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> btw, if anyone has any ideas of how to work very few hours a week as a pretty decent full stack web dev without too high of a financial aspirations, I’m all ears, people seem too look for all or nothing employees only.

I'm starting an experiment next week with a marketeer, where she can work whenever it suits her for how long she wants for a retainer/fixed amount per month. The rate is about 1/4th of a full-time freelance, and the idea is to mutually agree on actions and/or outcomes/results each month.

I plan to do something similar with a very senior dev this summer, who is training for a triathlon and has 2 small kids he needs to look after, probably at 50% of market rate...

The biggest issue when setting up something like this is trust, but as I've worked with both of them before on short stints with a regular daily rate (a few days to weeks), I don't have that issue myself.

For me it's a simple math equation: how much am I putting in, and what will this bring me financially (SaaS license income etc), so I can easily figure out the point where I'll be satisfied with our agreement.

I have high hopes for this experiment, but low expectations. We'll see how it goes.

My best bet for you would be to look for similar opportunities: find someone who pays on commitment/outcome, and doesn't care about hours worked...

Wait - are looking for 100% of the work to be done, but at a fraction of the cost? i.e. instead of everyone pretending to work 8 hours per day 5 times per week they are just going to do work when there is work to do?

This is called "asynchronous work" or "async work"[1]. Do work when it makes sense for you, but get it all done. Async workers should not be discounted.

[1] https://levels.io/async/]

It sounds like the amount of work would be reduced to less than what a full time person could deliver.

Most programmers/engineers only work realistically a few hours per day, if so much.

Veterans bring a wealth of experience, can likely do more in two hours than many others in two days. Like OP mentioned, it is a matter of balance and profit. When both sides of the equation are happy, isn't that what really matters?

Well, veterans will do lots in a day, but it will be conversations, drawings and thinking about exactly what the best thing to do is. They will then spend much, much less time programming than someone green who had a React bootstrap and pre-commit rules up before they knew what they were building.

Sure, and that's the way it should be. Understand what the heck we are really supposed to be building.

Otherwise we deliver what the customer asks, while failing to deliver what the customer wants.

True, but also the "how". There are plenty of pitfalls to avoid with a bit of up-front thinking.

I wasn't aware "async work" was a thing; thanks for the pointer!

It's a little bit of a hybrid TBH: the question is "what can you aim for given the amount of money I pay you per month, assuming everything goes right?".

For marketing it's simple: I'd like to get x demos scheduled in timeframe y; tell me the plan, including the metrics and conversion ratios that you expect (i.e. content publishing, visitors, activations, cold calls/emails,...), And how much it will cost. If the price/value/risk balance is worth it, I'll commit.

For dev it's about rewrites, migrations, upgrades,... Always well scoped. The dev knows the software and he's a way better dev than me, so I fully trust his judgement.

The important thing here is that it's all about trust, and that these metrics are a best guess and a way to stay informed.

If it's the first time somebody is doing something I suggest to multiply the estimated happy path timing by 3 and start with that, but I understand some things take 1/10th, and others x 10.

From a commitment/risk point of view, actions are important but results are even more important. It's during the negotiation that we will decide whether/how much of the commitment is time -, action- or result-oriented, i.e. I will spend x hours, do y things or deliver z results...

I don't hire toddlers, so I don't treat them or expect them to behave like toddlers. The whole idea of hiring mature people is having to do less of it myself, not more...

The closer the reporting KPIs are to the results, the less work and risk it is for me, so I am able to value it higher. If you get more efficient in a job but we agreed on results, it's your win, not mine.... (For the marketing example, 5 demos are worth more than 100 cold calls, and these are worth more than hours active f.e., so if you get 5 demos in a fraction of the expected timeframe, I don't care.)

It's all a big experiment and I'll have to see how this works out, but if it does I'd love to organize the whole company like this...

On your question, We welcome Seniors even few hours a week, especially if you are happy to work on architecture and documentation. Plus we are based out of Tenerife if you want to work from an office and there is a lot of surfing on the island.

I’m interested in learning more about this. Mind if I message you?

sure, feel free

Time to lean back and do a double take to witness a little pivotal moment on HN?

The common theme of a tech worker looking for options, alternatives and flexibility, but finally answered casually by an employer who seems to "get it", by offering part-time and being located on a neat island?

Other threads are often a pile-ons of complaints from the employee-side, and half-measures and push-backs from the employer-side. So this is neat.

Yeah, ours is a field where we typically make multiple X what we need to survive. I took 6 months off somewhat involuntarily when COVID first hit and it kind of sucked because of the COVID lockdown, but I could see the potential. Of course resume gaps are a yellow flag at best, and the ol “just explain it was a sabbatical” is realistically not as powerful as people like to think it is. Two people. Identical except that one has a 6 month sabbatical in the work history. Most companies will hire the guy without the sabbatical on record.

