Comment by sriram_malhar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sriram_malhar | Hacker News Reader

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I was in this loop for a while. One day -- a rare Sunday morning when I was home -- I was just laying down on the carpet enjoying the warm sunshine on my face, when a vision of my workplace flashed in my mind. I was stunned to feel my heartbeat thump instantly. That's when I realized how truly stressed I was.

The next day I told my manager that instead of the promotion I was due, I would take Fridays off for the same salary. Somehow, when I had two days off I found it easy to overwork on the weekend, but when I decided that every week had to have a 3-day weekend, everything changed. I started spending hours and hours at bookstores and cafes, and walking around SF and Berkeley.

Of course it had a downside. I told my team not to hold meetings on Fridays, but they would forget and go ahead without me. My ego used to get bruised at my dispensability!

I'm sure I left many career options on the table, but gained many life options. So much so that I eventually started working only six months a year (did it for 19 years), and picked up a PhD (starting at age 42) during those years.

There will always be relentless deadlines, but there has to be enough whitespace built into a life.

I have retired now, but I still wake up wanting to write code or learn something now.

That's a really great career path you were able to plot out, and great your manager at the start of the journey was supportive of it.

I think a lot of people don't realize everything is negotiable and you have to set out your own path.

That said, you have to make sure you get yourself into the right organization first to make these sort of flexible arrangements. I think 60-75% of firms I have worked at would not allow either % of week / % of year type of arrangements, and the most you might get is a permanent WFH for less pay deal.

The amount of stupid things I stayed stupid late for at my previous gig because my manager was a workaholic (as was his own manager). It's never a direct order and rarely even a request, but when your boss just stays in the office til 9pm it makes it hard to walk out the door at 5..6..7pm when theres a pending release/bugfix/etc late going out the door. Likewise when they call you on your cell at 6:45pm without warning to discuss non-urgent issues because they've finally gotten to that email in their inbox..

When working six months a year how are the work months spaced out? 6 months on and 6 off? Or every other month?

It sounds like a very interesting (and appealing) way of living life.

Mostly six months on, then off. I never learnt to have a work-life balance, so I still tend to go all out when I do take up any work, but on average over a year, I have terrific work-life balance :) I've written about this and about joining a PhD as a much older student on HN, so check my post history.

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