I can feel the panic that the author describes as he runs out of the office. I can feel it in my chest. Before kids this would have been a story to read. With them, reading this is me falling apart at my desk.
My kid recently turned one. I can't read this article without weeping. Everyday when I back home, I regret not spending more time with my family. I love coding, by all means. But this article is a huge wake up call on where I want to strike the balance.
I took a step back in my career to work from home, and bring my kids to the kindergarten with my bike some days, and take a late lunch and eat their "dinner" with them, and it has been totally, totally worth-it.
Remote work being a set-back is possibly a side-effect of how I selected my new gig, but it has suited me so well, I don't care about the (temporary) career stagnation.
Same here. I think the work-life balance that remote work provides is understated in our society.
I get to be far more involved in my kids day-to-day, I know their teachers, friends, and generally what's happening in their lives.
I think of the alternative (what I grew up with, and what a lot of my friends with kids are still doing) and it's sad.
Barring the awful circumstances of the article (my heart goes out to the author) spending time with our children shouldn't be a chore to fit in.
Hug them, tell them how much they mean to you, that's important. Being present in their lives though, for the brief period that life affords us, that is essential.
Good job. But at least your job as a coder you can work anywhere. But some of us have the job that have less choice than another one. But that depend on our priority, our family, our career. our love one.
Similar story. Made a decision to set aside career path in favor of remote work, flexibility and autonomy (I have young kids) for this exact reason. I will never get this time back. I want as much of it as possible to be ours. These stories bring it home.
This post was both heartbreaking, heartwarming, and very emotional to read. Thank you to the author for sharing your story.
After working from home (and watch my kids grow) I had an opportunity to work to help finishing a big project that would make money.
It was just 3-4 month of hard work (including almost every week ends and some nights) and then back to normal hours when the project would be on track.
Well, as often, months turned to a year, then a year and a half, and no real end of the "hard" part in sight.
My son started ignoring me, my daughter waked up early to have a glimpse of me before I go.
I finaly ended it (mostly when the word Divorce was pronounced out loud) and fight to be a member of my family again. And work from home.
For now, this period was the biggest mistake of my near-half-a-century life, and until the kids can take themselves in charge, I won't move from home again.
Yeah, I've never had the experience that those project schedules ever turn out to be realistic. You get to the end and then there's just more stuff to do in less time. And now that you've put in all those hours everybody wonders why you're backing off from the project.
My experience is that "crunch time" never actually ends. It just becomes the new normal and expected over time. Its better to deliver under the maximum you are capable unfortunately. Think of it this way, is the company providing the maximum value they can to you?
Same here, except I quit completely to stay home with our two kids. The decision was easy. One day when I was working remotely from home, the nanny rushed in carrying my 6 month old daughter. She was completely unresponsive, having her first of many febrile seizures. Eyes rolled back, body limp. We called 911. By the time they arrived she had mostly recovered, crying, but could respond to us. I quit a few months later.
She's now 5 and her brother is 7. They grow out of febrile seizures and luckily she hasn't had one now for about 2 years. Overall she had about half a dozen.
Besides that, the reason I also it is because if one day, my child is a drug addict, asshole, school shooter, or any other "failure" of sorts. If someone asks me if I did everything I could to prevent it. My answer will be yes, I gave it my all.
It seems in the US when people say I want to provide for my children, they mean money. But more money doesn't really help your kids, it helps you. What kids really need is people to provide time.
As a Foreign Reader, it really pains me to read that there exists parents in other countries (maybe mostly USA?) that worry about whether their kid will one day become a School-Shooter. :(
Its only recently that we started to frown upon genocide. The atrocities committed in the Middle Ages aren't fresh enough. Mind you, its not "just the numbers". Here's a US example [1]. Or think about stories in the bible about the ill.
I think we need to care about our parent too. As they become old, we are just fly away from them and they will struggle in their stage as us. Damn life.
So much this. Personally feel this is one of the most deplorable "widely accepted" social phenomenon in the west.
I have an immigrant family on my street (know them and they are from China) that is three generations...every morning as I drive to work I pass the grandparents walking the children to the bus stop for school. Every day I think "why don't our parents live with us"? I've asked them but they've said no. They have their own home and lives and like their independence. Maybe that's true, but I wonder if they're actually lonely and don't want to impose. At the end of the day I just have to think this is a mutually non-beneficial setup for all involved (the US style of moving out "never to return" at 18).
I don't pretend to know why or say how to "fix" it but I believe we in the U.S. (and assuming at least some of the "west") took a wrong path somewhere when it comes to this.
Also constantly see in the media examples of college grads living and working from home, always in a "negative" economic-driven context. Maybe this is a trend that is changing (again in my opinion for the better).
I didn't even bring up nursing homes.
Edit: Constant ""'s are because I'm trying to be aware of over-generalize here...mainly speaking for "mainstream U.S. culture" which is always problematically reductive
It's a devil's bargain either way. If you can't move away from your parents, your career prospects & upward mobility can be severely hampered. If your parents move to follow you, they can cut short their own successful careers and sever deep social ties they have spent a lifetime building.
Most of this country was settled & built by people who left home to find their fortune.
