Never considered that connotation, but a good point.
Personally, I take much bigger offense at the word "resources", because it is very dehumanizing. "FTE" is another term I'm not a fan of, because it's often used with fractional numbers like "1.5 FTE", as if we can chop a person in half.
>"FTE" is another term I'm not a fan of, because it's often used with fractional numbers like "1.5 FTE", as if we can chop a person in half.
Huh. See, I actually think that employee quality of life would be much better, at least on the high end, if employers really thought that two half-time folks were worth one full-time, and you could work half-time for half-pay. I dono about you, but I can live well on half what the market would pay me. Yeah, I like having more money, but at some point? half the money for half the time starts looking pretty good, especially with marginal tax rates being what they are.
In my experience, if you want to go part-time at a high-paying job you can, but it is quite difficult. You have to prove yourself to be difficult to replace, then use the leverage that would normally get you a large raise or a promotion, and spend that leverage on going part-time. You usually also, in my experience, lose company benefits.
This is getting common in Denmark, I think due to two reasons:
1. It's very common for students to work 1 or 2 days/wk while in university, so companies (esp. tech companies) are already set up for it. This is because the way university funding is structured students have an incentive to work ~5-15 hrs/wk, but cannot work more than 15. Some stick with the same arrangement even after they graduate, working 15 hrs/wk to fund a startup, or game company, or whatever.
2. Since benefits (healthcare/childcare/etc.) are provided directly by the state, not tied to your employment, part-time vs. full-time doesn't matter from that perspective.
> Yeah, I like having more money, but at some point? half the money for half the time starts looking pretty good, especially with marginal tax rates being what they are.
Not only that there's nothing to stop you spending that newly-freed time on your own choice of work, assuming you have a sensible contract with your employer. 20 hours/week is a bit too much for me to fill without some direction!
That's just petty semantics - people use those words all the time even about themselves, in reference to the work provided by the person, not the person him/herself.
Personally, I take much bigger offense at the word "resources", because it is very dehumanizing. "FTE" is another term I'm not a fan of, because it's often used with fractional numbers like "1.5 FTE", as if we can chop a person in half.