Slashdot Mirror
Parenting and a Career in Coding?
el topher asks: "After 5+ years of being married, my wife and I have been blessed by her becoming pregnant. I've professionally been a programmer for a while now and am now concerned that commercial software development is not a good job for a dad to have. Thinking back on all the software development groups I've been in, it seems most of the coders were not parents, and the coders that were parents seemed to have trouble with things like dealing with unplanned death marches and not being there for their family. So my question to the programmers with kids out there: How does a programming career jive with family life? I'd especially like to hear about parents who have been coding for a while and the situations in this area they've faced."
I used to work at startups and I currently work at the in-house development department for a major HMO (it's a big department, like 3500 people). The work itself hasn't changed a whole lot, but the expectations about hours certainly have -- at my current job, we're not relying on the next release to stay alive so there isn't a constant scramble to push product out the door. I've found, incidently, that this suits me much better than high-pressure 90 hour work weeks.
You might expect that sort of job to pay less, but it actually doesn't. Sure, I'm not going to become suddenly rich off stock options, but who does these days?
My advice would be to look for a job like mine -- someplace stable and with reasonable expectations when it comes to the hours you work. That's going to be someplace big and probably someplace in a industry where software/hardware isn't the big money-maker. Be sure they know your priorities; an interviewer at the sort of company you're looking for will respect a commitment to family. After all, these sorts of people are looking for *you* to be stable, too...
Aside from that: Kudos to the author for realizing that his kids are more important than the software release. Bringing home the bacon is important, but it ain't everything -- When I was with the startups, all of the parents just dumped their kids into daycare and with babysitters a week after they were born -- our sales VP probably spent a week total of waking time with his new daughter over the course of a year. Bet he felt really good about that when the place went under...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I'd think that a fairly structured, stable, relatively high-paying job is perfect for family life.
feel luckey you got a girl to have sex with you.... dont worry about the rest...
I'm not a parent myself (yet), but the company I'm working for has a lot of coders who are parents. It doesn't seem to cause too much trouble for them, as long as management is reasonable on estimates (which is usually the case).
I'll see if I can draw their attention to this article, though.
... for the first 3 years:, but then my kid learned vb and started writing windows security patches.
...than having an unemployed drunk for a father. At least when you come home, you'll probably hug your children and tell them you love them.
... get a programming job with the government! You'll have plenty of time to spend with your fam.
I work for a large healthcare organization, writing custom software for the needs they have. There are occasional deadlines, but the pace is much more relaxed than for a for-profit organization. The work is interesting and meaningful.
In fact, I took off before lunch today to attend my son's preschool graduation. To put it in geek terms, my current job is so good, I turned down an offer from Bioware making games for a living.
Is it me or is "Ask Slashdot" really "Help I fucked up my family/social life because I'm not suited to it and my hobby/job".
Simplest way to work out YOUR life if to LIVE YOUR LIFE. We're faceless user names on a geek website, not people who follow you twenty five hours a day noting every little thing you do.
--- [Insert intresting Sig here]
Just make sure you are programming cool stuff, like games, and your kid will be happy to have the betas. :)
Programming and families are quite compatible. Lots of folks work basic "9-to-5" jobs that have standard in and out times.
Sure there may well be crunch times, but they SHOULD be rare and not "normal".
It's all a matter of expectations by you, your employer and your family. Get them all set up straight up front.
Administrators typically have worse issues, because they tend to have to do things "off-hours".
Life is a series of choices, you have to choose your priorities.
I've been programming professionaly (i.e. not including school) for ten years now. My son is 5 and my daughter is 2.5, and I love them more than anything.
Sometimes I have to work late, but it's very infrequent. I go into work very early so that I can come home early and not miss evenings with them. Sometimes I telecommute so that I can take an hour and go to a program at one of my children's schools.
I do get called after hours and on weekends, but it's extremely rare.
If you've been working in a "slave labor" job where you constantly work late, on weekends, and have no free time, then see line one.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
My wife has been pregnant for 7 months (baby due in July) and my software project has been stalled for... 7 months. :)
Before you stand a wife, a baby, and a successful software project. Pick two.
This is 100% dead on and the thread can be closed now. My wife worked for Boeing and Lockheed Martin- and this was never a problem. I've been programming for about 3 years now, and the times I've been forced to put in a lot of hours have been few and far between.
I would think that changing employers would be easier than moving to a new profession.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I have 3 kids, and I'm 32. They take a lot of your time, but if you have basic planning skills, that is no problem at all. Just consider 16:00 - 20:00 to be a no-work zone. As long as you don't PLAN to do any work then, you'll be fine. However, if you plan to work all the time, then prepare to get frustrated. After 20:00, they sleep, and you can code since going out every evening is a big nono with kids at home (babysitters are damd expensive !)
If you can manage a wife for 5 years, you sure as hell can manage a kid : if you can not plan free time from work with your SO, then forget about kids.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Was i the only one thinking "el topher (Score:5, Married)" when reading this?
Other jobs I've had where the employer was not as family friendly made life quite a bit harder - like taking unpaid time off.
If you've been with your company for a while (and assuming it's in the States) you can take unpaid (or sick time) off via the family medical leave act (act?). There's nothing they can do about that.
SBC stands for Stupid Bell Company
AT&T stands for All Telephones Tapped
The two careers are completely compatible, you just need to set expectations ahead of time.