My mother moved to a far-away, small town late in her career to improve her retirement finances. (It worked). Then one of my brothers moved to a new town for access to recreation opportunities. Surprisingly they have been living a short drive apart since then. But neither of them live near the friends they made in $BIGCITY where they were born, raised, and lived for a long time.
I agree with the idea of being able to start your career somewhere other than where your parents live. In the future maybe something will change about vocations/careers that will make location less relevant and this might help our family lives.
As I age and realize more and more we're all just making this stuff up I really come to appreciate what my parents have gone though and are probably currently going through. Knowing they are struggling the same as I am, they just has a head start, has made me realize that the relationship moves both ways and that we are in fact there for each other as we move through life.
I think those who like their parents do already. I think those who don't like their parents don't need to. It's the parents' job to be a person worth loving and caring for. It isn't the child's burden.
Exactly this. I have divorced parents who each remarried.
I have a mother who makes so much effort to make sure she stays in our lives. Calling/Facetiming every week at minimum. And she has visited at least once or twice a year the past five years. And we visit at least once a year if possible.
By contrast, I have a father who has literally done nothing to try to visit us in five years. It was always us making the effort, taking time and money away from ourselves, for them. And we got very little in return. We have been given very little respect by them despite showering them with undeserved respect. Every time we visit, it's like they're acting out their own Seinfeld episode -- literally worth nothing except waiting for the next opportune moment to be sarcastic "gotcha" asshats.
Some people would say, one shouldn't look for a return, that it should be all about giving. Those people must never have been burned in their lives. For me, reciprocation is the bedrock of a relationship. Any relationship. It doesn't have to always be equitable, but time and effort must be shown. Otherwise, I'm out.
I don't spend time with my parents because they are toxic assholes who are extremely mean to me and abused me growing up. I don't need shit that in my life.
Yet society thinks I'm the asshole for not wanting to subject myself to that?
The WaitButWhy post a few years back is incredibly compelling in helping one understand how little time with your parents you may have. For example, if you see them 10 days a year, and they're 70, you might have (10/days * 15 years).... 150 total days with your parents.
Link: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html
I moved away from home to study, then even farther for work. I usually see my family once every one or two years since I left during our summer gatherings. Couple of years ago I realised I will see them maybe 20 maybe 30 times if I am lucky, hopefully more.
This has been the hardest realisation of my life and I try really hard to be there for the 1-2 weeks I can see them and try to make the time we spent count.
Definitely, make sure there's just "time". Everyone I've spoken to who has a real quality relationship with their kids has reiterated quantity is better than "quality".
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that making it to the odd piano recital is the same as being there every day for dinner.
As the piece sadly reminds us, that calendar invite might be scheduled too late.
You become a manager of your kids, not a parent. The quantity time is when you’re there to emotionally engage with them. If you only show up during quality time, you’re teaching them that it’s only during big moments that life matters.
Remember that performative workaholism is poison to life. Every time you put in more hours over the weekend "just because", dial in to a meeting on your vacation, or get on Slack at 10 PM "just to check a few things" - you're shifting the culture to make it that much more acceptable to demand it of everyone. The parents in your meetings that run until 7:30 bitterly hate you.
It might seem OK when you're single, childless, etc. but once that time starts coming from your family you will realize what a prison you've built yourself.
I agree if you're talking strictly about salaried employees, because you don't get paid for that overtime work. But as a contract developer if I want to work 60 hours each week, instead of 40, to earn an extra 50% when I invoice them at the end of the month, that is my prerogative.
I'm a contractor. I've been working extra hours continuously for a few months. The money and flexibility are great. However, more than a few times my 6yr old (Whoa, he is 6 already?) has stumbled into my home office at 9:00 PM. I've been telling myself that this should stop. But I've been ploughing on. What if my contracts run out the end of the year? I need to upgrade my skills. So I'm traveling next week for a week long programming course.
I hear first hand accounts of L5 to L6 employees and first level managers working unbelievably hard. The pay off is probably "worth it" if they or their kid don't end up being "a statistic". To be in this place (CEO, Founder, AppMaGooSoft) the odds were always in their favor to begin with. So why would the odds be unfavorable going forward? As a result there will always be a group of employees willing to throw themselves head first into whatever "challenge" "management" throws down.
That is of course your choice, but if you do that for a long time, there's a chance of burning out, divorce, losing touch with friends and family etc. Money isn't everything.
'Money isn't everything' is kind of truism. Stories abound, however of divorce, losing touch with friends and family once a person faces money troubles. Note that I am not trying to justify any particular way. It is just things are going to happen irrespective of one's outlook towards money.
It definitely is - and if you're paid overtime it's fantastic because it gives the company a signal that yes, this is possible if they need it, but it doesn't come free.
I don't mean that it's bad to work hard, or long sometimes. But it MUST cause the employer some pain.
I'm talking about salary jobs where meetings scheduled to end at 6 routinely run past 6:30 (even though daycare closes at 6:30 too). Where you get non-actionable pages all the goddamn time because it doesn't cost the company anything. Where you say better integration tests should be a higher priority, but nah, it's all good we've got Datadog alarms set up so let's launch that bad boy! Where week-long work trips come with the assumption you'll fly on Sunday and Saturday with no time off in lieu, and people ask how they can reach you on vacation.
This also applies to new technologies and skill gaps. I'm over 30, and have stopped following the latest javascript trends. I want younger people to be satisfied with the tools that I learned; they're perfectly adequate.
