For some people, a 40-hour workweek is something to aspire to; for others, it’s still too much time taken up by a job. If you fall into that second category, if you want more time for hobbies, family and friends, or working on your own software projects, you too might dream of working less than full time.
But how do you get there? Almost no one advertises part-time programming jobs–believe me, I’ve me[sic] looked.
The answer: negotiation. I’ve negotiated a shorter workweek a few times myself, and I’ve met other programmers who have done so as well, some with just a few years of experience. And of all the programmers I’ve met who’ve negotiated part-time work, Mike’s record is the most impressive.
Mike has spent pretty much all his career working part-time: he’s been working part-time for more than 15 years. To help you get to a shorter, saner workweek, I sat down to interview Mike about how he does it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @07:14PM (18 children)
Set parameters, find people who can agree with you, and get on with life.
Also, realize how stupid it is to slave away through your youth just so you can spend a little more time as a decaying husk in your twilight; health doesn't get better, folks.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @07:41PM (14 children)
If it's stupid to spend your own youth saving up for medical bills in your own twilight, then it's immoral to expect other people to spend their own youth paying for your own medical bills; in general, then, socialized health care is unethical.
In contrast, of course, risk management by means of voluntary insurance is perfectly moral and therefore perfectly ethical.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Thursday May 24 2018, @07:44PM (1 child)
Stupid != Immoral != Unethical
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @07:46PM
The logical development in the AC's comment is quite clear.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snow on Thursday May 24 2018, @07:44PM (6 children)
Yea! Fuck those poor people, they deserve to die in the gutter alone and uncared for as god intended.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @07:48PM (4 children)
Nowhere does the OP imply that conclusion.
Also, poor people have a very bad people of creating more poor people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @07:50PM (3 children)
I meant "a very bad habit", not "a very bad people".
This web site very badly needs an "edit" feature.
(Score: 2, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday May 24 2018, @08:03PM (1 child)
They have that, they call it "preview." Although it causes big problems at certain times. Like when I tried to tweet about the DOD CN>, Counter Narcotics & Global Threats. But it came out as something very different. Sad!!
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday May 24 2018, @11:40PM
It happened again right there. And I didn't do the preview. I put the initials of Counter Narcotics & Global Threats. I didn't do the preview. Someone said the preview changes things, so I didn't do it. But still the initials got changed to something else. It's bad cyber. And once again a hater or loser found one of my tweets. Down modded it because it was tweeted by me. And got his or her liddle' wings. Enjoy!! 🧚
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 24 2018, @08:32PM
No sweat. I just edited your name to AC, to save you some future embarrassment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:45PM
screw that noise. we need to create a useless, bloated corpse of a government to use guns to steal from people so we can pretend we are helping the poor but really the corpse just gets fatter and bluer.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 24 2018, @08:05PM (3 children)
You seem to contradict your own point?
With socialized health care, isn't everyone spending, and everyone able to avail themselves of services?
No system is perfect. While considering the various imperfections, socialized medicine seems to be an improvement over private insurance.
Private insurance guarantees that the people who work hard and pay for private insurance ARE INDEED paying for the services of those who don't work or contribute into the system. They just go to the ER for expensive services that the rest of us pay for.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @08:37PM (1 child)
What is the contradiction?
Ergo, you can view the situation in 2 ways:
You are being forced to choose a lifestyle that you personally deem stupid. (Certainly unethical in a free society)
You are trying to benefit by forcing other people to adopt a lifestyle that you wouldn't choose for yourself. (immoral and possibly unethical if said morality applies generally)
The problem you point out is not a problem of "private" (e.g., voluntary) insurance, but rather a problem with coercion: The government forces (at the point of a gun) one group to pay for another group, and in the most expensive case.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Saturday May 26 2018, @01:45PM
In any natural human society there ever was or will be until the apocalypse, people have always had to get along with other people. This also means that you don't get to do everything you might like to do that benefits yourself but is detrimental to others.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:48PM
false choice. you shouldn't need private insurance to pay a doctor. if we had a real free market you would have affordable doctors. also, most people don't need doctors they need proper nutrition and to get off their fat asses.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 24 2018, @08:30PM
FFS, someone triggered a millenial incel!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @08:26PM
Live like you did in college with 4 roommates, eating spaghetti and working 80 hours a week. Buy a few rental properties along the way, retire young to an inexpensive area as a slumlord.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday May 25 2018, @12:05PM (1 child)
There's been a masterful marketing job that SS and medicare are "savings programs" but they aren't, each dollar in is a dollar minus admin costs out with the occasional weird buffer funds that don't really matter much.