Tell your co-workers that you have a family and that they'll always come first. Let your boss know that you're willing to go the extra mile when you're needed, you're just counting on him/her to use really clear judgement about when to have you working late or weekends. You'd be surprised how reasonable someone can be if you actually talk about this with them.
Finally, offer to fill in occasional gaps by working at home. When I had my first kid and I started getting antsy, my boss suggested that I work from home occasional Fridays. It was a small thing, and I'm careful not to betray the trust inherent in it, but it definately helps.
Software development has occasional deathmarches, but it also has unprecedented flexibility other times of the year.
I would venture to say that the vast majority of the IS folks in my company have children. Let's just say that there is no shortage of Girl Scout Cookies, Candybars, etc. being sold at any given time to raise money for some child's extra-curricular activities.
I think that rather than worry about programming as a career, you need to look closely at the company for which you work. Find yourself a large bureaucratic organization where you can get yourself a cube and a steady 9-to-5 and you won't have much of a problem. Stay away from small development and software companies and move into some other field.
Not every programming job has to be so dramatic.
This disqualifies a certain sector of the development industry where the next release of X product will determine the ongoing fate of the company, and so everything else goes out the window as you try to meet some deadline.
Absent parents cause all sorts of problems -- kids with substance abuse issues, teen parents, low self-esteem... Trust me: I went to a private high school where a fair number of the kids were from rich up-and-coiming families, and a disproportionate number of them were burnouts or had serious problems.
No job and no amount of money is worth seeing your kids slide down the tubes. I'd rather be broke with well-adjusted successful kids than be a millionaire with my kid in rehab.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Thinking back on all the software development groups I've been in, it seems most of the coders were not parents, and the coders that were parents seemed to have trouble with things like dealing with unplanned death marches and not being there for their family.
Just because it's possible to have "unplanned death marches." in the software world doesn't meant that you should have too. In fact, if you do it'll probably mean that the software you write won't be adequately tested before it's deployed.
Anyway, you shouldn't have to stand for that crap. If you're team is slipping behind deadlines, it's the managers fault, not yours. Asking you to sacrifice your social/family life because of someone else's fuckups is ridiculous.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This worked really well for the first few years and I'm someone who actually gets more work done when working at home - I'm really pleased I got to spend that time with the kids whe nthey were really young ....
Then just don't do it.
Computers will advance. You might get carpal tunnel. Any of a million things could happen. If it comes to a question of family vs. job, take the family. What you gain will far outweigh what you lose. Or, think of it this way: a computer won't hug you tenderly the way a kid will.
Just write a UNIX compatible OS like Linus did. He's got 3 kids and handles it very well.
Believe me ... you spend a lot more time with your family than military servicemembers. Try doing IT for the Army and being involuntarily extended in Iraq continuously.
Family First.
If your employer can't handle your family obligations, then Family First says you get a new employer who can.
If you are on a project that suddenly requires a lot of work, but your child is sick, then Family First says you take care of your child first then do whatever you can to help out with the project second (if that means late nights, it means late nights, if it means burdening your coworkers then burden them).
Maybe I am fortunate, but I have always worked for companies and/or managers that understand the Family First rule, though that might be because all but one of them had kids, too (the only mgr I had who did not have kids was a complete jerk anyway, and he was soon fired for it).
...bring a family member into the home and keeping your current job / profession. Meaning, why not have "grandma" or "grandpa" come live or stay with you? Or maybe be a nanny during the daytime? I'm not saying to replace yourself with another family member, but anyway family influence is a positive one, and it may allow you to keep things the way they are now.
I coded in C/C++ for about 5 years. Learned some perl, php, and python too. More recently, I've been a sysadmin for 8+ years, but I still do a lot of coding... and some DBA work... and I consultant on the side cause my wife doesn't work and my salary, even almost 12 years of experience later makes for a decent life, but not the best one. Plus I've been laid off enough that consulting is my little "what if" plan. My first kid came about 2 years into my coding career. I have three now... ages 12, 10, and 3. When it all comes down to it... its all about time. I work Mon-Fri from 9am to 6pm. Mon, Wed, & Thur nights, I code and other stuff from 9pm to midnight. Tues and Fri, I don't do anything unless emergency requires that I do. Then on Saturday from 7am to noon, I work more. So I get my fulltime salary, another 10 to 15 hours of side work a week, but I get to have dinner with my family every night. I get every evening with them and most of the weekend. Having tried different combinations, this is the only schedule that allowed everything to happen without sacrificing something... either the boy's hockey game, or the wife, etc. Plus, being salaried, I can take a morning or afternoon off when the wife has to take a kid to the doctor or dentist. And with three weeks of vacation a year, I enjoy two weeks off and with the family, and one week I spend consulting full time for a nice little check that gets saved until November when we go Xmas shopping with it. For me its all about priorities and schedules and knowing when to turn the cell phone off and when to leave the PDA at home.
I am a father of 5 children and have been a programmer for nine years. All of my programming career I have worked at a University. The pay is not great but the benefits are awesome for a family man. I get 6 weeks off when the baby is born, 4 weeks vacation a year from day 1. Great Medical and Dental for your family. No overtime or beepers. So I have the time to devote to my family. They even gave me a below rate mortgage to purchase my house.
the hours.
