| By asking what you are asking you are challenging people on Hacker News in multiple ways. You mighht be perceived as "undermining" the market position of others programmers. You are also undermining the mythlogy of "working hard". Prepare for vitriol or being silenced. A mostly copmpatible way to accomplish this is to ask for 2 or 3 days of week at what salery they offer, however those days might still be stressful. Only working 4 hours a day, 5 days a week with some flexibleness might also be possible. In either configuration you can not "hang out" at the office as this time will need to be paid because of anti-exploitation laws. In many bigger companies there are salery ranges and bureaucracy like that. Fighting to overcome them is not worth the savings for the company. Companies also pay a lot of non wage costs to keep seats filled, such as IT support, licenses, hardware, health insurance ... All those can impose constraints which make it impossible for you to be hired. Good health insurance might be unavailable for people with little income. The internal procedural cost of hiring a person might be bigger with your special needs, so hiring will not be quicker. Look for smaller companies/NGOs <<50 employees. It is easier to talk to an actual human there vs talking to internalized procedures. Look for cooperatives. There any management structure is more likely aligned with the employees. If a majority of employees is sympathetic with your constraints management (in so far there is one) can easily adapt. > I know a lot of people who work at a high salary (for example, say $90k, to me already a lot of money, but I know it's not enough to some), who spend most of the day doing "nothing." Often those people are kept on staff for peak times by wanting things to be calmer at peak times you would reduce your utility a lot. - You might need to bypass formal mechanisms through the same mechanism cronyism usually uses to bypass formal mechanisms. This could involve knowing people before you apply. Just walk in and talk to someone (viable for < 20 people companies). Maybe know the owner beforehand. Meetups and social gatherings relevant to your industry are a place i would frequent. Yes, that will take effort. - If possible give presentations (if you are not bad at presentations) about stuff you worked on in the past in front of an technical audience. This is a social proof of competence to the attendees. Recordings are a bit less powerful proof of skill and getting people to watch those recordings might not be easy. - Challange a few head hunters with your request, most will be irritated but maybe someone knows someone how knows someone who would be worth a talk. - Assuming you are talking to an actual human (vs a procedure) To overcome the "unqualified hypothesis" you need to have a CV, demos and a presentation (not a slide deck but how you speak and behave) which oozes the premise: "I am competent. I can demonstrate you i am competent. I like office culture over remote work (if that's true). However i require some special accomodations." I would not make "and i get paid less" part of your pitch. You mentioned your special needs and ask whether the other side can accomodate them and insists on getting them in writing in your employment contract. - Communicate clearly that you are not disabled. You do not want the other side expecting or assuming that you are. - Why not bring up the reduced salery yourself? If they are unwilling to accomodate your needs and would have been convinced to by the lower salery they would not respect your needs. Anyone who tries to accomodate your needs and hire you would do think about bringing a salery reduction up themselves. Do not say "minimum wage", just negotiate on the accomodations and see how the other side wants to reduce the salery in turn once you shown some flexibility with the wage after they asked you whether you would be willing to reduce the wage. |