The treadmill of re-inventing the technology wheel also looks like a prison.
The struggle with that is how do you step off the treadmill but stay relatively current. I think about how web pages looked 10 years ago, and in a world of React, I feel like very, very few of the things I learned then help me for more than the very, very basics.
The reality is that engineers with a strong foundation in the fundamentals can pretty much pick up any new technology. The details are different, but the underlying principles of software engineering, algorithms, data structure, distributed systems, etc. are the same.
I guarantee you that a talented kernel hacker, with a few weeks of reading the docs and writing some toy examples, would be just as productive in React as the front-end developer with years of experience.
I work in a pretty niche industry, where hiring people with specific experience in the tech stack is rare or impossible. So, I see this up-close and personal all the time. Fluid intelligence, an understanding of computer science fundamentals, and a demonstrated history of delivering results trumps specialized experience with the specific technology. Every. Single. Time.
Keeping this in mind relieves some of the anxiety of keeping on the treadmill. You might feel like if you don't start getting experience with Kubernetes or Typescript or Airflow that you'll be left behind. The reality is that if you're smart, then if/when you need Kubernetes/Typescript/Airflow, you'll be able to pick it up in a week or two.
I think some of the industry-wide problems with this come down to the fact that HR is too involved in the recruiting process. The typical job listing gets written by someone who's never written a line of code in their life. They just walk down to engineering, talk to the manager, hear something like "we're using Kotlin", then decide to add "5 years of Kotlin experience required".
> I work in a pretty niche industry, where hiring people with specific experience in the tech stack is rare or impossible. So, I see this up-close and personal all the time. Fluid intelligence, an understanding of computer science fundamentals, and a demonstrated history of delivering results trumps specialized experience with the specific technology. Every. Single. Time.
I think that actually helps you look for generic skills and generally good people - if you're guaranteed that your interviewee doesn't have the direct skills your position requires, you look for the generic stuff. I don't know if that translates to other places, who like you said don't need someone smart who can roll with things, but instead a very particular set of skills.
This isn't so much about React as that the expectations for web applications have skyrocketed in the last five years. Before 2012 or so you could call yourself a front end developer with good knowledge of html and CSS and little bit of javascript. If you were working in the industry back then and you're one of those people, you've had to teach yourself to be a proper software engineer in that relatively small amount of time. It's possible that the complexity growth curve has rounded off and over the next five years things will settle down and mature (fingers crossed).
Read and inwardly digest the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.
After that, whatever is next on the treadmill is just some new syntactic sugar on top of the fundamentals taught in that book, which you can pick up with a minimum of time and effort.
Occasionally there is something truly new, but those are few and far between.
Also, if you are seriously worried about your earning potential, read this and learn to really apply it, before picking up another Javascript framework:
> you're shifting the culture to make it that much more acceptable to demand it of everyone.
I would argue the cowards who refuse to ever stand up to employers are the cause. If you aren't able to push back on your boss, you're fucked regardless of how many hours I choose to work.
If everyone stood up maybe we could have some sort of organized labor...wait, that's the ticket, a union! (Seriously, I think that's more in line with what's needed, otherwise you become the squeaky wheel most likely to be replaced when belt tightening comes.)
There is a problem in thinking any one thing is "the cause". It's a multi-faceted problem of many self-reinforcing causes. The comment above talking about "shifting the culture to make it that much more acceptable" is a nod to the subtlety of what contributes to this.
All parties, employers and employees both, need to see how they do this.
> The comment above talking about "shifting the culture to make it that much more acceptable" is a nod to the subtlety of what contributes to this.
I see no "nod to subtlety" as you claim. All I see is a claim that one employee's overwork is what enables the boss to force you into overwork.
For this to happen one needs 1) routine culture of overwork, 2) and employer who leans into this fact, and 3) an inability or unwillingness to push-back.
If you solve for #3 you've made #1 and #2 irrelevant.
Calling for others to stop willingly work as much reminds me of an old film I'd seen as a kid wherein a new employee starts at a loading dock, and after his first highly performant day the old-timers come along and give him a talking to about his making them look bad.
You'll only look bad if your team and boss expect the "above and beyond" to become the new norm, and this isn't a rule. It is a result of shit conditions.
Just as expecting your coworkers to go above and beyond is bad, so is chiding them for willingly working harder than you.
I think you underestimate how easy it is for a CEO, manager, or even high-performing/high-status peer or IC to set the tone and give implicit instruction to others without ever intending to do it.
I have seen it in very mundane things that are not nearly of the magnitude of consequence of this topic. And also, in big things, such as expectations around working hours and standing up to unreasonable requirements.
Perhaps one aspect is that if a behavior is perceived to be a path to success in an organization, it will be emulated, rightly or wrongly, consciously or not. It's important to create an environment where many can thrive.
Maybe you can "push back" and get out of additional work. But when it's that time of year for raises or promotions, who do you think is going to be the first in line?
When has any production/productivity increase not become the new norm? Have you ever finished a 6 month job in 5 and been given 6 months again the next time. Everywhere I’ve worked if you finish a month early you just get 2 months less the next time because obviously you weren’t challenged enough
Let's be clear -- the biggest responsibility for change rests on those who have the most power. Those "cowards" may have no savings and could be fired at the drop of a hat.
