Ask HN: Working less than 20h / week

[nalenth]

I'm a stay at home dad and can work for about 10 - 15 hours a week plus do some research in the evening. I need to be flexible if my child gets sick. I've worked part-time as a research assistant during my master's degree in computer science and co-authored 3 published papers, but have no industry experience.

What are my best options? Should I try for a normal employment with low hours or maybe do some freelancing? Maybe fiverr or upwork? Maybe a temporary employment agency? Thankful for any experiences and recommendations.

[larrymyers]

Staying in academia is a decent idea (I'm not sure if this is different in Europe vs the US). Lots of parents I know at my kid's school work part time for universities due to the same requirements around schedule flexibility.

Working as a freelancer is a decent idea as well, due to the autonomy you'll retain, but the amount of time you'll spend on the business aspects of it could be substantial.

[nalenth]

I'd like to avoid staying in academia because I'm somewhat dyslexic and am very slow with reading and writing long form texts.

Freelancing sounds like a good option, but I fear that the extra time spend on business aspects will not leave me with much time for the actual work.

[ernestipark]

I've been talking to a lot of people in your situation recently and my personal mission is to make part-time employment more common in the tech industry. A few tips:

* I would reach out to early-stage startups. Many early startups don't have the capacity/budget to add full-time employees, but may be willing to take on someone flexible on an hourly basis who knows how to code and can help with other things as well. Bonus of course if you can get warm intros. The key is most places aren't advertising these types of roles, it's your job to convince them that you would be a value add and a low risk hire.

* What are your papers and research about? Is there a way you can turn this into advising or consulting based on your expertise?

* I wrote about the part-time tech landscape here: https://blog.parttimetech.io/p/the-part-time-tech-landscape. An expert network could be good if your research or papers are of interest to companies for quick cash. Fiverr/upwork/toptal type gigs are possible, but they take huge cuts and tend to be smaller engagements so you have to keep getting more work.

* I know in Germany companies are required to allow part-time work if it doesn't pose significant harm to the business. 10-15 hours may be bordering on too few hours for continuity (I feel you should try to do 15-20 if possible), but you should reach out to many software companies in Germany and see if they'd be willing to take you on from the get go at reduced hours. If you look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33422129 you'll notice many of the German companies offer part-time.

* I've started a job board for part-time roles: parttimetech.io. It's a little sparse right now, but we're working on filling it up. Maybe something there of interest.

Hope this is helpful, good luck.

[robin_reala]

Probably the most important question is “where do you live?”

[nalenth]

Right, should have said that. Germany.

[Zachary-_-]

Are you looking to work out of necessity? or just to fill up 10-15 hours? I'm a stay at home dad too, and my background is in Software Engineering. I have some time, so decided to build a startup, I'm spending about average 30 hours a week on it. I find more fun in trying to solve a problem, so if it doesn't work out, hey, at least it was fun.

[nalenth]

I can get away with not working for a couple of months, but earning some money would be helpful and gaining some experience in the industry would be great. I've thought about building a startup, but from what I've read 10-15h are not enough time to get a startup going.