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Comment by levthedev | Hacker News Reader

Right now I am freelancing 20 hours a week. I've found it to be incredibly rewarding, as I have enough energy to sit down and code for 4 hours a day and then go home and read, go to the gym/library, watch a movie, or hang out with friends.

Plus, working part time in software still means that I make good money.

If I could work for a "regular" software company but only work 20 hours a week (and be paid 50%), I would definitely do it.

For what it's worth, I also know someone who for a while worked 6 weeks on 6 weeks off - he was kind of one of those fabled 10x developers and so had negotiated something special with his employer. Another commenter mentioned something similar; working 40 hours a week but for only a few months a year.

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> If I could work for a "regular" software company but only work 20 hours a week (and be paid 50%), I would definitely do it.

i've often wondered why this is not available more often. my guess is that hiring a person is so expensive (benefits, unemployment ins, hardware, office space, HR time, etc) that the company feels that it must squeeze as much productivity out of the employee as possible.

workers require a bunch of time/effort to find and maintain a relationship with (so milk 'em like a cow before they dry up).

My experience: I worked part time (3.5 days/week) for a startup early in my career. The reason was so I could go to school part-time also (for jazz performance).

I've since employed many folks part-time and a lot more full time. From what I've seen, it's almost always an option, but you have to ask for it, it's not just going to be offered.

It's also trickier to manage, if you have a handful of people that work 15-20 hours/week, and are paid hourly, vs full time folks who are salaried, and managing support/on-call schedules, etc, and it can create a strange dynamic on teams sometimes.

Just curious, how do you find freelance work? And how much time do you spend garnering clients beyond that 20 hours?

Don't want to butt in here but I can tell you my own experience of this - I mostly used agencies in the past. These days it's mostly word of mouth or people I've worked with in the past. I might get a call a year or two later from a contact, who may even have moved companies, and they need someone for a job. I think it's a case of "devil you know". Recommendations and prior experiences of successfully completing gigs is quite important. If I were doing more gigs per year I'd probably work more with agencies. The gig I'm currently on was through an agency, just because that was how things worked out - I got a phone call and the gig was interesting and a good rate. Building up a network over time is important. I always take agency calls even if the person is a bit clueless - you never know when they might actually have a gig you want! Hope that helps!

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