Ask HN: Why are there so few part-time jobs?
A developer/sysadmin friend of mine has been job hunting for a while now. He told me that he doesn't want to work his entire life away and as such he's only looking for part-time work, but that it has been impossible to find something.
Why are all companies only using full-time employment?
Why are there so little flexibility? It's like everyone is "brain washed" into this robot way of working eight hours a day.
I must admit, I'm only really productive the first 4 hours, after that I just want to go home!
81 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadOur contractors range from $20/hr for something like content migration to $150/hr for someone who has built multiple products from scratch, been the CTO of startups, and has years of experience in coding, team management, architecture/system design, and infrastructure.
I've observed other people under-paying someone hourly and ending up spending a lot more in the long run. The most cost-effective strategy is to find the right person and pay them what they're worth. If you don't have the money to do that, you don't have the money to be in business.
> Do you monitor his screen though?
No. That's an insane practice, and it's shameful that Upwork promotes it. Anyone who needs to do that is incompetent at assessing talent and/or managing it.
> I heard up work makes you install something like that?
It does not force you, as far as I know. Our contractors log their time manually, and we trust them.
I prefer fixed-fee, but the way we run hourly work is similar in practice. We guarantee a minimum number of hours, and we expect a certain amount to get done.
As long as it gets done, what do I care if they finished it 2 hours faster? Whatever money I recovered by micromanaging, I'd end up losing again because micromanaging takes up my time (and drives talent away).
do you have any advice for someone who can't afford to start at the bottom and work their way up? how do i screen clients and avoid the bad ones?
I would rather hire one person working 100% than two people working 50%, because there is less communication overhead.
Life is too short to give 100% to a job unless it is a job you love or it underwrites either love or necessity.
I ask because the current 40-hour schedule was fought for in the early 20th century specifically because it worked out to 50/50: 8 hours for work and 8 hours for “what we may,” each day (allowing the final 8 hours for sleep).
Considering Saturdays and Sundays off, that means a 40-hour schedule is only 5/14 of the waking hours per week.
1. Commuting is exhausting and can easily add between 2-4 hours a day for long commuters (10-20 hours a week).
2. Work can be exhausting, it can feel like you just wake up to go back to sleep. Those 8 hours not sleeping I’ve felt a ghost of my self.
3. There is almost always some expectation of availability to work outside of those hours.
I moved to part time / freelance and it has been an enormous quality of life improvement.
#3 is poor self control and spinelessness in negotiating working schedule.
#3 I personally see the reality that knowledge work and life blend a bit more at the edges than traditional factory work and can accept the need for work outside of the standard hours . It's the existence of this adaptation in working time alongside the other issues I highlighted that makes it a problem. We're in the middle of changing work and these are teething issues.
I find your reply overly simple, inconsiderate and from a place of privilege.
The employer is getting a hell of a deal with that arrangement.
They'll get their 8 hours a day. Sure, some might be chatter with fellow employees, a little screwing around on a phone, or using the restroom, but by and large it's 8 hours of being at work.
We all need 8 hours of sleep, most of us don't get it. If we wanted to actually get 8 hours of good sleep, we need to start getting to bed about an hour before we plan on falling asleep. So let's conservatively call that 9 hours needed for 8 hours of sleep.
Going to and from work isn't really "what we may" unless you're telling me I could or should consciously decide to live across the street from my workplace to maximize my me-time. So there's another hour stolen every day.
So what are we at - 9 hours requisite for sleep, an hour of commute - leaves us 14 hours split between work and "play," knowing that for most of us who can't afford to hire laborers to take care of our domiciles, much of that "play" becomes "chores."
In this scenario, even splitting the difference and affording capital 7 hours of your time each day is theft. We'd all be better off around 4.
In that scenario, you couldn't "choose" to go work for 8 hours instead and take a loss in pay - no firm is hiring "full-time" at 8 hours - which actually rounds right back to the issue brought up by this thread: you'd be looking for part-time work that doesn't exist.
To me, it means the work-week. It is in my nature to work ~10 hour days on whatever I'm working on (a habit I see across physicists), and it blurs into the weekend.
I'm shifting my focus to half-time on physics, a quarter of my time helping aging parents while they're still functional, and a quarter of the time assisting with the family business.
It's hardly the case that I can spend "my" 8 hours with family or friends, or even doing something of my choosing. Come tax day, I can deduct the purchase cost of tools I needed to buy for work, but there's no way to deduct all the hours spent every day on the unpaid activities which are also required for work.
It's great that we got our hours of labor down to only 8, but why stop there? I would consider a 50/50 split to be one where I have as much time to make art as I spend at work for someone else. (Or substitute "family" or whatever else your priority is.) Working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, that's not even physically possible. Maybe at 6 hours.