But if what you mean is that employees have a choice between passively accepting the status quo or trying to act collectively to improve their conditions, then yes, I agree.
This is especially important if you're a visible technical leader; you serve as an example for what it takes to get there, so set an example that you can do so without regular overwork.
I love what I do, but I don't ever want to give people the impression or example that becoming a technical leader requires working 50+, 60+ hour weeks. I maintain a work/life balance, and I want people to see that you can maintain that balance at all levels.
> The parents in your meetings that run until 7:30 bitterly hate you.
It's just not true at all, and seems quite dramatic. A lot of people enjoy working on weekends or putting in long hours some days. When I was younger I would do it regularly, and I certainly don't begrudge or "hate" younger, childless colleagues who do that now, even if they involve me sometimes. Nor did I build myself a "prison". Stop demanding people live their lives how you want them to.
I come in on the weekends sometimes, because I'm bored or lonely or have work that needs to be done. I get paid for the privilege and I love my job, and it means I never have to stay past 5 during the week. Granted I work in academia where the norm is to stay till 8:00 and weekend work is necessitated by the projects we work on, but I personally don't have to. If I had a family things would be different though.
Strong second on this one. I don't have a family; that doesn't mean I don't value time outside work (and the relationships I get to build during that time) extremely highly.
100% agree that the habits to have a more balanced life starts when you're young, single and childless... working 24/7 doesn't just turn off because you have a kid, it takes time and practice to reprogram your life habits
What bothers me about this attitude is that it totally ignores the rewards for working hard for at least part of your life, and it also relies on the idea that everyone subscribe to the same theory, which makes those pushing it suspicious in their motivations.
"You shouldn't work hard because if you do, it makes me look bad and I don't want to look bad or work hard."
Some people have lives and the capacity optimized towards working many long hours. You can't tell us to stop, it's not fair.
The thing about "at least part of your life" in that equation is that there will always be fresh meat coming down the line "just doing your time".
Also, it's OK to work hard. Work your ass off if you like. Just try not to get shafted. If nothing else it would help if overtime rules were meaningful.
This seems like a classic case of you projecting your value system on your peers. The reality of the situation is that is that there are a ton of ways to live a fulfilling life. Not all of them require strong family values, and there isn't any legal pressure to adopt family values as far as I can tell. I would actually put the onus on you to learn to work with colleagues who value work over family. If you can't live harmoniously with your values and your employer, you should find another job.
It has had a profound impact on how I think about everything, but especially the time I spend with our now 1 year old.
I'd recomend everyone read it, and internalize that you only get 52 weekends in a year. You also only get a handful of each holiday with your kids. His words are better than mine, and I encourage everyone to take the 2 minutes needed to read the essay, then implement a life strategy that gets you home with your family more.
> And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was.
And yet if you had a handful of 8 loaves of bread, it would be a lot of bread, if you had 8 luxurious chocolate truffles it would be more than you want to eat in one go. If you had 8 shelves of books the quantity would still "seem limited". If you stepped outside and there were 8 cars on your driveway, that would be a lot of cars and a long driveway, if none of them started and you had to walk 8 miles to the train station, that would be a long walk, if you went to the dentist and needed 8 fillings that would be a lot of fillings, and if there was a creature as tall as 8 humans, that would be a long horse.
Just choosing that the units of measure are peanuts and books, is not enough to establish that 8 is a small quantity, objectively and unquestionably. Everything is relative, everything is viewed in comparison to something different. Peanuts compared to how filling they are, books compared to .. how much choice you feel you deserve, outside of reading time. 8 books is quite a lot of reading time.
If you decide that 8 Christmasses is a paucity of Christmas, where did that decision come from? Why is it not enough, and how many would be enough? (and is the answer an eternal "just one more"?) If you have $8 but you want to spend $10 then $8 is not much money. If you have $8 but you want things which are ten a penny, $8 is a lot of things.
If we can't control how much we have, but we can choose what we want, why do we so often choose to want more than we have, then feel annoyed at the disinterested universe for being so mean to us?
I don't have kids of my own but my SO's sister has twin boys, aged 5 months.
Reading this article was tough. What if one of her sons doesn't wake up one day? What if something happens to both of them?
She and her husband have busy careers, and while I won't share this article with them (it'll probably be a sore spot) I'm hoping that they'll make enough time for their kids.
If the author is reading this, I'm so sorry for your loss. I can't imagine the devastation you must have felt and must continue to feel.
It's important that you take care of yourself though. As someone who works in mental health, I've seen how these events sometimes have a way of affecting your mental state in a gradual and cascading manner. Please stay cognizant of you and your family's mental health in this difficult time.
I'm divorced, with one young boy that I split time with my ex. Were this to happen to me, I am really not sure a mental health professional could help.
This quote FTA may have just changed my life:
"I’m guessing you have 1:1 meetings on the books with a lot of people you work with. Do you have them regularly scheduled with your kids? If there’s any lesson to take away from this, it’s to remind others (and myself) not to miss out on the things that matter."
I was logging on here to call out that quote specifically. My kids are both in college now, and we're empty nesters for the first time as of a week ago.
