[unrestifarian]

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.

[PragmaticPulp]

> 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.

[em-bee]

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.

[tyre]

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.

[disambiguation]

Are you based in the US?

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

[unrestifarian]

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.