It is the norm to work fewer hours in many sectors, especially if you're a government worker, but in tech it hasn't been my experience (as an expat in NL). If you don't have kids it seems to be 40+ hrs or nothing and requesting anything below full time is "unfair to other colleagues" or "signals a lack of commitment".
Not sure where you work then. As a (dutch) freelancer I worked at at least 10 companies where without exception 32hrs was possible. Developer jobs though.
But at my internship long time ago, as a mechanical engineer, it was also possible.
I recently tried and got exactly this, wouldn't be fair for the others to have to work more to compensate for me, and they wanted some committed to working. I will keep trying, maybe is the moment to shame these companies back to see if they change their behaviour.