If you can't be home on a regular basis (more than a few times a week, at at least one whole day free) at a reasonable time (in time for dinner or sooner) and be willing to spend quality time with your kid you need to find a new job or expect to not be much of an important part of your kid's life.
What job you're working doesn't matter. It's the hours you work. The hours you are home. And the ability to bond with your kid effectivly within the time you have.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I have a son of four years old and have been a coder/designer/architect for many years. The irregular hours that are typical of my coding phases are very difficult for me to fit in with family life. My wife is a great person but has no clue about the mind of a coder! And I cannot explain the habit of working 14 hours a day for three weeks and then working half days for the next three. I try to work at night when her and my son are asleep.
Changing where/how you work is very important.
You could also teach....
As a single father, I have been taking care of my daughter on my own for over 7 years now. I often think I could not take care of her by myself were it not for my job as a developer.
The biggest advantage has been in terms of salary, which has allowed me to afford private schools, material things and education which otherwise would have been hard to afford. I make more even than some of my friends in the banking industry, although their long term salary prospects are probably higher than my own.
The ability to work from home has been the second largest advantage. There have been days my daughter has been sick or on vacation where I could not physically be at work but have remained productive. Having a cable modem has made it so I am available to write code 24x7 and not be tied to a desk somewhere. Along with this goes the possibility of freelancing, which I have often had to do when the car breaks, an unexpected bill comes up, or when I just feel like taking a vacation.
The third biggest advantage is the social aspects of having a child. The relationships I have developed with other parents at my daughter's school have led to endless opportunities as a programmer, and I actually once got a job through another parent.
The bottom line is having a child is no shopstopper, even in terms of massive work schedules. I can work all day, go home and relax for four hours with the child until it is time for bed, then stay up and write code all night if I feel like. The fact is coding and parenting have many similarities - you are constantly issuing instructions and trying to find out why they are not producing the expected results.
M
I have two children. One 6 and one 2. I have seen no real difference in my life as a programmer with or without kids.
;)
I still go to work at the same time and come home at the same time. I work about 9 hours a day and then it's home to play with the kids.
Lately I have been on a hard project, but it's not required for me to stay and work extra hours. I have done it because if not, my boss would have been here for many more hours (2 can get the job done twice as fast).
But, I still make it to my oldest little league games at 5:30pm. Guarenteed, I'm there around 6pm, but I still make it. I have my weekends off to play with the kids also.
I guess it boils down to your job. Do you work a crap load of hours? If yes, then you will have issues. If no, than I doubt that your programming life will change.
Now, the personal projects that I work on have suffered because I don't have the free time like I used to have after work. I prefer to be playing with my boys than working on the computer anyway.
(1) make sure your boss is aware of what's going on (your child is sick so you won't be working until later in the day, you need to take your child to $random_activity, whatever). Oftentimes I think you will find that if your boss is aware of what your family issues are and how they are going to impact your time at work, he|she|it will be far more understanding;
(2) strive to work more efficiently when you are at work: don't screw around at the pop machine, skip the 10 minute hallway BS sessions that are part of company life, decide which meetings you really must attend and those that you can skip and ask someone else about later (this last one being a good idea whether you have a kid or not...)
Who decides what gets posted here anyways? This is silly...I've been a programmer for 20+ years and have 2 kids. Like *anything* you allow to dominate your time, programming will only shortchange your family if you allow it to. Asking a bunch of total strangers the answer to a common sense question seems a bit silly to me.
I have been working from home as a sysadmin/programmer for a small local company since my son was 6 weeks old. My wife works away from home full time, so I am the primary caregiver. I have strange hours. I usually do my coding/system updates from midnight to 8 am or so, then I watch and play with my son till by wife gets home at around 6 pm. During the day, while I am watching my son, I keep the phone open for any "emergency" situations that come up at the main office. I go to bed early around 8pm or so. I don't require more than 4 hours of sleep, so it works out good.
It's not easy, but it can be done. Plus, I am having the time of my life raising my son, who is now 15 months old. It is such a joy to watch him develop his own personality.
Best of luck to you. You will enjoy being a dad.
And when you're looking for a new job, make it clear that you have a family, and expect to have a family life.
Even when I was recently unemployed, when I interviewed, I specifically asked, "I have a family. Will I be able to have a life if I work here?"
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
2. Telecommute. My wife works for HP, and she hasn't been to the office in...ummmm... two months? She works her butt off, but she's home, and so it makes things a lot easier to juggle. I work at home as well (she took over half the "dining room" and I built a small room off the garage for my video editing / sound design / graphic design biz) so even though we're both home, we're not in each other's face all the time, and either or both of us can care for the Wee Child when she's not in school.
3. Get the kid into a Really Good Pre-K. This is important for a number of reasons - he or she will have lots of friends, will learn to read faster, and have better social skills. Oh- and you can get lots of work done from your home office without a 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 year old destroying things.
This is ALL true, and I speak from experience.
by the by: congrats on reproducing, and I welcome your child to this little green planet of clocks.
Now: do the sensible thing and get your yarbles snipped before you do it again. The world needs fewer people, not more. And a gradual reduction in population is what is indicated.
best,
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
It is a matter of priorities. Either your family or your job will come first. I realize there is a catch-22 there, but let me explain.
