Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | samzhao's comments login

How did you get your employer to agree to 4-hour work days?

The first half and one of your comment replies spoke to me deeply - especifically the part about having the feeling of never having done enough, haunts me everyday, but also pushes me.

So thanks so much for writing this! Just wish you could speak more about how you were able to negotiate your current work schedule.


I don't have an employer that cares about my schedule. It's literally never come up. My daily productivity has increased noticably since this regimen, and if my employer didn't understand that as a benefit, they'd be silly.

By the way I'm active for more than 4 hours a day, and after the morning sprint I'll spend some time chatting about business, reading and learning, triaging issues, etc. It's just that I don't spend more than 4 hours intensively coding or debugging.


Great response, thanks!


I'm guessing that his employer is agreeing to take the 4 hours of productive work he achieves, which is likely much more than the average "sit in front of the keyboard for 8 hours" worker.


Yeah, that must be the case: a smart employer and demonstrably productive employee.


Not OP, but I think it's because devs are slightly harder to sell to compared to non-devs. Also, the commission for a product less than $20 will be too low for anyone to put in any effort to promoting it.

5% of $20 is $1, meaning you won't be able to cover operation costs even if you sell 100 of it every month. If the product/course/service is $2997, and your commission is 5%, you are looking at $10k+ net profit every month if you sell 100 of that.

In addition, because the author/creator/founder of the $20 doesn't have a high profit margin to begin with, the commission rate will be very low compared to premium products/services. E.g., 5% for $20 product vs. 20-30% for $2997 product.


I've had very similar experience with Angular 1.x where a lot of problems can be avoided by having a sensible styleguide/standard across the entire team. I've since moved to using React and couldn't be happier :)


I'm interested as well! Please add my email as well. Thanks!


I think what your question implies is this: "I learned how to write Javascript in a black box where I'm not solving real world problems, and instead just learned how to print static text."

Programming, like anything, is a tool - you learn the features which might not sound like solutions to problems, and with practice you start crossing your programming mind with normal day to day mind. Let me give you an example.

I got the mega Creative Market Black Friday Photos bundle yesterday. To my surprise, the photos are all separate, so instead of one zip file for me to download, or a "Download All" button, it gave me a list of 100 or so buttons to click to download INDIVIDUALLY. Conveniently (or not), they added a "Save to Dropbox" button to each item, but that doesn't help at all, there's still no "Save all to Dropbox" button.

So after clicking on 5 or 6 items... I started to give up, then suddenly my programming mind jumped in and said to me "hey dude why don't just go into the console and select all the elements and do a `trigger('click')`?" So I jumped into the console, and typed

`$(".start-sync").trigger("click")`

I didn't even bother to check if the site uses jQuery, I just typed it in and it worked!

Now, if you were to jump in and helped them add a "Sync All to Dropbox" button, don't you think that's gonna be really beneficial to a lot of the users?

You might have learned the feature in jQuery to trigger an action, but to actually do something with it to solve a problem you need to not only learn the tools, but also start thinking about problems using your programmer brain.


I can think of one guy who would definitely want this. Update your HN profile to show your email so I can try to introduce you to him; or you can email me with more details.


When I said 3 days, I meant 3 days only. I think it'll make the founders think about the most important things they need to improve on, which can also be handed to someone with little credibility, kind of similar to the idea of contributing to open source projects.


The point is not to only work on the technical aspect of the business - there's way more than just code to a startup/business.


Other aspects also take time to learn. You also listed programming languages, hinting at a developer position.


But if I can help them with marketing, UI/UX or wireframing or anything, that'll not be a waste of time for both the companies and me


I should have asked for just one day only. It doesn't have to be technical. I think this is an easy way to get rejected (inspired by Jia's rejection therapy), rather than asking in person. I doubt people would give me access to anything important. Nonetheless, if someone decide to let me help, it would be a great experience for me, and one more reason other than my resume to hire me.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: