Not OP but I have a similar workstyle: I work half-time for one client (remotely), 4 hours a week for another (also remotely) and occasionally take side gigs like teaching or something. The remote work is mostly in Norway, I live in Poland, so the pay cut is not noticable – the fact that "I could be making twice as much if I worked “normally”" is something that always is in the back of my head, but is somewhat dimished by the fact that I still make more than a typical fulltime salary would net me here in Poland.
Being a contractor in a niche technology (in my case it's Perl) is great for this, because the companies involved can't really say "work more or we'll find someone else" – we both know that they won't ;) Also, beyond 4-5 hours a day my (and afaik everyone else's) productivity is diminishing anyway, so it's not like they're losing much because of it.
In-house product development of a SaaS platform. You can check out it out at ardoq.com.
The company is imo a great place to work, but this is also in Norway where it's pretty common for people (usually older ones, though) to work 80 or 60%. That probably made this a lot more likely to happen.
I'll add that there was some fear that everyone else would want the same arrangement and that we'd suddenly only have devs working part time, but nobody else has expressed any interest in this. Different strokes for different folks...
not OP too but I'd love to add an extra case:
I work 3.5 days/week. I asked my boss after 14 years of work there if I could reduce my working time, given the fact that I think family time is more important.
It went well and I suppose it's also thanks to the effort I put into my job daily.
BTW I first got the idea right here on HN and the good thing is that I think, as developers, we have one of the best jobs that allows reducing our working time.
To improve it even further I'd love to do this kind of work entirely remote, thus givin me some extra time to spend with my family and removing the commute. That'd be the max :) I can't ask for this now because we're not a remote company and I know for sure that if the company is not fully remote I'm gonna fail badly (mostly because I'll be the only one doing it ).
In any case, after doing it for many years I can say that it's amazing and I love it
I work 70% (5.6 hr/day) at SAP in Germany. I made it a condition when they hired me. In the meantime, many team members have switched from full-time to 80% to have Fridays off to spend time with their family.