If you are willing to put your familiy first, seek after a programming job in a company that does not make "death marches" a regular occurance. It isn't hard to spot this kind of tendency in a corporate culture during a job interview. It usually comes out in the kinds of questions the interviewer asks anyway.
If a career comes first for you, then find the best paying job you can where you will be happy at. You don't have the prerequisite of needing to balance your time with family life.
Of course the best option is a combination of the two. Maybe you can find an employer who will let you work flexible hours, or from home, or whatever. In any event, the bottom line is that you need to find a job that is in line with your priorities with respect to career and family.
-- yawn. --
you think one kid will fuck up your life, wait till you have two or more. Stay what your doing...You'll adjust.
As a geek, don't name your kid el topher 2.0 or some Anime name. He/She will resent you.
In the early years it's gonna be tough, but once your kid is old enough to handle a keyboard, you can teach him/her to be an elite hacker, and then your kid will grow up making viruses you fix for a living. Ah, the circle of life ^_^
But as long as you can take your work home with you (don't know exatcly what you code?) you'll be able to keep your presence around and let your kid know daddy is there if he/she needs him. Coding is pretty tedious and your code won't dissapear on you, I'm sure you can fit in a few hugs without losing your place.
I rarely have to work more than an 8 hour shift. I telecommute when I have to work weekends, which isn't often. My biggest problem is telling myself to stop working and go home when I know the house is a mess and the kids are guaranteed to be tired and cranky.
A job that's bad for your family is going to be bad for you in the long run, anyway, so you should start looking around if you're pushed too hard. I'm working in finance and found the right niche. You can find one too if you look.
#pragma! I'm soooooo proud!
Karma whorin' since 1999
I've been programming for about 13 years now, the last three of them as a parent. This has been compounded by the fact that my wife is even less of a stay-at-home mom than I am a stay-at-home dad. The truth is that it's workable, if somewhat demanding. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Tagteam the kids. Take turns keeping them distracted while the other one gets stuff done. This gets much easier after they start to walk, although you REALLY have to childproof your home if you're going to get any programming done while they're keeping themselves busy.
2. If your boss would fire you over putting your family over your job, you need to find a different boss. As long as it isn't a continual parade of parental interruptions, most employers are entirely understanding when family life interrupts.
3. Encourage your employer to use a better management technique (for instance Scrum), which doesn't encourage forced death marches to make up for bad planning. Programming is a demanding field, but if your employer expects you to wreck your health over a deadline, then they're doing something wrong, not you.
4. Don't expect to be a perfect parent. Perfect parents don't really exist because parenting is always a tradeoff between overmanaging your children (in which case they don't learn) and letting them run too freely (in which case they get hurt). If you have ANYTHING to do besides parenting then you will have to juggle that priority in with that balancing act. If you don't have anything to do besides parenting, then it isn't likely that you'll have the perspective necessary to make healthy decisions.
On the other hand, programming trains you for parenting pretty well. The long sleepless nights, the time spent explaining very simple things to really stoopid people, and the ability to tune out the rest of the world all really help when dealing with children.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
I know couples who have been at the brink of divorce because the wife just wouldn't have one of my developers work on a Saturday or whatever. Some of it is selfishness, but you also have to understand what they're going through. And if they work... well, that's another bowl of fish.
She has to see that you do what you do so that she and the kid(s) can have a better life. Just don't disappear at nights because you went drinking with your buddies - and whatever else, MAKE SURE YOU MAKE IT UP TO HER AS SOON AS YOU CAN. After a particularly difficult project for example, take her on romantic dinners or a good vacation. Let her go out with her friends while you watch the kids instead of firing up the XBox. And so on.
Life is a balance, and you need to find yours (and hers).
if you can't handle it, Jus' give me a call and I'll take care of the wife for you.
I'm only partly facetious. I don't know if its a natural cycle, years of service, or whatnot, but management (even people formally coders and those who actually *did* work) is more often filled with family types who manage the work/life balance well.
Management isn't always the pointer-haired boss, but can just mean Tech Lead or Supervisor, where you aren't necessarily the frontline coder. Being the latter can be fun when single or childless, but can lead to unhappiness when you have to balance work and family.
In the end, remember one thing: your child is here for life, your job (usually) isn't. Prioritize from there.
I'm currently employed in a marketing company.... my bosses make me work insane hours and i don't get paid overtime...1250 a month i get .. then i have to spend 250 on the train.... go figure...
my point is... don't go work for some marketing company where your needed as "flexible"
since at the moment i'm being "flexible" and programming at 0:38 (GMT+1)
I regularly work at night, just after tucking the kids into bed. I simply head to the basement, connect through IPSec and RemoteDesktop and there I am....at my desk at work.
It sure beats the drive in, and the crap I get from the missus when I come home late.
This is what "Ask Slashdot" has been reduced to?
Since when did a programmer becoming a parent pose any greater a challenge than anyone else becoming a parent?
Newsflash for you, people: becoming a parent is challenging. It doesn't become more or less challenging based on your chosen career path, especially if you're not the one who's actually had the baby.
Regardless of what you do for a living, you're life becomes less care-free and less flexible because you have, shock, horror, new responsibilities. If you work in a bar that means you can't hang around with everyone else for hours after closing time because you have a family to look after. Similarly, if you're a coder you can't casually decide to wave your evening goodbye by staying on for another four hours to finish the portion of code that you were working on because there are other more personal demands for your attention.
