It would hugely open up the field to women with caring duties if more companies would do this. Perhaps this is why they do not - I don't know.
Sorry HN! Of course I meant that it's actually just a complete coincidence that so many women leave tech after having children. We all just choose this completely on our own and childcare is not a factor in the least. There's literally nothing we could do about this completely natural and voluntary situation. It's not even worth asking the question.
Hammer it, lads. Happy to go to zero!
I lead a team four days a week and it's working quite well. The other team members work five days a week. They didn't request shorter time.
The difference between "full time" commitment, where the business might say "we don't care how much or how little you work, just give us results" vs where you are saying "I work for you 32 hours per week - no more no less, that's it, thank you very much" is huge. Mindblowing.
Suddenly you are not under pressure to deliver deadlines, you are only giving them 4 days a week of your time, doing your best, and that's it. You are off the hook.
In the US and other high wage countries, most developers are hired because of the need for maximum velocity at all costs or having them available to discuss things directly with non-technical stakeholders. Neither of these roles fit well into spending 20 hours a week knocking out bugs and well specced features.
For instance, when I was in college, I had a job that paid by the hour. I didn't need a lot of money, so I worked one day a week.
In our field, there's no option where you can opt to work four days a week, or work part time.
You would think that at some point, and employer would come up with the idea of opening up some part time positions. There's got to be thousands of talented techies who've reached a point in their life where they don't want to work 50 hours a week. But such a role simply does not exist.
It's particularly odd since a lot of us make good money. IE, my Dentist probably works 20 hours a week, and I imagine the reason he works so little is because he isn't living paycheck to paycheck.