[nerme]

It is a shame that so many employers have it in their heads that they need 100% of their employees lives. Why can't people work less hours for less money? Why must they give all of their will-power? Why can't people have a job with medical benefits, paid vacation but only work 3 days a week, with a salary that takes in to account the trade-off?

I'm sure I could come up with some reasonable answers to those questions, but I want to hear what you guys have to say.

[zupatol]

I have a programming job somewhat like that, except that I work full-time for (approximately) 9 months followed by 6 months unpaid leave during which I make comics. The people I tell about this arrangement usually say they would love to the free time but could not afford to earn less. Some would not mind reducing their expenses but are afraid to ask their boss because it could hurt their career prospects. In most jobs the idea of working part-time is unusual, does not bring direct benefits to the employer, and requires some coordination effort, so why would they do it? The one big upside for the company is the employee's higher motivation, but unfortunately this is not easily quantifiable. I was lucky to be hired by a director who was also an artist wishing he had more time to paint.

During the dotcom boom I had an interview with a software company founded by students where many programmers worked 60%. They had some coordination problems. The company went down in the dotcom bust. My previous job was with a company where everybody worked 4 days a week. They wouldn't let me work 3 days after they had tried it with one employee and were not satisfied with the results. Before I worked 3 days a week as an economist and it went pretty well.

There are other jobs where part-time is more usual or even the norm. Many artists become part-time teachers.

[pbhjpbhj]

>I work full-time for (approximately) 9 months followed by 6 months unpaid leave during which I make comics. The people I tell about this arrangement usually say they would love to the free time but could not afford to earn less.

My wife and I started a business together and took (and 5 years in still have) about 40% of our previous joint earnings collectively (and she was working part-time). We did this 1) to work together, 2) to bring up our children ourselves, 3) to bring art to the masses, 4) because we're crazy.

It's amazing but this month I managed to eke another £12 per mo off our (domestic) outgoings. We could definitely use more money but I've been surprised by how much we managed to cut our costs. It seems that if we went back to our previous pay levels we almost wouldn't know what to do with the money (except we would, pay off the mortgage for one).

tl;dr I think you'd surprise yourself by how frugal you can be.

[natrius]

An employee that works three days a week isn't worth 60% of the value of a full time employee. More people will be required to do the same amount of work, which means more communication overhead. If you still want full benefits as well, you'd be lucky to get 40% of your full-time cash compensation.

[lsc]

I strongly disagree. If you hire someone part time who is only doing that type of work for you, I believe you get /more/ than the value you pay for.

E.g. if you hire a programmer for three days a week and they go rock climbing the rest of the time, You probably get about the same productivity as hiring a programmer full time, and you don't need to pay them for the rest of their time.

The thing is, so many problems are solved 'in the background' - When I hire a knowledge worker, really, I'm paying for the background processes when they are in the shower as much as anything else.

Now, things are different if you are splitting someone with another job of a similar type, I think. In that case, if you are providing more interesting work and/or better motivation, you can 'steal' some of the background processing from the other job, but the other way around is also possible. (a win win is also possible here; your guy can learn something one place and use it at the other, etc... but it's less of a sure win, I think, as, say, hiring an artist to work on your customer support when they are not doing art.)

Of course, if you are hiring someone for a rote job where performance doesn't vary or matter, or where burn-out doesn't happen, none of this applies.

[natrius]

That's a good point.

[Tamerlin]

Whole heartedly agree.

Are we hired for our skill, or to warm seats?

In corporate america, I'd say to warm seats.

[ZeroGravitas]

I'd imagine you get more redundancy (in the good sense) by having more part-time people, lower your truck-number, and have people less likely to be distracted by personal stuff in work hours since they can visit the bank (etc.) on their free days. Recent posts about productivity have claimed white-collar/creative workers are most productive at lower than 35 hours a week. I wonder if anyone has actually studied the cost/benefits from both the employer and employee side.

[stcredzero]

I had a 3 day a week job with full benefits and paid vacation. My salary was cut by 40% from my 5-days a week compensation, as you suggest in your comment, but I still had enough to live on. I gave it up because I was bored. Can't have everything, I guess.

[Tamerlin]

If you want to be totally, brutally, honest about it, companies should pay me a full salary for a half work week.

Why?

Well, take John Harrington's example (photographer).

You book a one-hour shoot, for say $200, to make it an easy number to play with.

Your job is to show up, set up the lights and backdrops, do the necessary makeup, get the executive portrait for the financial report (or whatever), and get out of his way.

Now, the exec suddenly says, "I only have 30 minutes, so you have to get it done in that amount of time."

Do you take a pay cut? No. You charge double, because to do the same work in half the time, you have to be better.

If I can get my work done in 20 hours/week, and another engineer takes 40 hours/week to accomplish the same task, I should be getting the higher hourly rate, not the same hourly rate.

[pxlpshr]

that's great when you're a lone wolf, but it generally fails when team work is involved; and therein lies the divide between lifestyle vs. startup.

[zasz]

Luckydave is doing what the parent commenter said, essentially--working somewhat part-time, and making enough money to do what he really cares about. And he's an excellent team member.