It’s a real bummer we can’t work 20 or 32-hour weeks (with proportionally-reduced pay). It’s “40” or nothing, you’re right. Where’s the leverage? We’re supposed to be in-demand. Why haven’t we unionized? Why haven’t we been at the forefront of advocating for workers’ rights? They need us. We’re hard to replace. Hospitality staff are easy to replace. Amazon warehouse workers are easy to replace. Apple retail employees are easy to replace.

To your question, there’s the obvious freelance sites, but also working on open source can be rewarding in more ways than one. I found a couple companies in a conference that were looking for open source solution consultants part time / custom time.

If you can’t find them online, I can check my conference swag to see if I find the name.

Sounds interesting, I honestly think that’s one the things I’ll be going for.

That would be great if you found them.

If you want to contact me at my email it’s my username plus varela at the mail from the big search engine.

Thank you very much!

I'm interested in those companies too. Could you send me a mail (hn at philipp-trommler dot me) in case you find the names? Thanks!

Apply for normal jobs that sound interesting. When you get a FT offer as expected, counter with “actually, I’ve reevaluated and am only able to commit X time for the foreseeable future. I’m still very interested in the company/problem space and would gladly entertain compensation relative to my availability. Let’s work something out!”

Companies get creative when forced to is all.

This sounds like a bad idea.

You don't want the employer to waste your time, so you should try not to waste theirs. If you want to work for them you should go in assuming they're not trying to deceive you either.

You counter offers for a dozen other things, why not time? All those other negotiables can just as easily blow the "deal" apart but aren't considered a waste of time/deceit. They often aren't pre-aligned on. Even if you pre-aligned on something, the interview process itself can change your opinion. For example, you may agree that a salary of $x would suffice. During interviews, you determine the job is going to be much more demanding than originally expected so you now say you like it but $y is the new price. It's not deceitful, it's quite normal.

I agree your example of a salary adjustment is fine, no deceit there.

The deceit comes from pretending to be qualified for a fundamental job requirement that you'll never meet (the requirement to work full time).

A better example is applying for a job that requires a license and after weeks of interviews you finally get an offer just to turn around and say "actually I don't have a license and I'm not willing to get one, but I hope your offer still stands?". Except it's even worse becuase at least in that case the employer can verify your license right off and avoid wasting everyone's time.

Lying on a resume or application is just not a good look.

I think in practice this is going to work about 0% of the time.

In the past I would tell recruiters “hey I meet all the criteria and the salary even looks good, but I’m going to need every Friday off”. The salary looks good @ 32 hours/week, but I’d be underpaid at 40. No one has gone for it. They probably end up with someone not as good (because they’re willing to work for below market) who realistically works at most 32 hours/week anyway. But hey, at least the perception that they’re a good hire is in-tact.

It's because they don't know you yet. It's easy for a gatekeeper like a recruiter to shut the door. The hiring manager, if they do actually like you beyond butt in seat, can get creative. Typically they just have a budget and a unit of work to accomplish, they get to fill in the details.

Also, trying to negotiate 25% less work for same price is not what I suggested. It has to be 1:1 relative for them to view it as equitable. They have a lot of things to think about when considering what's "equitable". If their plan was to grind you for 80 hours and pay you for a "full time 40" then they weren't being equitable or forthright either, and it's very common, so it goes both ways.

Idk about work a few hours a week but with wfh/remote I've been able to surf at lunch breaks. It's not the 3-4 hour marathon sessions I did daily as a kid but it's still fun. Also have been able to do some digital nomad type stuff and get a place, work and surf in places like Bali, Hawaii and Puerto Rico

Count me in as a SWE who would be interested in flexible engagements.

I like to push hard for a few months, and then change with the seasons. I think this is very realistic with most software engineering work. Project based, develop a rapport over time. Request hours with me for the next month and we can get shit done together.

I'd honestly like to be a part of a SWE coop, where we as engineers pool our resources and develop shared assets that we can use for clients. Working almost like a law firm does.

> btw, if anyone has any ideas of how to work very few hours a week as a pretty decent full stack web dev without too high of a financial aspirations,

There's almost zero part-time job offers for sw engineers, but I have one. If you're interested DM me (same username in twitter or telegram).

I’ve had a very similar experience to you. Quit my job due to burnout in November, been hiking virtually every other day since then.

I expected to take a year off, but recently my brain has been getting a bit itchy and working on my own stuff wasn’t cutting it. Also, I was eating into my savings a bit too much.

I floated the idea of part time work with my network and a few offers came in. Some project based stuff, some actual part time work. I guess I’m lucky to have a good network, but the jobs are there. Many people want/need experienced engineers but can’t afford a full time offer.

I’ve been doing two days a week for the past month. Sometimes I struggle to switch off as I’m actually pretty excited and engaged. I’m working on improving this. Other than that I’m loving the balance of 2 days on 5 days off - can see myself doing this long term.

Nice! But you can also have a good lifestyle with tech jobs too. You just need to be a financially independent founder.

@Trufa - What are you typing this reply on?

