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by zupatol
5838 days ago
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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. |
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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.