I know that part-time programming work exists because I have been working a three day week for the past year and I have friends that are working part-time. The problem is that you first have to work full-time for the company and then slowly bring them round to the idea of part-time.
I'm convinced that more companies would take on part-time software developers if they considered the benefits.
What do you think? Have you ever wanted part-time programming work and had a similar response? Have you been successful in finding part-time work? If so, how did you go about finding it?
I'm keen to hear from other developers about their experience finding part-time work.
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If you are from Sydney, Australia and your company would consider hiring a part-time developer please contact me at dev.simond@gmail.com or view my resume.
1 comment:
Jasper put me in touch, drop me a line.
In the section "Small Companies" you don't demonstrate how experience leads to greater productivity. And if the small company is paying a day rate rather than a project rate, there's more pressure to hit deadlines and the hourly cost of a blowout by your calculations is 60% higher! The "many, many times" bit is hyperbole - can you quantify it?
"Imagine the positive effect it would have on a developer if they could spend part of their working week outside of the office pursuing other things that are important to them. Not only would they be out of the office but they would be working at completely different things giving their minds time to refresh and re-energize."
It really depends on the level of commitment a programmer has to the company they're working for - 3 days a week says "I have other commitments", not "I keep my mind fresh" to a lot of people.
I wasn't sure how this demonstrated a cost/benefit analysis. It was an interesting if repetitive discourse though ;) Additionally, if you're not mentally in the zone for 3 days, your employer could lose a whole week's productivity. There's a grind to programming sometimes and being in the zone doesn't stop it being repetitive sometimes - how do you cope with this?
Additionally, one benefit of a programmer working full-time is their ability to address something that comes up urgently as a priority, and for an employer to feel that their work is the most important thing in the employee's life. Obviously this isn't actually the case (family etc) but if you're working one full day plus four half days, you have a different level of commitment to Weds/Thurs/Fri. And clients have that nasty habit of looking at sites over the weekend.
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