For the employer, it would be better (in theory) to have fewer people working for more hours, because then training costs less and the workers become more and more expert.
For the worker, the desire to earn more is most easily accomplished by working more.
Both of those are offset by the decrease in productivity and increase in fatigue and burnout as you work too many hours.
Right now, most workers and employers have landed on about 40 hours a week as a good balance between these concerns.
However this has changed over time and will change in the future. For example there’s recently been an increase in so-called “30 hour jobs.” For example: https://30hourjobs.com/
1) Hiring is a pain, and there's ton of friction. 2) Ideally you want to get max efficiency out of roles that serve "business critical" functions. 3) More people on payroll (parttime or not) = more time wasted for me on management
These two factors incentivize me to avoid having too many part-timers, if I could
Add health insurance and office space as costs which don't scale down.
Lack of availability / presence creating difficulties for the rest of the org for meetings / getting questions answered / answering questions / etc.
That's a hard no both ethically and because I don't want a sick employee.
There's even a decent chance that they can get an ACA subsidy. To get a subsidy they need to get their MAGI below about $49k (I'm assuming they are single...someone else can do the numbers for families). MAGI is for most people income - HSA contribution - retirement plan contribution.
With an HSA and an IRA they can knock up to almost $10k off their MAGI, which means they can take a part time job paying up to $59k/year and still get a sweet ACA subsidy.
If your company has a 401k, and they work enough hours to qualify to contribute to that (1000 hours/year, I believe), using that instead of an IRA would let them knock around $24k off MAGI, meaning they can take a part time job paying up to $72k/year and still get a subsidy.
The way ACA subsidies work is that even if you barely come in under the MAGI limit, it is usually pretty substantial. You might expect that as you get closer to the limit, the subsidy decreases--and you would be right--but it isn't the kind of gradual decrease to 0 that you would probably expect. No, it is a slow decrease right up to the cutoff then it drops to $0.
2. I think working full-time hours is not actually the same as max efficiency.
3. Understandable, but I do feel like there are ways/techonologies to reduce this friction.
I don't actually have data with me atm to back this up though, just my thoughts.
Also, here's one source that suggests increased productivity with a 4-day workweek (Microsoft Japan): https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-say...
More here: https://30hourjobs.com/4-day-work-week/
When I worked about half-time and studied half-time, I found that it was difficult to get switched from one to the other after already having spent time and energy on either during the same day. Dedicating full days for one activity helped with that, but having a longer break of potentially several days between working days may of course also require more time for getting back to speed.
On the other hand, at some point I worked ~30-hour weeks (also because of attempting to study at the same time, but I dropped that once I found the attempt unproductive), about 6 hours a day, Monday to Friday. I had more energy both for work and other (non-mandatory) stuff I liked to do. I'm pretty sure I was just as productive as when working 8-hour days on the same job, if not more, because I was able to focus better and more intensively. The added hours in the longer days were just empty space.
My 30-hour scenario of course differed from what might be a more typical part-time arrangement in that mentally I was pretty much considering it a full-time job and not just a side gig, or as one half of something.
Nevertheless, that experience (among some other, somewhat similar ones) has made me seriously question whether the 8-hour days unconditionally make sense from an efficiency point of view.
I don't think there's anything special about eight hours a day. It's more about just having everyone keep the same hours, so that you can get a quick turnaround on questions/requests. So I think it'd work if companies built entire teams that were part-time, working on the same subset of the week.
But if it was actually blackout, it'd be untenable.
It feels like there could be some sort of compromise between the two, where employees are contactable during full-time hours, but only to organise actual work hours, which are limited and flexible.
Of course, this would be less convenient for managers than simply having full-time hours, but it would save money spent on wages/salaries and result in more productive happy workers. I also feel there should be some way to reduce the administration burden, perhaps a combination of allowing employees to arrange working hours directly with each other and technology to facilitate this.
being reachable means that you can pass on your problem, and i'll acknowledge it so that we can together decide what the best next step. sometimes we can solve the problem, sometimes we can find someone else who can also help, and sometimes we need to delay working on the problem and reschedule it for another time. but at least then it's scheduled. on a few occasions i am not reachable at all. but that doesn't happen often.
in other words being on call means always to solve the problem immideately, whereas being reachable means i have the option to say no.
and i don't feel it's an intrusion if being available is optional and not required.
it's essentially how every freelancer works. they are available during business hours. but they don't get paid if they don't get called for work by a client.
If you apply for a part time position, what do you communicate to your potential employer? Namely, that work is not your #1 priority. I think that employers want employees who are as obsessed with work as possible. It’s not that they don’t want part time employee, it’s that they don’t want the sort of person who would apply for a part time job.
