'm CTO'ing but it's not same at all.

Absolutely. 25+ years programming experience here. I am surprised that more companies doesn’t offer this. It is a huge recruitment advantage.

I would be open to this. I've always imagined my retirement would be owning a coffee shop and picking up some code here and there.

Yes, either one of these will do.... 4 days a week or 4 hours per day or 4 months of unpaid time off but keep medical benefits

Absolutely yes. I would be pretty happy to work 20 hours a week to essentially be a consultant and advisor to a team.

Some days ago there was an HN thread with devs complaining about no option for part-time... So the answer is yes!

Yes. 4 day week, 3 months on - one month off, all kinds of things seem possible. What do you mean by senior?

Totally!

I have dream of build a replacement for FoxPro/Access/Excel and have the time for it will be great!.

Yep, I'm soon going to be working a (pro-rata) 4 day week for life-work balance.

This is something I'd be really interested in when I enter semi-retirement.

Yes, I would love to work 4 days a week, 3 days would be even better.

Yes I would rather work 4/5 days and get paid 4/5 as much.

I'm looking for something to replace my side job?

16hrs a week after 630est.

Codethrower@gmail.com

I would be very interested. How can I get in touch?

I'd be interested. phil@multiprocess.io

Yes, this is basically what I do right now.

I work 4 hours a day since 2017. Of course this is a huge privilege. I could not imagine how I could combine kids, friends and hobbies with a 8 hour work day.

Sorry if this is a dumb question but would your friends not still be working 8h/day? How would having 4h/day help see your friends? Did all of you manage to cut it down to 4h/day?!

Kids leave school at 8am, get back at 3pm

A traditional job would be

7am - up, breakfast

8am - leave home

9am - get into office

5pm - leave office

6pm - get home, see kids

7pm - make + eat dinner

8pm - chores (washing, gardening, etc)

9pm - hobbies / friends start

11pm - bed

a 4 hour day

7am - up, breakfast

8am - start work

12pm - stop work, chores

1pm - hobbies start

3pm - kids back

5pm - cook/eat dinner

6pm - hobbies / friends start

11pm bed

Wow cool! Thanks for sharing.

why is the parent post being downvoted? it nicely states a motivation for working parttime and directly answers the question posted.

I wonder what happens during crunch?

For the same total pay - yes.

For less pay - no.

lower salary for a 4 day work week would work as well.

Definitely. I'm not even that senior and I'm interested.

Absolutely!

Yes.

but are you going to pay me less?

Then no.

YES

/End thread

I’m already part time as a senior engineer. But I make full time pay. If your intention is to pay less than full time salary, I’d imagine many of your target engineers are in my position and wouldn’t want the pay cut.

I don't think it is the pay cut for most people. A lot of engineers would take 80% pay for a 4 day work week without losing benefits and insurance.

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