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Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

You're lucky. Most companies don't accept that. Frequently, even when they have part time arrangements, the incentives are such that middle managers are incentivized to squeeze you (including squeezing you out), despite company policies and HR mandates.

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I am lucky. I work for a very small consultancy (3 people plus occassional contractors) and am paid a fraction of our net income.

The arrangement was arrived at because the irregular income schedule makes an hourly wage or a salary a poor option for everyone involved. I’m grateful to work for a company where the owners value not only my time and worth but also value a similar work routine themselves.

40 hours/week is of course just an established norm for a lot of people and companies. But two 20 hour/week folks tend to cost more than one 40 hour/week person for all sorts of reasons.

source?

Well, for starters people probably want health insurance in the US which often starts at some percentage of full-time. Various other benefits. Then two people are probably just more overhead to manage than one. Though they may offer more flexibility.

Which is a shame because I bet most knowledge workers aren't putting in more than three or fours hours of solid work. The rest of the time they are just keeping a seat warm.

Spoken like middle management. If a knowledge worker is only putting in 4 hours they're either mismanaged or dead weight. Fire their manager and see if they are more effective, if not, then let them go. As a developer I routinely work 9 hour days without lunch and so do the others on my team and most people I've worked with as a developer. Myths like the 10% developer and lazy 4 hour knowledge workers are like the myth of the welfare queen. We really need to be more aware that when we complain about 5% of people that it becomes 100% to those outside of the field.

>As a developer I routinely work 9 hour days without lunch and so do the others on my team and most people I've worked with as a developer.

I've come across people like you and they don't produce as much value as they think.

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