Whether you work in a bar or code in an office the bottom line is the same: work isn't the be-all and end-all of life when you have little mouths to feed. Start working to live and not living to work.
Now, is there any chance that we could see some "Ask Slashdot" questions that aren't remotely stupid?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I subcontract for a company in the MD/DC area. I work for them 8-10 hours a day and I also do other work both for other clients and for my own company's projects.
I also spend a lot of time with my kids. Its all about *making the time* and setting limits. Your family should come first, no matter what indoctrination your current or future employer has given you.
Also, it is encumbent upon you to build in and plan for time that you can spend with your family. Most of the contractors/employees that I work with are married and have one or more kids, so there is nothing stopping you.
Just thought that might help, GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Well... It looks like there is a sufficient amount of favorable responses posted already. You can go ahead and let your spouse read the thread. And don't forget to start looking for a better job. It shouldn't be hard. My company has openings for 100's of positions in IS right now. As a matter of fact, we're having a hard time finding qualified individuals (they must have all moved to India or something).
So **WHY** are you asking Slashdot?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
...I worked for a company as a QA engineer breaking software, and many of our developers were family people. The easiest solution to being able to deal with family stuff was to work from home. They had offices in the home where they could work relatively undisturbed yet be there in an instant if something desperately needed their attention, and any "crash!" noise was usually loud enough to make it through anyway. Breaks to spend some time with the family every now and then worked out okay, so the kids got to see their father, but work still was able to be completed.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
My father used to commute 2-3 days out of the week, and work at home the remainder. Now, he works at home full time - the hope being that more time is available for my siblings and I.
:-))
However, I think this is *not* the way to go. Ever since Dad has been able to walk 20 feet to his office, he has left it later and later. My advice would be to leave your work as far away from your kids as is possible.
On a seperate note, you will do wonders for your childrens' egos if you "don't notice" them ARP sniffing on you... (Hi, Dad!
At least the war on the environment is going well
I know you asked for a parents perspective, but perhaps a childs might be appreciated as well.
My father is a software engineer. Has been for his whole career. I dont think it detracted from his being a good father. To be honest I dont think its the field you're in that matters as much as its how much time you spend with your family. My father was/is a great dad, and I think he would have been one no matter what field he had gone into. If you can spend time with your family then there's no problem. If you cant perhaps you should seek a job with better hours, perhaps in a different field. But this is not a problem with the computer industry, its simply a problem with having a job, any job. to sum up, its a question of time, not profession.
just my 2 cents (and pardon the rambling tone, I havent slept much last couple nights because of finals)
--Aaron
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
What, do you think coding is different than any other job? How about all those 18th century factory workers at Bolton's button-polishing plants who worked 12 hours a day (or more) and had families of 8? Get over yourself.
Here's how you do it: you go home at five. Every day, period. Wave goodbye to the boss, and say "well I'm off to see the kid". When they say "crunch time", say "see you". When they say "death march" , say "see you".
I told the boss I wasn't coming in till noon twice a week so I could have the kid mornings. Moan, whine, bitch... ok, see you at noon.
You will not lose your job. You will not lose your bonus. You might get a raise, and maybe even a promotion. If you're so insecure at your job that going home at 5 loses it for you, you lost it already.
Face it, you work long hours because you want to. Don't tell me different, I was there too. With a kid you just won't want to any more, so you won't. That's all there is to it.
Steve McConnell wrote about this in his book After the Gold Rush, in a chapter entitled "Orphans Preferred". He slams the heroic crunch coding style of programming and gives his ideas for a saner, more professional, development process.
So lemme guess - either your kids are old enough to sleep without waking up every half hour asking for mommy or daddy, or you just don't sleep at all. Or both.
The truth is, most coders and the like aren't very successful with the opposite sex.
Since I left my last full-time job in september of 2001, I've been working as a contract programmer. I've enjoyed steady demand from the same few clients, and that's obviously a nice thing. But I've made as much money as I would working full time, and worked more like 30 hours a week and done so with complete and utter flextime. The panic fire-fighting calls tend to come far less frequently than they did at my full time job, and at worst my clients tend to apologetically ask if I can finish something urgently - they don't demand it, or simply assume it, which is what happened at my last full time job.
So, before you do something radical like changing careers, think about leveraging what you know and changing HOW you do what you do. I'm sure your ability to pull this sort of thing off depends a lot on your ability to soak some short time financial risk, your skill at what you do and the demand there is for it.
It sucks being a coder and a Dad at the same time, so I am trying to move into management. The only problem is that I will have too much time on my hands and I have to learn golf now!
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Just keep telling yourself you can handle it. There are lots of trials in life, and having kids is a big one, even more so than getting married (you can always get divorced, but your kids are forever). I have a kid and i've been on call for probably 5 years straight now. The good thing about being on call is if you get called out to do something in the middle of the night, you can usually make up that time by sleeping the next day. just don't sleep as much and you get lots of time with your kids.
As a programmer, you'll probably have deadlines and stuff like that. just pace yourself and you should be able to finish your tasks. If you do not plan ahead, you will probably have lots of problems. Plan on the unexpected. Plan on taking at least one day a month off for no reason, other than spending time with your family. If you have to work from home on a saturday, it's worth it.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Parenting or not, programming for commercial software shouldn't be a career goal unless you've already hoarded enough cash during the doc-com years. The open-source movement is bound to succeed and I truely believe it. That is to say, openoffice will kill ms-office and eclips will kill jbuilder and etc. Programming is like painting: if you love it, do it;if you have a family to support, be prepared to be a hungry artist/programmer. The bottom line is I program for the fun not for the money.
