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I work part time at an engineering firm. I would like to progress to Department Manager. I am part of the technical teams and manage projects now.

Since I work 4 days a week, sometimes it takes me longer to respond to emails and calls that are sent/made to me on my extra day off. I have the most experience on my team and feel I could be a good mentor to the department team members, but they are all full time salaried persons. They often work 45+ hours a week and I do about 32 hours a week.

Would they respect me if I was promoted to Department manager while working less than them? They all recognize me as a go to resource for project guidance and reviewing their work, but would that relationship change if I was managing them?

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    Can you add a country tag? I do observe differences between countries regarding the amount of hours you put (overtime or not) and the perception of the people - there is a large cultural component on this that's highly dependant on country Aug 15, 2019 at 7:29
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    This really depends on company culture. Some companies value people by their skills and output, others by the number of hours they sit at their desk. Top sharing (two part-time people sharing a management position) is a thing, but only in some companies. Would your relationship with your coworkers change if you are suddenly their boss? Certainly, but we don't know any of your coworkers, so we can't know if it would change to the worse or to the better.
    – Philipp
    Aug 15, 2019 at 7:41
  • Yes, one, but they work 5 days a week.
    – user107558
    Aug 15, 2019 at 11:03
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    My ex manager worked part-time, 4 days a week. This was in the UK. It is possible here and she was treated no differently to any other manager, workload was the same.
    – KippleKat
    Aug 15, 2019 at 12:29
  • @Clare Can you explain how the part time manager had the same workload if working less time?
    – user107558
    Aug 15, 2019 at 13:37

2 Answers 2

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My favorite saying is "Anything is possible if you have comfortable knee pads and determination".

It's not about how many hours you work, it's about what you do in those hours that matters. If your deliverables are solid and you continue to take on responsibilities. Your colleagues will only care about what you do, not how many hours you are there to do it.

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    What are the knee pads for?
    – Stun Brick
    Aug 19, 2019 at 8:39
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Take a look at other department managers in the company, and how they work.

Some kinds of management work requires lots of visibility and accessibility to support your team. It's not all babysitting the team, of course; a lot of it is representing them to other parts of the company.

Can you handle the various meetings in a manager's schedule part time? How important are all those meetings to your team's success? (Don't think about them as "stupid time-wasting meetings" when answering this question, but rather as necessary interactions with other people. If they are time-wasting, that's something you can take on once you get the manager job. )

If that's the expectation of managers in your workplace, you will need to make the case you can do the job part time.