My advice to all of you with young kids is to follow that advice. Schedule 1:1 time with each of your kids, and make it more important than your most important meeting at work.
I'm in tears reading this and his wife's account (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/all-remains-dr-jessica-brande...) - I didn't realize how short life was until I realized I only had 52 weeks with each of my one-year-old sons, and stories like this are a reminder about what's really important.
A friend said it well when I was feeling guilty I wasn't putting more time into my work, "No one has ever looked back on their life and said 'I wish I spent less time with my family'".
At some point your family is not so much the people you were born to or grew up with, but the people you've chosen to be with, build a live together... Also, if I had to guess, no one has ever looked back on their life and said 'I wish I had spent more time being deliberately obtuse on the Internet' either.
>At some point your family is not so much the people you were born to or grew up with, but the people you've chosen to be with, build a live together...
Point still holds though. Your "made" family (marriage, heck, even kids) might turn up not to be all that great either. Happens to millions...
>Also, if I had to guess, no one has ever looked back on their life and said 'I wish I had spent more time being deliberately obtuse on the Internet' either.
Those are people who die with regrets though, so perhaps not the best people to listen to what to do not to have regrets! Their "I should have actually done that instead" deathbed choice might be equally bad as the original choice they made...
I think they meant the people that become your real family. It doesn’t have to be marriage. It can be a select of friends where a strong bond has formed.
If we're talking about a wife and kids, or blood-is-thicker-than-water style friendships, or just people you dearly love, then I couldn't imagine somebody saying they wish they spent less time.
If we're talking about parents and siblings and relatives—the family you inherit at birth—then yeah, I can totally see where you're coming from. Same with the other less happy scenarios that I don't think are helpful to go into in a topic like this.
But essentially, family means different things to different people, especially when we're talking about it in the positive sense.
Which is also why I found the OP's article about his son really upsetting, because from that point of view, I've lost people I love and wished that I spent more time with them when I had the chance, or did more of what they wanted.
It makes the loss feel so much deeper when you start playing back history and noticing the times you weren't present... and now that you want to be present it's too late for them. All you can do is take that with you and make sure those loved one you still have can enjoy that from you.
Just a note for everyone who tends to go through the comments and weigh if they should actually go read the post (I'm guilty of this), go read the post. Even if you have nothing to relate this to, it's a great contrast to the majority of posts on this site. It's a breath of fresh, troubling air.
Many of us, especially younger folks with income anxiety and families see no other choice but to work slavishly at the expense of time with our families because we see avoiding starvation as more important than quality time. We could all be forgiven for this.
I've made it past that phase of my life, having missed the entire first year of my middle daughter's life, not being there properly for my family after the loss (cancer) of one of our daughters at 2 1/2. My oldest daughter (are you keeping count) who is 18, I barely know and am just now building a relationship with.
I have the luxury of not making that mistake with our youngest daughter (we're up to 4 girls now) who is now 5. I still remember giving up time at home so that I could ensure I kept my job and was investing in the skills to get the next raise.
Hindsight is 20/20 and you already know what I'm going to tell you. You'd be surprised how little of your stress about your current job translates to you keeping it, but that stress makes you grumpy or distant and difficult to feel love from. You'd be surprised how something as small as dinner together, tucking them in at night, or an unrushed breakfast, can take so little time but mean so much to you and to them, still leaving you with the time to advance your career on behalf of the ones you love.
Please spend those special moments, they're so few and they pass so quickly. Your family likely won't starve, and maybe even getting fired from a toxic environment will be the break you need to see what else the world has out there for you and your family.
"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
>The big question is how to return to work in a way that won’t leave me again with the regrets I have now. To be honest, I’ve considered not going back. But I believe in the words of Kahlil Gibran who said, “Work is love made visible.''
Imagine you just came into enough money that you never have to work again.
What would you work on, then?
What is something that you can do that no one else can?
What can you do to help make the world more harmonious?
How can you help humans, animals, plants, machines, and the planet as a whole?
I’d probably find some open source project to dedicate myself to. Maybe work towards sustainability in some shape or form, or at the very least invest in it. But it’s tough to ignore money.
>Wiley was obsessed with starting a business. One day it was a smoothie stand, the next it would be a gallery, then a VR headset company, then a ‘coder’, then a spaceship building company.
To me, this sounds like the father shouldn't be worried too much. Wiley loved the way his father was to the point of wanting to emulate him.
>Damn, could that kid dance.
The kid gave it all, like his father. Without such a role model, would he have been the same kid? Would he have had such a precious life?
Such a heart breaking story. For me it was taking a walk around the office and seeing a private plane take off from San Carlos airport, here its engine sputter, and then watching as it fell from the sky into the "lagoon" next to a hotel. Life ends. Really slammed home how a 'normal' day could suddenly be a really bad day, or your last day.
One of the unfortunate challenges of tech work is that as someone young and single you can spend all your time at work with your colleagues building really cool stuff and get the social fix and the financial rewards of lots of hard work. And if you get married and have kids, and suddenly the demands of the family keeps you from putting in the same amount of time at work, well you find yourself either explaining to your boss why you aren't getting as much done, or explaining to your spouse why you don't seem them as much as they would like. Can be tricky to navigate to a new normal.
Was it a twin airplane? I was doing flight training out of San Carlos around the time that happened and yeah, it was sobering. I haven’t flown since my daughter was born.