Most coders have stopped participating in "unplanned death marches" by the time they are responsible enough to start a family.
The better to enjoy the familial unplanned death marches...
If management is smart enough to plan ahead at all, the marathon coding sessions will be rare and predictable. (Release on this date means that the week two weeks previous will be long hours, and the week before will be chaotic; but you know this two months in advance). If you don't know when your releases will be, management is clearly insane and likely to be ineffective.
As far as long hours, I'm firmly convinced that no good software design gets done while someone is at work. All of the major breakthroughs are made while you're asleep. The only reason to go to work is to type them in and tell people about them. Of course, you'll make some progress on things you're not working directly on, so a 90-hour week once in a while (generally at the last minute before the testing cycle) is good to clean out all the bright ideas you don't know you've had. But a 90-hour week severely cuts into the actually generation of insight, so it kills the next week or two of work (which may be okay, if your next week or two is mostly sitting around waiting for bug reports). If you're doing regular 90-hour weeks, you're working part time and have an extra fulltime job staring mindlessly at a computer.
I had an employee's wife get pregnant about a year into him working for me. At that point, he basically became useless. He no longer had the passion for the job he once had. He slacked off and spent half his time researching things and creating goofy personal home pages chronicling the development of his child. I think having children is one of those fundamental things in life that creates a paradigm shift in peoples' motivation. As a result, I would always prefer an employee that doesn't have children over one that does, especially in a case where the family is about to have their first baby. I guess it depends upon the industry you're in, but I do agree, programming takes quite a lot of concentration and commitment and I'm not of the belief that one can maintain a high level of productivity when other areas of their lives are radically changing. This isn't any indictment of the value of having a family; it's just my opinion based on my own experience, and it just seems to make a lot of sense. Certain types of jobs require high levels of commitment that often cut into other social and interpersonal worlds.
Leave work at work. Work hard and play hard is not just a saying for single people without kids.
I forgot to mention - my daughter was born in September of 2001, and so I did this working from home. My wife was full-time at home for nearly the first 18 months as well, not working. Now we both work, although her more by choice than by need; our daughter goes to Montessori preschool now, at 2.5, from 9-4 (2 of which is napping), and spends the rest with us.
Small other note: your kids will want to do as you do, so have a plan for introducing them to computers. If Daddy does it all day, they'll want to also.
Not all coding is huge amounts of overtime and odd hours. I work for a government contractor, make pretty decent money, and still have time to raise two kids on my own.
Granted, I haven't had a date in a year...
Unfortunately, I'm in the USA, so I'm still waiting for the new Sarah Bettens solo EP to arrive from proxis.be!
I also find Anouk strangely enjoyable, even though I would hate the American equivalent of her style. *shrug*
LOAD "SIG",8,1
I'm not a parent yet, but I think the principal I'm about to present applies to any and all careers. It's all about priorities. Don't become a work-aholic and everything should be fine. Work 40-45 hours a week, spend your free time with your family and try not to bring your work home with you. Don't spend weekends trying to make deadlines and stuff. If your career requires you to do a lot of work on your days off and such, find a new job. Family, IMO, is far more important than a paycheck. Don't sacrifice family for money. It is NEVER worth it.
What is your penile percentile?
The whole situation definitely depends upon YOU. If you can create a clear separation in you life between work and family, everything will probably be copacetic.
Although you will want to attend all of the birthday parties, school plays, and sports events you may not be able to attend them all. Choose your battles wisely.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Author C. Clark
I work at an 80 million dollar Independent Software Vendor called FrontRange Solutions. You might have heard of products that we make called HEAT and Goldmine.
Over the past 6 months, the company has gotten rid of over 30 employees in the Colorado Springs area. I think that we even made f*ckedcompany.com over these lay offs.
The majority of those long term salaried employees, many of which were married, were replaced in Silion Valley by single, male, green card holders or guys on work visas. These guys will all put in massive amount of hours just to stay in the USA.
We are sourcing most of our development work to the most expensive place on the planet and not a single person we have hired out there is married, and only one is female. Mostly because our new CEO, Mike McCloskey, is located there. That guy has some serious credibility issues.
It's this simple: LEAVE ON TIME.
You don't get overtime, do you? If your boss wants you to stay late, don't. If there isn't enough staff, make them hire more people. I mean, you can be flexible every now and again (like one saturday shift every two months or so), but don't give your boss / company extra free hours.
Look at the reverse: How likely is it for the company to say, "Hey, we've been on time all year, so here's a cheque for $1000. Enjoy!"
That'll never happen, so don't give them free cheques for $1000.
Leave on time on a regular basis or leave for good. It's that easy.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
In the modern market, there aren't many big, stable companies that hire large programming departments and yet don't give them mission-critical work.
There are some, but they are few, far between, and already full of talented programmers who aren't planning on leaving any time soon.
While the goal is great and I agree with it, the fact is that it is very, very difficult to find this sort of IT work, and you may be left looking for years (during which time you will need to deal with family issues, of course).
Part of the programmer's life is staying late and showing what a good boy you are. You let your company know that you are backing them by spending all hours working for them.