Its simple wealth transfer from kids to parents. Everyone paying in is paying some kind of average for their parents medical care. If you're going to do the "nuclear family" thing with grandparents not living with the kids and grandkids like some cultures, then you gotta do something, pretty much. As an insurance scheme I'm down with it as some ancestors keel over cheaply with a stroke and others spend millions in nursing homes, and its unfair to the grandkids to wear shoes or not wear shoes because of how some grandparent randomly died.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @07:23AM
In both cases, one person is immorally imposing on another person. "But they took advantage of me in my youth, too!" is a non sequitur.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 24 2018, @07:18PM (5 children)
This goes for pretty much every negotiation, everywhere - if you're really willing to walk away from the deal, you have some power. The other great nugget is: never be the first one to speak.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @07:34PM (4 children)
You should always speak first; just aim a hell of a lot higher than reasonable.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimtheowl on Thursday May 24 2018, @08:07PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday May 24 2018, @08:20PM (1 child)
Perhaps you will not tight all credibility, perhaps not; I suppose stranger things have happened.
But if you have a semi-competent boss, you've already won half the battle, that being to get a reasonable conversation started to begin with.
I would guess (it's no more than that) that the odd negotiating tactics above would be indicated if you didn't have the competent variety of boss to start with, such that you have to trick them into negotiations instead of just talk to them. PHB From Dilbert comes to mind as an example of this variety.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 25 2018, @01:39AM
I don't know which tactics are supposed to be odd, but if you're signing up under PHB you're playing to lose - unless you have a great exit strategy and you just need the gig for some temporary income. Living with a PHB long term is the opposite of quality of life.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 25 2018, @01:36AM
Nah, man - I can take this monster idea of yours from rough description through test driven development fully documented to agile deployment with 100% customer satisfaction within a week, by myself. That's a four day week - no sweat.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @08:29PM (1 child)
Does part time programmer pay better than part time crack whore?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @09:16PM
... unzip; strip; touch; grep; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; umount; sleep
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 24 2018, @11:08PM
Start as a full-time programmer then try to get back after they outsourced your job?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday May 25 2018, @12:23PM
Two things I've done over the decades:
1) If you want hobby time and family time on average, take shorter term contracts during the school year. My kids know if I'm home during the summer, they don't know or care if I'm working while they're in school. Remote work also helps.
2) The article went into great detail about his Wednesday off deal. I got a day off with full pay at my last W-2 regular employee job by working 4 tens. That also saves me 20% on the commute both time and money, except its even more because I flex timed and avoided rush hour so I drove at 75 mph while people in rush hour average below 25 mph, so my commute was at least 3x smaller than most. Ironically because of the shrunken commute times and some manipulation of lunch hour breaks, my 10 hour days were only outside my home about 30 minutes longer than 8 hour days, so in terms of work I put in the same 40 hrs/wk but in terms of lifestyle I literally had another day off per week. You know, someone losing an hour each way in rush hour traffic, thats two hours per day, four days a week that would be a complete eight hour working shift spent as a driver, whereas I spent about an hour per week as a driver, which is actually a negative WRT podcast and audiobook consumption. The biggest problem I had, if you want to call it that, was parking. This 4 tens thing really messed with the minds of less productive harder working dotcom people who bragged about working 6 twelves every week, what idiots... I even got paid more than them, which is funny. The fact of the matter is for creative work like programming you only get maybe two hours of really high quality inspiration per day, regardless how many hours you sit in the chair and pretend to look busy.
To quote the Office Space movie, most days I really only put in a couple hours of productive work anyway. Lots of meetings and email-as-a-job for at least an hour per day and B.S. H.R. classes and pep rallies, I was probably only productive two, three hours per day anyway. Which is another secret of contract work if you only bill for productive time and you're only productive half the time at best, you gotta charge twice average day just to break even aside from all the tax and insurance stuff...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @02:20PM (1 child)
We're talking computer programming, not factory work, so why dick around negotiating the conditions of your wage-slavery? Not my industry (I like programming too much to make a job of it), but everything I've heard says contracting is the way to go.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:53PM
i don't even do that anymore. i make my own software and go to market with that. who needs a middleman?