Me: 20 hours a week is perfect
Candidate: Cool, I'll do Monday 8 to 3, tuesday noon to 5, and thursday and friday 1 to 5.
Me: well, really I need help 11-3 five days a week.
Candidate: that's not the schedule I'm after.
choosing not to work together is ok if the constraints are a lifestyle choice. you may like to have your work done at that time, and i may prefer to work certain hours. if that's more important to either of us than other factors, then fine.
what bothers me is when there is no choice. i can't choose my work hours, they are dictated to me and outside of my control.
yet you insist on workhours that are incompatible. now your hours may not be by choice either, but something or someone has to give here, because it's not good for society if we exclude a whole category of people from working just because of constraints they have.
you have to realize that most business will act like you and are not flexible on their hours. but at the same time, i can't change school hours either. so i can't find a job.
there are discussions about how early school hours are bad for children but starting late will cost many parents their jobs.
if your work hours are a preference, then i'd ask you to reconsider that. if they are not by choice either then i'd like to explore what the problem is and see if we can work around those constraints.
we won't be able to solve every problem. maybe you actually are accomodating other parents already, and now you need someone to fill in for the remaining time. that would be unfortunate for this particular situation, but if more companies work like that then there would be enough other opportunities.
the problem i see is that right now most companies seem to have the attitude that they get to decide and employees need to adjust and fit in. and that i think, needs to change.
Trading, economies were meant to serve peoples' wants and needs, but people serve "the economy", with no thought given to what the actual quality of working peoples' lives are like. As if the economy is the important thing, not human lives. There is extreme attention on "economic efficiency", no attention at all on the quality of the lives involved. We don't know where we're going, don't care whether the journey is pleasant or not, but focus on getting there as quickly/cheaply as possible. I guess that's easier to measure.
Also, modern economies rely on there being a pool of unemployed. If everyone could do 1, 2 or 3 part-time jobs, balanced how they like it, that would mess up the system. Anyway, the whole thing is designed to make the rich richer, whether underlings enjoy that process is not really relevant.
When I worked for the public sector, it was possible go 80% without a lot of red tape, and as low as 20% with approvals. The people going 20% had more expenses, and were usually sick with cancer or something, and that allowed them to stay on payroll to maximize their leave and insurance. You could work 5 days a week and “bank” a certain amount of leave for up to a year.
You are right that if you study and work, there's a lot of context switching, competing requirements, and lack of real downtime. If you just work part-time, you have control over the other time.
Rather hire 3 full time devs than 6 half time devs.
Lots of work to train and keep people updated.
Life’s too short to increase my complexity for people to have a more relaxed life.
1. Biggest one: transfer of knowledge between people is lower bandwidth than going to one person. If I have Jill and Jane doing work function A, I can assign primary responsibility to some sub-parts A1 and A2 to Jill and A3 and A4 to Jane. If I need A2 on Tuesday when Jill is off, sure Jane can do it (and as a manager I should make sure of that) but it would take her more time while her othe things slip.
2. Overhead per employee: I have to do one on ones, regular reviews, and various other per-employee bureaucracy.
3. All team update meetings and other get togethers requiring non-trivial subset of the team get exponentially harder to organize.
I agree completely that it's crazy that it is not not common. We make an insane rate compared to the average salary, might as well take advantage of that and enjoy some extra time.
DevOps has some nice potential niches for this sort of arrangement, like one-time projects to move between platforms.
It’s the same thing with contractors. I used to get stuck on call over Christmas all of the time because contract staff are out of hours.
By contrast, I find that someone representing themselves as a "fractional" expert suggests that they are serious and plan to stick around. Many times they are very experienced and have hourly rates that would make it difficult to afford employing them full time, but 2-3 days a week is tolerable.
It's really how you position it. I currently employ a fractional professional.
If not then how much 80%, 50%, even less? Answering that already just makes me want to avoid opening up part time positions.
Unless you just change the whole work day to 4 hours (gl with that), having some employees work double what others are just sounds like a headache to me.
I don't really know what would be so uncomfortable about that that you'd want to avoid it altogether.
As to whether it should be the same as someone else doing either hours... that shouldn't depend on the number of hours but on how much and how valuable work they get done. You probably don't pay exactly the same to everyone even at 100%.
Seriously, I used to do ~30-hour weeks for a while. Got paid accordingly. Of course I'd like the total salary to reflect the fact that I was still fairly productive, but I still don't see what the problem there would be as long as I was happy and the employer was happy. Both apparently were.
* I am hoping the unavoidable budget shortfalls following this pandemic make this possible.