Standing firm on a 4 day week

I had a really excellent interview with a startup bank recently and was excited by what they were doing – but ultimately I ended up declining the opportunity and decided to walk away.

I made them a good perm offer with a generous reduction in earnings compared to my contract rate. But we couldn’t agree on a 4 day working week. My justification – I needed the 5th day to continue my counselling training and work experience in the local primary school.

But not really in any altruistic manner.

Simply, I felt the exposure and skills developed on that 5th day would help me better perform during the other 4 days in an Analyst / Developer role. I also learnt that I felt strongly enough the 5th day was a core channel for my own further professional development. I came to see that by conceding on a 4 day working week, they and I would overall be poorer for it.

I don’t necessarily believe they understood my motives for doing this, as a software engineer retraining to be a counsellor is a bit of an unusual thing to come across in potential employees.

Thanks anyway for your time Clear.Bank, it was a good initial experience and I felt fairly treated and welcomed. You also affirmed that my tech skills are now good enough to pass a decent technical interview (proving to me that my C# ASP.Net MVC SQL technical upskilling over the last 6 months has finally ‘come of age’).

Hopefully, we can still work together in the future, perhaps in some other way.