146 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadThanks for the article
Remote work being a set-back is possibly a side-effect of how I selected my new gig, but it has suited me so well, I don't care about the (temporary) career stagnation.
Beautiful story, I felt it hard.
I get to be far more involved in my kids day-to-day, I know their teachers, friends, and generally what's happening in their lives.
I think of the alternative (what I grew up with, and what a lot of my friends with kids are still doing) and it's sad.
Barring the awful circumstances of the article (my heart goes out to the author) spending time with our children shouldn't be a chore to fit in.
Hug them, tell them how much they mean to you, that's important. Being present in their lives though, for the brief period that life affords us, that is essential.
This post was both heartbreaking, heartwarming, and very emotional to read. Thank you to the author for sharing your story.
After working from home (and watch my kids grow) I had an opportunity to work to help finishing a big project that would make money.
It was just 3-4 month of hard work (including almost every week ends and some nights) and then back to normal hours when the project would be on track.
Well, as often, months turned to a year, then a year and a half, and no real end of the "hard" part in sight.
My son started ignoring me, my daughter waked up early to have a glimpse of me before I go.
I finaly ended it (mostly when the word Divorce was pronounced out loud) and fight to be a member of my family again. And work from home.
For now, this period was the biggest mistake of my near-half-a-century life, and until the kids can take themselves in charge, I won't move from home again.
She's now 5 and her brother is 7. They grow out of febrile seizures and luckily she hasn't had one now for about 2 years. Overall she had about half a dozen.
Besides that, the reason I also it is because if one day, my child is a drug addict, asshole, school shooter, or any other "failure" of sorts. If someone asks me if I did everything I could to prevent it. My answer will be yes, I gave it my all.
It seems in the US when people say I want to provide for my children, they mean money. But more money doesn't really help your kids, it helps you. What kids really need is people to provide time.
Sorry for the gallows humor...not sorry.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
I have an immigrant family on my street (know them and they are from China) that is three generations...every morning as I drive to work I pass the grandparents walking the children to the bus stop for school. Every day I think "why don't our parents live with us"? I've asked them but they've said no. They have their own home and lives and like their independence. Maybe that's true, but I wonder if they're actually lonely and don't want to impose. At the end of the day I just have to think this is a mutually non-beneficial setup for all involved (the US style of moving out "never to return" at 18).
I don't pretend to know why or say how to "fix" it but I believe we in the U.S. (and assuming at least some of the "west") took a wrong path somewhere when it comes to this.
Also constantly see in the media examples of college grads living and working from home, always in a "negative" economic-driven context. Maybe this is a trend that is changing (again in my opinion for the better).
I didn't even bring up nursing homes.
Edit: Constant ""'s are because I'm trying to be aware of over-generalize here...mainly speaking for "mainstream U.S. culture" which is always problematically reductive
Most of this country was settled & built by people who left home to find their fortune.
I agree with the idea of being able to start your career somewhere other than where your parents live. In the future maybe something will change about vocations/careers that will make location less relevant and this might help our family lives.
I have a mother who makes so much effort to make sure she stays in our lives. Calling/Facetiming every week at minimum. And she has visited at least once or twice a year the past five years. And we visit at least once a year if possible.
By contrast, I have a father who has literally done nothing to try to visit us in five years. It was always us making the effort, taking time and money away from ourselves, for them. And we got very little in return. We have been given very little respect by them despite showering them with undeserved respect. Every time we visit, it's like they're acting out their own Seinfeld episode -- literally worth nothing except waiting for the next opportune moment to be sarcastic "gotcha" asshats.
Some people would say, one shouldn't look for a return, that it should be all about giving. Those people must never have been burned in their lives. For me, reciprocation is the bedrock of a relationship. Any relationship. It doesn't have to always be equitable, but time and effort must be shown. Otherwise, I'm out.
I don't spend time with my parents because they are toxic assholes who are extremely mean to me and abused me growing up. I don't need shit that in my life.
Yet society thinks I'm the asshole for not wanting to subject myself to that?
https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/02/abusive-parents-wha...
Add on: https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html
This has been the hardest realisation of my life and I try really hard to be there for the 1-2 weeks I can see them and try to make the time we spent count.
"I’m guessing you have 1:1 meetings on the books with a lot of people you work with. Do you have them regularly scheduled with your kids?"
I am totally doing this, but more like 1:1 days.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that making it to the odd piano recital is the same as being there every day for dinner.
As the piece sadly reminds us, that calendar invite might be scheduled too late.
It might seem OK when you're single, childless, etc. but once that time starts coming from your family you will realize what a prison you've built yourself.
STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW.
I hear first hand accounts of L5 to L6 employees and first level managers working unbelievably hard. The pay off is probably "worth it" if they or their kid don't end up being "a statistic". To be in this place (CEO, Founder, AppMaGooSoft) the odds were always in their favor to begin with. So why would the odds be unfavorable going forward? As a result there will always be a group of employees willing to throw themselves head first into whatever "challenge" "management" throws down.
I don't mean that it's bad to work hard, or long sometimes. But it MUST cause the employer some pain.
