As an enrepreneur, having to now hire developers for my startup, I don't see how this could work practically. As a company, there are objectives you need to meet by a certain time frame. If there's a task that needs to be done in 3 weeks, and there are 2 weeks of full time work estimated in order to do it, you're not going to hire someone and let it take 4-6 weeks just because they don't feel like working a full week.
For programming projects especially, its much simpler to have one person work on a given task, than splitting out an assignment over 2+ people - it lowers complexity, and keeps the process coherent.
So 1 person, needs to get the work done in the time frame. I personally don't care how much time the person spends doing the task, as long as its done properly, and on time. And its not always possible to see so far in advance what needs to be done that you can afford to let people take twice as long to do it (also taking into account the difficulties with estimating software project durations when work is done full time).
So working 16-20 hrs a week sounds GREAT in principle. But in practice, as an employer, I don't see a practical interest from my perspective
EDIT: I'm not a pointy-haired manager either.. Prior to starting my own company, I was full-time lead developer (and very well paid) for several years in a startup environment. My work pushed the envelope forward at the company, so I have a deep understanding of software development projects, and how development teams function as a whole, all first-hand experience
The practical interest for you, as the employer, is the quality of your team and of the work produced -- something you should be optimizing for regardless.
Say you find a dev who nails all of your interviews, is passionate about the kind of work your team does, and intuitively gets your company's mission. And then you find out he or she is only available for 16-20 hours a week. You must decide whether hiring them for their time is still a net gain for your business.
In some cases, it may not be, and as you said it certainly makes sense to have more full-timers available to do the day-to-day dirty work. But I'd argue that, in many cases, the quality of output and, yes, even the timeframe in which it gets done, will be higher for some developers given 16-hour weeks than many developers will do in a 40- or 50-hour week.
> Say you find a dev who [...] is passionate about the kind of work your team does
What does this mean to you? To me, being passionate about doing something means I want to do more of it, quite literally. Leaving other motivations aside, someone who is trying to negotiate less time is less passionate, right?
Or it means they recognize that passion is a finite resource that takes time to replenish.
Works too hard for too long at something you are passionate about is a good way to lose the passion for it you once felt.
So someone who is trying to negotiate less time doesn't necessarily mean they are less passionate about their work; it may just mean that they are mature and self aware enough to realize that they'd like to work at a pace that allows them to sustain that passion over the long term.
> But in practice, as an employer, I don't see a practical interest from my perspective
I'd venture that may be because you view programmers as interchangeable cogs. Rather, for one developer, a project may take two 16-hour weeks, and for a less talented developer, it may take three 40-hour weeks. If you need it done in 2 weeks but the price tag is the more talented developer only works 16-hour weeks, and you accept, everyone wins.
[P.S.: I'm not sure this is a valid thread for the "10x programmers" debate, and I would hate to derail a very interesting topic. But I would say that if your goal is to only work 16-hour weeks, it's in your interest to attempt to demonstrate you can provide at least as much value as an average 40-hour-per-week-developer.]
> if your goal is to only work 16-hour weeks, it's in your interest to attempt to demonstrate you can provide at least as much value as an average 40-hour-per-week-developer.
I'm not convinced that's true. Most developers, 1x and 10x alike, are not evenly productive across a 40-hour week. If, in 20 hours, you can get even half the work you get done in 40 hours, you're already just as valuable based on time worked and should get compensated accordingly for that time.
And I'd argue that in 20 hours you can get far more than half the work done, since the other 20 hours are likely the tail end of your productivity anyway. So your value-to-time ratio goes up, even if you aren't providing as much value as a 40-hour-per-week developer.
If the strong developer can get the work done properly in two 16-hr weeks, then I'm in full agreement.. I'd rather have the strong developer, and it would probably even cost less in teh long run, with better developer happiness.
The problem isn't there... The problem is finding that developer in the first place. As you mentioned, that type, is probably closer to the 10x developer profile, and most developers are cross, are (by definition) closer to the average. So the problem is, as an employer, I have to (despite both yours and my own wishes), prepare for the average case scenario, until proven otherwise that I have a 10x developer on my hands
Assuming you half their wages, you eat a small bit of admin and hire two of them. In exchage, you now have redundancy in your dev team and are I suspect gaining more than you lose.
For programming projects especially, its much simpler to have one person work on a given task, than splitting out an assignment over 2+ people - it lowers complexity, and keeps the process coherent.
So 1 person, needs to get the work done in the time frame. I personally don't care how much time the person spends doing the task, as long as its done properly, and on time. And its not always possible to see so far in advance what needs to be done that you can afford to let people take twice as long to do it (also taking into account the difficulties with estimating software project durations when work is done full time).
So working 16-20 hrs a week sounds GREAT in principle. But in practice, as an employer, I don't see a practical interest from my perspective
EDIT: I'm not a pointy-haired manager either.. Prior to starting my own company, I was full-time lead developer (and very well paid) for several years in a startup environment. My work pushed the envelope forward at the company, so I have a deep understanding of software development projects, and how development teams function as a whole, all first-hand experience