I realized a couple of years ago that I have to have a life of my own, completely independent of my company. Part of this realization came about because I was horrified how time was passing without me really learning anything new and stretching myself outside of the computing environment.
I signed up for three concurrent evening classes in non-computer related fields. My boss had the audacity to express his concern at this because I may not be available to work extra hours if necessary. I have deadlines but I don't work in a customer support type area so WTF? I explained my reasons for wanting to do evening classes and said that I intended to leave at 5pm every day. This I have stuck to.
I am still well respected (I hope!), I still work hard and I now have a life as well. I don't think that I do any less for my company, working longer hours is not always productive.
You have to stick to your guns, be polite but firm. You can also gain respect from being a stronger person.
Kevin
"It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in" O. Nash
...I have an infant daughter and I still get tons of work done, I just spend my evenings and weekends working at home when I can.
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I'm a professional programmer, have been for 4 years. I'm also a PhD student (Computer Science) and more recently (like 15 days ago) a father. I've found that everyone in the professional world seems stolid and inflexible until the baby actually arrives, and then they're happy for you and lenient and usually very nice. If they're not, there's one surefire cure, and that's to sic your post-partem wife who's just been through the pain of her life on them. Have her talk about how hard it was going through labor and pregnancy and how much of a help you've been through it all and how she looks forward to all of those NICE people at work being grateful to have any of your time at all.
Legally, of course, you have the right to 12 weeks of paternity leave (unpaid) with a guarantee of having your job back (unless the company goes under, of course) as signed into law by the Clinton Administration in 1996 -- the Family and Medical Leave Act. On top of that, managers are usually more than happy to let you telecommute (I'm lucky -- they have no choice about me, I live out of state) most of the time at first to give your wife and new baby some time and energy. Programming's the greatest telecommuting job ever, and if you're boss is against it on matter of principle, transfer or find a new job in programming.
I was married seven years, an in my mid-20s when my first daughter. Fifteen years later, I now have three daughters. And I've had mixed experience with jobs and kids.
The most important factor is: Do you work for people who have kids? If not, there will likely to be problems. People who do not have children do not understand the complexities involved; if the school calls with an emergency, a parent has no choice but to respond, even if they're in the middle of a meeting.
Finding a family-friendly employer is difficult; I know this from both personal and friends' experiences. It isn't just a matter of split loyalties -- although that certainly is a factor. Families require insurance and other benedfits; people with kids tend to catch more minor illnesses. Given a choice between a family man (or woman) and someone equally qualified and unattached, the latter often wins. Long ago, families were considered a sign of responsibility and maturity -- today, family is often seen as a burden.
Families are not the only subject of workplace rpejudice. Beyond the obvious "color" and gender issues, religion, hobbies, and even the kind of car you drive can be cause problems in getting hired or staying employed.
I've handled these problems by going solo; this also allows me to homeschool my daughters, and lets me wear shorts in the gawd-awful Florida heat. Not everyone has that luxury, and I'm grateful that my situation allows freedom.
All about me
The worst problem I have with our new infant is figuring out how to program it.
No matter what I try, it initiates functions apparently at random. (I suspect it may have a faulty timing crystal.)
Worse, it appears to have a both a defective interpreter and a memory leak. Most of what I tell it, it doesn't seem to parse correctly; and what it does parse correctly, it appears to forget almost immediately.
I'm thinking maybe it's time to call in a consultant...
Get a divorce! Never have kids! Kids are weird, and should not be created. I think people who want kids are freaks, and should be put to death.
I'm do free-lance web design to pay the bills while I'm in grad school. I don't have kids, but the neighbor kids have flunky parents and I'm basically like a second dad.
What I've found is that working from home actually makes it harder to deal with competing demands. When I was working in an office doing database development last summer, I would go there, work from 8 to 5 or 6, and then come home. The kids and I could play, watch a movie, go to the public pool, whatever. Now, because there's no clear line between work and being at home, it takes a lot more discipline to make sure I'm spending enough time with the kids, because when I work from home, I can shut the door my bedroom/computer room and work and work and work. It's great in its way, but I think if I had a family, it would be hell for them.
A few friends when I was in high school had moms and dads that did the home office thing when I was in high school, and I noticed the same thing. The kids hated their parents being around all the time, and at the same time, the parents didn't actually seem to spend that much quality time with their kids.
Perhaps other people have better experiences or thoughts on this.
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
Coding and parenting are just the same--make one mistake, and support it for the rest of your life.
Remain calm! All is well!
Staying married - especially with a child - while working at a shop that expects regular unpaid overtime as a matter of course is a real hard row to hoe. It really depends on your honest (and - hopefully - informed) appraisal of your wife's willingness to spend nearly all of her waking hours going it alone.
I think of personal ambition as a somewhat zero-sum game, and if you aspire to succeed as a husband and father, you're going to need to channel a good piece of your current career ambition towards the other two. If you set your overall career goal to do that which will help support your goals as husband and father, you will do well enough in business and perhaps still have a family twenty years down the line. Maximum bucks as a substitute for personal involvement in your family doesn't usually work.
My personal experience is a career in aerospace and DoD related work. The firms I've worked for are somewhat traditional, in that they expect 40 to 45 hour weeks, and infrequent crunch times. When the crunch does come, they really need it, you know it, and your spouse will understand. Almost everyone from the CEOs on down have family lives, and so have the subconscious expectation that everyone else does, too.