I'm talking about salary jobs where meetings scheduled to end at 6 routinely run past 6:30 (even though daycare closes at 6:30 too). Where you get non-actionable pages all the goddamn time because it doesn't cost the company anything. Where you say better integration tests should be a higher priority, but nah, it's all good we've got Datadog alarms set up so let's launch that bad boy! Where week-long work trips come with the assumption you'll fly on Sunday and Saturday with no time off in lieu, and people ask how they can reach you on vacation.
The treadmill of re-inventing the technology wheel also looks like a prison.
I guarantee you that a talented kernel hacker, with a few weeks of reading the docs and writing some toy examples, would be just as productive in React as the front-end developer with years of experience.
I work in a pretty niche industry, where hiring people with specific experience in the tech stack is rare or impossible. So, I see this up-close and personal all the time. Fluid intelligence, an understanding of computer science fundamentals, and a demonstrated history of delivering results trumps specialized experience with the specific technology. Every. Single. Time.
Keeping this in mind relieves some of the anxiety of keeping on the treadmill. You might feel like if you don't start getting experience with Kubernetes or Typescript or Airflow that you'll be left behind. The reality is that if you're smart, then if/when you need Kubernetes/Typescript/Airflow, you'll be able to pick it up in a week or two.
I think some of the industry-wide problems with this come down to the fact that HR is too involved in the recruiting process. The typical job listing gets written by someone who's never written a line of code in their life. They just walk down to engineering, talk to the manager, hear something like "we're using Kotlin", then decide to add "5 years of Kotlin experience required".
I think that actually helps you look for generic skills and generally good people - if you're guaranteed that your interviewee doesn't have the direct skills your position requires, you look for the generic stuff. I don't know if that translates to other places, who like you said don't need someone smart who can roll with things, but instead a very particular set of skills.
I really hope so.
After that, whatever is next on the treadmill is just some new syntactic sugar on top of the fundamentals taught in that book, which you can pick up with a minimum of time and effort.
Occasionally there is something truly new, but those are few and far between.
Also, if you are seriously worried about your earning potential, read this and learn to really apply it, before picking up another Javascript framework:
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
I would argue the cowards who refuse to ever stand up to employers are the cause. If you aren't able to push back on your boss, you're fucked regardless of how many hours I choose to work.
There is a problem in thinking any one thing is "the cause". It's a multi-faceted problem of many self-reinforcing causes. The comment above talking about "shifting the culture to make it that much more acceptable" is a nod to the subtlety of what contributes to this.
All parties, employers and employees both, need to see how they do this.
I see no "nod to subtlety" as you claim. All I see is a claim that one employee's overwork is what enables the boss to force you into overwork.
For this to happen one needs 1) routine culture of overwork, 2) and employer who leans into this fact, and 3) an inability or unwillingness to push-back.
If you solve for #3 you've made #1 and #2 irrelevant.
Calling for others to stop willingly work as much reminds me of an old film I'd seen as a kid wherein a new employee starts at a loading dock, and after his first highly performant day the old-timers come along and give him a talking to about his making them look bad.
You'll only look bad if your team and boss expect the "above and beyond" to become the new norm, and this isn't a rule. It is a result of shit conditions.
Just as expecting your coworkers to go above and beyond is bad, so is chiding them for willingly working harder than you.
Your point is sound. It's also more ascerbic than it needs to be.
I have seen it in very mundane things that are not nearly of the magnitude of consequence of this topic. And also, in big things, such as expectations around working hours and standing up to unreasonable requirements.
Perhaps one aspect is that if a behavior is perceived to be a path to success in an organization, it will be emulated, rightly or wrongly, consciously or not. It's important to create an environment where many can thrive.
But if what you mean is that employees have a choice between passively accepting the status quo or trying to act collectively to improve their conditions, then yes, I agree.
I love what I do, but I don't ever want to give people the impression or example that becoming a technical leader requires working 50+, 60+ hour weeks. I maintain a work/life balance, and I want people to see that you can maintain that balance at all levels.
It's just not true at all, and seems quite dramatic. A lot of people enjoy working on weekends or putting in long hours some days. When I was younger I would do it regularly, and I certainly don't begrudge or "hate" younger, childless colleagues who do that now, even if they involve me sometimes. Nor did I build myself a "prison". Stop demanding people live their lives how you want them to.
Who are these people? Don't extrapolate your anecdote.
But there's nothing wrong with solo work that involves working late.
It's not OK even when you're single and childless as well. The fact that people think it is is revolting.
"You shouldn't work hard because if you do, it makes me look bad and I don't want to look bad or work hard."
Some people have lives and the capacity optimized towards working many long hours. You can't tell us to stop, it's not fair.
Also, it's OK to work hard. Work your ass off if you like. Just try not to get shafted. If nothing else it would help if overtime rules were meaningful.
Enjoy yourself while you’re still in the pink
The years go by as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself enjoy yourself its later than you think
It has had a profound impact on how I think about everything, but especially the time I spend with our now 1 year old.
I'd recomend everyone read it, and internalize that you only get 52 weekends in a year. You also only get a handful of each holiday with your kids. His words are better than mine, and I encourage everyone to take the 2 minutes needed to read the essay, then implement a life strategy that gets you home with your family more.
