Why are there so few part-time jobs?

I'm a full-timer and I have to admit that I find it frustrating to work with part-time colleagues. Sometimes you need them, and they're not around until the next day. Not saying they shouldn't be allowed to do it, but there's definitely a cost.

I don't think there's anything special about eight hours a day. It's more about just having everyone keep the same hours, so that you can get a quick turnaround on questions/requests. So I think it'd work if companies built entire teams that were part-time, working on the same subset of the week.

As an employer, I can give you some color.

1) Hiring is a pain, and there's ton of friction. 2) Ideally you want to get max efficiency out of roles that serve "business critical" functions. 3) More people on payroll (parttime or not) = more time wasted for me on management

These two factors incentivize me to avoid having too many part-timers, if I could

I don’t have any hard evidence for this, but my intuition is that it’s about the trade off between the cost of hiring and training workers versus the work output you get from each one versus the workers desire to earn income.

For the employer, it would be better (in theory) to have fewer people working for more hours, because then training costs less and the workers become more and more expert.

For the worker, the desire to earn more is most easily accomplished by working more.

Both of those are offset by the decrease in productivity and increase in fatigue and burnout as you work too many hours.

Right now, most workers and employers have landed on about 40 hours a week as a good balance between these concerns.

However this has changed over time and will change in the future. For example there’s recently been an increase in so-called “30 hour jobs.” For example: https://30hourjobs.com/

Are you saying that you would only have one 50% job? Why not just take it as a 100% and find other ways to make best use of your non-productive side.

I would rather hire one person working 100% than two people working 50%, because there is less communication overhead.

I have worked both part-time and full-time and honestly I prefer working full time as it feels less stressful. When I am working part-time I have to coordinate heaps more with other staff if they are taking over my role during the times I am not at work (eating into my work hours leaving me with less for actual work). It takes longer to coordinate meetings especially if they involve other part-timers (sometimes to the point when we have meetings about when to have meetings—which wouldn't be needed if we all worked full time). When I have heaps of work on I feel guilty leaving part-way—whereas if I am full time I can confidently say I've done all I can during the time I have available. The times I have been able to work full time on the same role has really improved my mental well-being, reduced my overall workload (as I'm not having to coordinate solutions for issues caused by not being available—I am working 100% on my actual work) and getting a full pay check is just icing on the cake. I am currently working part time (due to studying part-time) and I absolutely hate it but it has to be done to gain qualifications for my current role. Looking forward to going back to full-time work! YMMV of course.

I find that part time seekers want the part time to be their schedule,not the schedule I need them

Me: 20 hours a week is perfect

Candidate: Cool, I'll do Monday 8 to 3, tuesday noon to 5, and thursday and friday 1 to 5.

Me: well, really I need help 11-3 five days a week.

Candidate: that's not the schedule I'm after.

It's very common here in Switzerland. I could reduce my work hours to 80% without even needing approval from my manager. Many parents do some combination of 80% + 60% or even less.

They are excellent questions.

Trading, economies were meant to serve peoples' wants and needs, but people serve "the economy", with no thought given to what the actual quality of working peoples' lives are like. As if the economy is the important thing, not human lives. There is extreme attention on "economic efficiency", no attention at all on the quality of the lives involved. We don't know where we're going, don't care whether the journey is pleasant or not, but focus on getting there as quickly/cheaply as possible. I guess that's easier to measure.

Also, modern economies rely on there being a pool of unemployed. If everyone could do 1, 2 or 3 part-time jobs, balanced how they like it, that would mess up the system. Anyway, the whole thing is designed to make the rich richer, whether underlings enjoy that process is not really relevant.

I frequently use part-time people through Upwork. My highest-paid dev makss $125/hr, has no other contracts right now, and works 10 hrs/wk. He spends the rest of his time on his own projects.

There are many people in Germany who work 4/5 or 3/5 jobs. I was previously 3/5 and moved to 4/5, but it's nice to have the extra time.

For the employers here, the only downside is if they are being measured by head-count (but even then, I count as 4/5 of a headcount...)

I have a theory about why this is. There’s this economic concept called signaling - it’s the ways the economic choices we make also communicate information to other agents in the economy.

If you apply for a part time position, what do you communicate to your potential employer? Namely, that work is not your #1 priority. I think that employers want employees who are as obsessed with work as possible. It’s not that they don’t want part time employee, it’s that they don’t want the sort of person who would apply for a part time job.

As a manager, here are my reasons:

1. Biggest one: transfer of knowledge between people is lower bandwidth than going to one person. If I have Jill and Jane doing work function A, I can assign primary responsibility to some sub-parts A1 and A2 to Jill and A3 and A4 to Jane. If I need A2 on Tuesday when Jill is off, sure Jane can do it (and as a manager I should make sure of that) but it would take her more time while her othe things slip.