My phone :)

If I ever got out of tech, HN would be one of the first things I'd like to kick tbh haha. What keeps you coming back? I don't use social media either but this often feels worse in some ways

Not him, but I find HN a good tradeoff between Reddit and 4chan.

There are no powerhungry mods that'd ban you without an explanation, but you can still have a conversation without being called homophobic names. The hivemind exists, but the opposition is strong enough that even controversial voices can be heard as long as they are well-argumented.

HN is on the more tolerable side of social for me. I kicked Instagram years ago, never had Facebook, hate the hustle mentality of LinkedIn, and deleted my Reddit account due to the constant bickering and flame wars.

I find the discourse on HN to be (usually) thought-provoking and largely respectful.

Same here - HN is nice enough as long as you're willing to just not react to people who vehemently disagree with you about something.

As in: knock yourself out, I don't need to get into internet fights about why I think your opinion is ridiculous/oversimplified/ill-informed. If I get a whiff that the person is not going to be reacting productively I just don't reply.

What was the point of this pedantry? "Ha - caught you using a computer when you said you don't really use one!". Really?

Let us assume for now that he was just curious :)

It may also be how I phrased it, I still read HN and watch some YouTube and Instagram, from my phone just with quite strict time controls.

Congratulations on your progress. But software development isn't even very high on the scale of stressful jobs. It really doesn't compare to being a trader or police officer or ER physician or social worker. We have it pretty easy.

I don’t think that’s how stress works. If you’re prone to stressing about things then you’ll build up failure scenarios in your head relative to what you know.

The ER physician becomes desensitized during residency and learns to fall back on their training; or burn out into another role. Same for the rest.

Even worse, we’re professionally trained to consider all the edge cases, failure cases and write code defensively.

I find most other professionals tending to be more “optimistic” than I am…

Now I wonder if there's correlation to a developer's preferred language, and their outlook in life.

Do Gophers live under a shroud of nihilism, while Pythonistas run about their business laissez-faire, leaving issues for others or a future them to deal with?

In my experience, writing Python was often followed by dread of some random exception popping up in production because my unit tests didn't pick it up.

Writing Go was a much more pleasant experience, I always felt like the code does exactly what I want.

Writing Python is great, maintaining it is miserable.

Conversely, writing Go is miserable, but maintaining it is great.

Logically, the best of both worlds my work has arrived at is Python and on-call for more senior engineers... Fuck. The sheer amount of None-type, or object doesn't have member X errors is pretty ridiculous.

Correct. I had a doctor tell me one time that when treating a patient "if you hear hoof beats don't look for zebras". Meaning, take what you see and hear for what they are. Because someone has a headache don't assume they have a brain tumor. I am over exaggerating here just to make a point.

You software engineer can't be stressed, a police officer has a more stressful job.

You police officer can't be stressed, an EMT has a more stressful job.

You EMT can't be stressed, an ER doctor has a more stressful job.

You ER doctor can't be stressed, a cobalt miner has a more stressful job.

There's always somebody worse off. It doesn't mean your stress isn't real.

Stress, burnout, any mental condition isn't relative. It doesn't matter if you're not able to deal with what you're dealing with. For whatever reason.

We use the same internal stress response to stress about rent you're not sure you can make as we do to stress out about a lion stalking you. Robert Sapolsky makes the case that this actually ends up having an even worse impact on your health in his book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

As a former firefighter-paramedic for 14 years turned full-time software dev I disagree.

Was being a FF-PM stressful? Sure, at times. But there was a LOT of down time, even while on duty. There was banter between co-workers, working out, SLEEPING, watching TV, reading or doing a whole lot of nothing, to help relieve the stress. Majority of calls were very benign so not a lot of stress really. But it was also very exhilarating and challenging. A patient whose vitals were all stable, looked good, talking, etc, etc, all of a sudden turns into a heart attack or goes unconscious. Again, it wasn't the majority of calls but those were the type of calls that we were there for and not the calls were people want to go by ambulance so they don't sit in the waiting room at the ER. (HAPPENS A LOT!). My normal shift was 24 hours on and 48 hours off. During the 48 hours off I didn't worry about email or office politics (there was some but I tried to not get involved).

My stress as a dev comes from different things. Am I doing this correctly? What is the point of this? Imposter syndrome!! I now work from home so no more co-worker banter. Plus the mentality of FFs is way more juvenile, and fun, than that of an office worker. I could take an hour nap during the day but then I'd feel guilty, which adds more stress.

After 8 hours of sitting in front of a computer my mind is fried and I have little motivation to do much else though I have the desire to do personal computer projects which are left for the weekend. And when the weekend comes I may spend an hour or two at most because now I feel guilty for spending more time on the computer.

Is my lack of motivation not to exercise or work on personal projects due to being a software dev? No, not at all but it does add to it.

Bottom line I didn't worry about "the job" as much being a FF-PM as I do being a dev.

Also, I think working in the jobs like FF, PM, police, ER doc/nurse, it is expected to have high-stress so people approach it differently. But no one thinks a software dev can have stress. Stress is stress, it doesn't matter what causes it. It is a physiological response.