And yet if you had a handful of 8 loaves of bread, it would be a lot of bread, if you had 8 luxurious chocolate truffles it would be more than you want to eat in one go. If you had 8 shelves of books the quantity would still "seem limited". If you stepped outside and there were 8 cars on your driveway, that would be a lot of cars and a long driveway, if none of them started and you had to walk 8 miles to the train station, that would be a long walk, if you went to the dentist and needed 8 fillings that would be a lot of fillings, and if there was a creature as tall as 8 humans, that would be a long horse.
Just choosing that the units of measure are peanuts and books, is not enough to establish that 8 is a small quantity, objectively and unquestionably. Everything is relative, everything is viewed in comparison to something different. Peanuts compared to how filling they are, books compared to .. how much choice you feel you deserve, outside of reading time. 8 books is quite a lot of reading time.
If you decide that 8 Christmasses is a paucity of Christmas, where did that decision come from? Why is it not enough, and how many would be enough? (and is the answer an eternal "just one more"?) If you have $8 but you want to spend $10 then $8 is not much money. If you have $8 but you want things which are ten a penny, $8 is a lot of things.
If we can't control how much we have, but we can choose what we want, why do we so often choose to want more than we have, then feel annoyed at the disinterested universe for being so mean to us?
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
I hope you heal in time, and we're with you in your grief.
Reading this article was tough. What if one of her sons doesn't wake up one day? What if something happens to both of them?
She and her husband have busy careers, and while I won't share this article with them (it'll probably be a sore spot) I'm hoping that they'll make enough time for their kids.
It's important that you take care of yourself though. As someone who works in mental health, I've seen how these events sometimes have a way of affecting your mental state in a gradual and cascading manner. Please stay cognizant of you and your family's mental health in this difficult time.
This quote FTA may have just changed my life:
"I’m guessing you have 1:1 meetings on the books with a lot of people you work with. Do you have them regularly scheduled with your kids? If there’s any lesson to take away from this, it’s to remind others (and myself) not to miss out on the things that matter."
My advice to all of you with young kids is to follow that advice. Schedule 1:1 time with each of your kids, and make it more important than your most important meeting at work.
A friend said it well when I was feeling guilty I wasn't putting more time into my work, "No one has ever looked back on their life and said 'I wish I spent less time with my family'".
Not everyone has a family worth being with.
This is going on my tombstone lol.
Point still holds though. Your "made" family (marriage, heck, even kids) might turn up not to be all that great either. Happens to millions...
>Also, if I had to guess, no one has ever looked back on their life and said 'I wish I had spent more time being deliberately obtuse on the Internet' either.
Those are people who die with regrets though, so perhaps not the best people to listen to what to do not to have regrets! Their "I should have actually done that instead" deathbed choice might be equally bad as the original choice they made...
If we're talking about parents and siblings and relatives—the family you inherit at birth—then yeah, I can totally see where you're coming from. Same with the other less happy scenarios that I don't think are helpful to go into in a topic like this.
But essentially, family means different things to different people, especially when we're talking about it in the positive sense.
Which is also why I found the OP's article about his son really upsetting, because from that point of view, I've lost people I love and wished that I spent more time with them when I had the chance, or did more of what they wanted.
It makes the loss feel so much deeper when you start playing back history and noticing the times you weren't present... and now that you want to be present it's too late for them. All you can do is take that with you and make sure those loved one you still have can enjoy that from you.
I've made it past that phase of my life, having missed the entire first year of my middle daughter's life, not being there properly for my family after the loss (cancer) of one of our daughters at 2 1/2. My oldest daughter (are you keeping count) who is 18, I barely know and am just now building a relationship with.
I have the luxury of not making that mistake with our youngest daughter (we're up to 4 girls now) who is now 5. I still remember giving up time at home so that I could ensure I kept my job and was investing in the skills to get the next raise.
Hindsight is 20/20 and you already know what I'm going to tell you. You'd be surprised how little of your stress about your current job translates to you keeping it, but that stress makes you grumpy or distant and difficult to feel love from. You'd be surprised how something as small as dinner together, tucking them in at night, or an unrushed breakfast, can take so little time but mean so much to you and to them, still leaving you with the time to advance your career on behalf of the ones you love.
Please spend those special moments, they're so few and they pass so quickly. Your family likely won't starve, and maybe even getting fired from a toxic environment will be the break you need to see what else the world has out there for you and your family.
"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
Jeremiah 29:11
Imagine you just came into enough money that you never have to work again.
What would you work on, then?
What is something that you can do that no one else can?
What can you do to help make the world more harmonious?
How can you help humans, animals, plants, machines, and the planet as a whole?
Think about these questions, and then do that.
Ignore money.
To me, this sounds like the father shouldn't be worried too much. Wiley loved the way his father was to the point of wanting to emulate him.
>Damn, could that kid dance.
The kid gave it all, like his father. Without such a role model, would he have been the same kid? Would he have had such a precious life?
One of the unfortunate challenges of tech work is that as someone young and single you can spend all your time at work with your colleagues building really cool stuff and get the social fix and the financial rewards of lots of hard work. And if you get married and have kids, and suddenly the demands of the family keeps you from putting in the same amount of time at work, well you find yourself either explaining to your boss why you aren't getting as much done, or explaining to your spouse why you don't seem them as much as they would like. Can be tricky to navigate to a new normal.
This one: https://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/NTSB-Engine-failure-in-...