2. Overhead per employee: I have to do one on ones, regular reviews, and various other per-employee bureaucracy.

3. All team update meetings and other get togethers requiring non-trivial subset of the team get exponentially harder to organize.

- Synchronous vs asynchronous communication -- if we're all full-timers and you're not then you're hard to communicate with

- Security and access -- I know and trust my full-timers, be they contractors or direct hires. They get to see my codebase, have access to my servers, and get insights as to what my roadmaps are because they own them. If we already knew you, like you were a full-timer who scaled back hours for a while, that might be a different story, but I'm not going to give some rando 20-hour-a-week person access to things.

- IT contracting firms / headhunters already do much of this.

- Hiring is a pain. Why interview for 2 positions when I can just hire one person?

Note: I'm in Canada so some of the healthcare and overhead-related questions are different from the US.

I have been pushing to go 1/2 time or 3/4s time for a while* with a large state agency and the primary reason I was given that I could not is because part-time jobs are more difficult to fill in the future. Which makes sense to me: in my field, and a lot of professional fields, most people have large student debt (I don’t) a family (I don’t) and barely manageable mortgages to boot (I don’t) and, therefore, they need a full-time paycheck. I am on my phone so I could not search all the comments to see if this had been said.

* I am hoping the unavoidable budget shortfalls following this pandemic make this possible.

I am being incredibly reductive in terms of how much effort is needed to position yourself for this successfully and sustainably, but: your friend can get that schedule by going freelance and moving towards a consultancy model. Consulting clients don’t have to worry about the same overhead per employee as a proper employment arrangement entails (onboarding, legal, benefits, etc.) and tend to be more focused on what will be done and by when.

DevOps has some nice potential niches for this sort of arrangement, like one-time projects to move between platforms.

I think most of the people who are full-time are more dedicated to the projects. They are more focused to think on how to solve a problem better, sometimes even when they are off shift.

I do flexible part time hours. As in, I'm flexible. I'm on Slack if people need me. I work when there are hours for me. I get to pay rent, take a trip whenever I want, work on side projects, and work on interesting work.

I agree completely that it's crazy that it is not not common. We make an insane rate compared to the average salary, might as well take advantage of that and enjoy some extra time.

Interesting that no one has mentioned the real reason. It's because you need butts in seats. In an office. A real office. Preferably within a half hour drive of Sand Hill Road or Silicon Alley. Then you have visual and social proof for future investment. Moreover, FTEs are assets. Salable assets. Not one by one, but as a collective. Assets for an exit.

What about pay. Do you expect to get paid as much as someone doing the full eight hours?

If not then how much 80%, 50%, even less? Answering that already just makes me want to avoid opening up part time positions.

Unless you just change the whole work day to 4 hours (gl with that), having some employees work double what others are just sounds like a headache to me.

Nobody wants to deal with the drama. It’s 2 o’clock and I need something from you, but whoops, I’m stuck waiting until tomorrow, or I call you in and lose you for a day at the end of the pay period.

It’s the same thing with contractors. I used to get stuck on call over Christmas all of the time because contract staff are out of hours.

Maybe have them start with an MSP, as they demonstrate ability, rigor, decision making, etc., they may be able to pull back on hours and get to service a few choice clients, as they get known they may be able to go on a 1099, if that’s what they’re after.

Beware that some companies demand full-time effort for an advertised part-time job. It’a better to join a company full-time that offers flexible work routine that can fit your friend’s routine/lifestyle.

From the employee side, I’m not really sure there’s any benefit to being part time vs. going full free lance. You might think you have additional job security, but the part timer is the first one to go.

I find that someone looking for "part time" work is kind of suggesting that the role isn't important to them, or they don't plan to stick around. I say that as both an employer and a former freelancer. As an employer, hiring is a pain in terms of time and resources, so you want to get it right.

By contrast, I find that someone representing themselves as a "fractional" expert suggests that they are serious and plan to stick around. Many times they are very experienced and have hourly rates that would make it difficult to afford employing them full time, but 2-3 days a week is tolerable.

It's really how you position it. I currently employ a fractional professional.

Let's say I have a part time guy, and a full time guy. I can give the a task that takes 5 days. The full time guy gets it done in a week, the part time guy takes 3 weeks.

Run a company.

Rather hire 3 full time devs than 6 half time devs.

Lots of work to train and keep people updated.

Life’s too short to increase my complexity for people to have a more relaxed life.

Theres a lot to be said in favour of a shorter working day. Not many people can deliver value after 9 hours of concentration!

Most SW jobs are salaried so you stay at work until the critical work is complete. A PT position doesn't allow for that so PT can't get critical work. PT only works for hourly type positions as you do the work and go home. There's also a reason that SW positions generally say you work only for them and them only so you're not preoccupied with other work.