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Comment by statquontrarian | Hacker News Reader

I've been doing 20 hours per week (Mon-Wed) remote for nearly 3 years and I absolutely love it. I'm at a $bigco and worked there for 10 years before changing to this part time arrangement.

I believe it's harder to do for small companies due to legal/tax reasons (something about less than 32 hours complicates things a lot although I don't know the details why).

The "simple" solution is to be good enough that you have the bargaining leverage to propose it and make it an ultimatum. Other ideas:

* Grind in a project for some years and become indispensable and then propose it.

* Propose it as an experiment for 6 months.

* Create an "excuse" of why you need the extra time such as pursuing an M.S./PhD.

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Create an "excuse" of why you need the extra time such as pursuing an M.S./PhD.

Having kids. Serves also as a pressure upon you to actually seek part-time instead of just procrastinating about it.

I believe it's harder to do for small companies due to legal/tax reasons (something about less than 32 hours complicates things a lot although I don't know the details why).

Not a US resident, but FWIW many countries because of redistribution schemes need to categorize people by whether they are a) principally employed or b) self-employed.

Hours worked for a/b are a common denominator for this. It's likely that depending on the regulatory environment smaller companies when given the chance will always opt for the candidate with less HR department overhead.

My understanding is it's complicated because of benefits. 32 hours is considered full time by my employer's insurance company, any less is part time. You can pro-rate salary, but benefits are mostly either there or not.

Yeah maybe it is easier to achieve in large companies...? They will anyway need to employ lots of people since they are large. Whereas growing the headcount might not always be that easy for small companies.

So far I have mostly worked for small companies. So I might want to consider working for larger ones.

Also, thank you for suggesting multiple strategies. All angles need to be considered (^_^)

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