My ideal plan would be to continue working for my current employer while I take night classes. However, I am currently a senior dev with a large number of responsibilities. My current work load takes ~50 hours of my time per week, and I just won't have that much to dedicate while I am going to school.
Does anyone here have experience with trying to negotiate with their employer to take a lower-level position? In theory it seems straightforward: pay me like an entry-level engineer, and I'll pump out a few API updates/bug fixes each week. I'll be a better deal than an 'actual' entry-level coder since I won't need hand holding and will probably push fewer bugs. If I worked full-time at Starbucks and said "Hey, I'd like to work half the hours for half the pay" my manager would do it without blinking.
However, I feel from my time in this industry that trying to negotiate such a deal won't be easy. I sense that there is an unwritten rule in tech that everyone is working as hard as they can, and I've never really met a management chain that could handle an IC who is good at saying "no, that's too much work right now". There is also a myth that one should only hire candidates with growth potential, even though we have all worked with entry level coders that obviously do not have this potential.
Thoughts?
I would challenge you to think about the performance of your coworkers and how you compare. How little can you work and still get a "meets expectations" review?
You're probably used to being the star of your team and chasing promotions. But if you're already thinking of exiting your current job, there is no need. Just do enough not to get fired.
My hunch is that you could work 20 hours a week and still get a good review. You won't be doing your best and that will be an adjustment for you. But if you want to spend more time focusing on other areas of your life, you need to spend less time focusing on something you're already doing.
In my mind there's really only one way to achieve what you're after here. If you're truly ready to exit in pursuit of this new career then go to your management and inform them that you'll be leaving, but offer to continue working for them on a 1099/consultant basis for some number of predetermined hours per week or on the completion of some feature(s) by some date (as long as the time required to deliver by that date aligns with how much you want to work).
If they're receptive make sure you make it clear that they will have no bearing on when/where you perform the work.
Otherwise, try to find another employer to make a similar arrangement with, or apply for very low-efforts jobs (probably at non-tech companies) where you can come in fresh without a reputation of being a high-performer and phone it in.
Less than that and it would be very situational whether I'd think there was enough benefit to the company to cover the overhead of having such a low-percentage employee. There's a cost of coordination and benefits overhead; at some point, the fixed weekly drag of just keeping up with company news and team progress takes over. Very few places would pay 2.5% for 1 hour per week as an extreme example...
Pete Muller said of his quants, "I want their shower time because in the shower they are thinking about things that get them to solve the problems." Put another way, in certain roles >50% value is created in 20% office time spent crystalizing ideas developed outside the office.
If your team can capture the >50% value of 20% time for 20% comp, that's a huge win. Assumes your work is qualitatively different from a new hire's. Not "more widgets with fewer defects in less time". If latter, company may reasonably prefer new hire who can put in the 50 hour slog. And you will too, it's no fun working as a time-metered widget-making FTE stand in.
Recently I got promoted, even though I told my manager I am not interested in promotion if it means additional work or responsibilities. I was clear about me feeling burned out in how I work already. She told me that the promotion would be more of a reward for the work I did, not because of additional exceptions
When my promotion got accepted and she told me about it in a 1-1, looks like she forgot about all that stuff and ended the meeting with something like "we will talk about the responsibilities later"
I felt like my heart sank after that last bit. Admittedly nothing really changed yet and we never had such talk but I am very worried of it. I got assigned to onboarding of a new employee so maybe that is a start
Sorry for hijacking your thread
You’re not setting proper boundaries and/or expectations. That is the skill you need to learn.
Your situation is a strange one. If one of our engineers came to me and said something similar it would be a difficult call. Switching to a different team with less responsibility would make more sense, though.
Here in the Us I see that as more difficult. The only time I got a part time accepted was in the context of me threatening to leave, and that did not really work out well. ( I ended up actually leaving ) Maybe just switching job?
I interviewed for several "down-level" positions, a couple where I subsequently found out that I was clearly the most qualified candidate. One HR person more or less told me that they didn't understand why I was willing to take a ~30% pay cut. I think they thought it seemed suspect... because who would do that?
1. Have you just tried to delegate the work you do to free up a bit of your time? 2. Does your company has role like an architect or something? Where you do more design and code reviews and less of direct coding? 3. What will happen if you start working 30+ hours a week by declining meetings and moving things out?
Since you are financially independent, why not slow the pace yourself and see if where you can add the most amount of value for least amount of work?
That way, you can delegate much of the hands on and time consuming reactive, break/fix, late night and on-call stuff, and just train people up, handle occasional escalations, set strategy and direction, etc. What's more, they'll think you are a very good manager since you focus so much on helping your team grow, training them, etc, etc.
Better to go to your employer and say you want to take night classes and need to reduce your hours, duties/resposibilities, etc, but cannot afford reducing compensation or level. Or, if you "have enough money" then you shouldn't work.
Based on what I think the place you work at is, I think chances are you will be prime PIP candidate - regardless of your contribution. It sucks, don't get me wrong, just being frank.