Eric Wise

Business & .NET

Rethinking compensation

You know, I've had many conversations in the last few months about compensation with my contacts, and I have hit upon a common theme. Those of us who have experience, confidence, and ability seem to agree with the following statement:

"I would take a paycut to work less hours"

Yes, there is a magic time and place when your experience level and salary reaches a point that suddenly the money doesn't mean as much. You want to spend more time with your family and kids. You want to pursue other interests. Bottom line, you want to develop yourself in directions you've never had the opportunity for when constrained by a full time job.

So here's a tip for you businessmen out there. If you're looking to hire someone in that hard to fill sweet spot, the 3-7 years experience developer and you're strapped for cash... why not offer to let any employee who wants it to take a 15% paycut and take fridays off? Or let employees schedule as much unpaid vacation time as they want as long as they clear the time in advance?

How many of you would take a paycut for a shorter work-week?

Published May 19 2005, 06:27 PM by Eric Wise

Filed under: Business / IT

Comments

Dave Balzer said:

Hire Productive Employees

# May 19, 2005 7:53 PM

David Neal said:

Salary is definitely not the primary motivator in my career at this point. Not to say that I'm not making a good salary. For the last few years I've made the "life balance" choice over more money. I'm now in the best job of my career, working from home 1-2 days a week, and having an absolute blast.

Laptop: $2000
MSDN & Great .NET Tools: $2500
Home every night to have dinner with the family: Priceless

# May 19, 2005 9:09 PM

Willem said:

That sounds like an awesome idea. I'd wouldn't mind taking a paycut, and having fridays off to do some non-programming related work.

# May 19, 2005 11:50 PM

Jeffrey Palermo said:

I have that situation at my current job. I'm very productive, so in order to completely fulfill my assignments, I only have to work about 20 hours per week. I come in when I wake up (usually before 10am) and leave when I need to. This week I wasn't there past 4PM. I've never been questioned, and I don't think I will be because I never miss deadlines, and my work consistantly has the fewest number of bugs (usually none). I agree with you, Eric, that other things are important (mostly family), and confidence play a big part in my ability to be absent from work when I need to be.

# May 20, 2005 7:26 AM

Jay Kimble -- The Dev Theologian said:

Eric wrote an insteresting piece over here about here&nbsp;inviting employers to pay us less and let...

# May 20, 2005 7:40 AM

Darrell said:

It doesn't usually work. The people that are part time say "I can't work at all on Fridays, I took a pay cut for that reason!" And anything that requires overtime then falls disproportionately on those who are full-timers. I've seen it happen in 2 separate clients who let people work part-time with a pay cut.

Besides, if I'm an employer and I give an employer a 20% reduction in hours and only a 15% paycut, how does that help me much? I still have to pay 100% of the benefits, which is now amortized over fewer working hours.

# May 20, 2005 11:50 AM

Nino.Mobile said:

# May 20, 2005 1:37 PM

Eric Wise said:

My previous post got my wheels really turning over how I would design a compensation system if I were...

# May 20, 2005 3:51 PM

Josh said:

My employer offers this, but I don't know of anyone that takes them up on it. Since it is still a full-time, salaried job, you are expected to do what it takes to get the work done. Ideally that is 40 hours a week, but sometimes you have to work late or on weekends. If you were to voluntarily take a paycut to have an extra day off, but still had to get the job done, you would be pressured to work on your "day off".

# May 20, 2005 6:55 PM