Luke, help me take this mask off
my wife and I decided to procreate while i was a DOD security admin. Because that job entailed about 75-100% travel, the physical restrictions on procreation had me re-evaluate my current employer and search for something that would allow me to be a bit more local. Luckily, I was established enough in the town we were living in that I was able to find a job that required zero travel, and from there, beautiful sophia was born on April 11th.
Because we chose a method of childbirth that required me to be my wife's sole coach during the entire birth, I was glad that my employer gave me the time and dedication to be there for her during the entire term.
Bottom line, don't let your career stand between you and your becoming a father. In the grand the scheme, nothing is more important. When all is said and done, the computer and the code may be gone or obsolete, but your son or daughter will still need you. As I type, little Sophie, now over a year old, is grooving to some reggae and "helping" me type. My little hax0r.
I've been professionally coding for ten years, and parenting for seven years. What I've found is that I simply do not work the outrageous hours. If they expect me to come in late, I'll find a day where Mom is taking the kids out, or the kids are just hanging out at home. Lately it's on days when Mom has visitation. And I'll come in extra on these days when needed, but it's according to my schedule. I've gotten some push-back on that, but I've found that if I ignore them, and do a lot of bad-ass coding while I'm there, that they don't fire me (lay me off, yes; fire, no).
My current boss maintains "A regular workday at is not eight hours, it's more like nine or ten hours." Right. And it's 5:40 on a Friday and how many people are here? I've also complained about Wednesday releases where 2/3 of our team are non-custodial parents who have the kids on Wednesdays, so we really can't stay Wednesday evening. (I don't wanna miss my time with the kids, and Mom makes plans/dates for when I'm taking the kids, so I can't just not pick them up.) In that case my boss responded, "Well, you know when releases are way in advance, so you can plan accordingly." I responded about how often our release dates changed, and he didn't respond. But again, I didn't get fired. I just leave on-time on the days where I have the kids.
I've also tried the whole work at home thing. It only works if someone else (i.e., Mom) is willing to be aggressive about keeping the kids from bugging me. Cuz the kids want to be close to me when I'm home, but I can't work with them in the room. It was also effective when we rented a house with a detached apartment, and that became my office.
Note that this works best when your spouse doesn't work outside the home. (I've said "Mom" above, but that's because my ex-SO is female, not because I'm making a discriminatory statement about how there aren't enough women programmers). I need someone watching the kids during the day so I can get work done, then when I get home I spend serious playtime with them. Especially when the kids are preschool. (But actually now that I think of it, it worked OK when Mom was working and the kids were in daycare. Except that we didn't spend as much time as the kids, and with Mom having a low-paying job, we ended up netting a loss of a couple hundred dollars over four months) Nowadays, Mom and I are divorced, and she watches them most of the time, so my visitation times are weekends and a weekday evening. That makes me more able to work late at other times, but makes my time with the kids sacrosanct.
Sometimes people fear that having a family and a programming job will get them divorced. I did get reprimanded once for taking three-hour lunches (oops) and subsequently laid off. But actually, my wife left me when I was unemployed for five months and about to run out of unemployment. She didn't leave while I was spending 40-50 hours a week working. Of course at that time I was also bringing home a lot of money for her to play with </spite>
So, basically, you can do it. And you will do it cuz you have to. And it'll work out and you'll find your particular way of balancing the kids, the job, and the wife.
Acronyms Obfuscate
We had our daughter while I was finishing up my PhD. If you can afford the pay cut, the flexibility of setting your own hours is a huge asset. Not many dads (or moms, for that matter) are lucky enough to spend as much time with their kids. Beyond that-- every minute you spend commuting is a minute less spent with your kids (not to mention the economical and environmental arguments against long commutes). Now that I'm done my degree, I live a five minute walk from my new workplace. I'm home for lunch every day, and in the door five minutes after I leave work. I also make a point of starting work earlier in the morning if I know I've got a lot to do, so I'm always home for dinner.
;-)
I guess the real question is how to balance your career and your kids. If you watch less TV, and avoid getting caught up in keeping up with the Joneses, you'll find that life can be incredibly rewarding when you put a little extra weight on spending time with the family. Obviously, job security, 401K's and putting food on the table are important, but if you can steer clear of the rat race, the intangible benefits far outweigh the tangibles.
The down-side as a parent is that you'll worry more that you won't have the money to ensure your child has access to the best possible education. But there's a simple solution to that.. move to Canada.
(Congratulations all the same. Having kids changes your life in ways that you'll never fully grasp.)
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
If you can deal with working full time plus full-time college, sure, go for it unless you've got a rational, family-oriented employer.
Otherwise, forget it. Family is more important than work, and if you can't give your child time, you shouldn't have one.
On the other hand: having a child is awesome. I love my son to death. You will find yourself making time for them (possibly by not sleeping). It might lead to burnout, but the child will energize your spirits at the same time.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
...outsource your parenting responsibilities.
I know three nannys here in the Seattle area. All of them work for Microsofties.
What do you realistically think the event horizon of your career is if you're writing code anymore? You're asking the wrong question if you're worried about death marches. The real question to ask is "How will I support my kid when my job has been moved to India?"
Dog is my co-pilot.
Dude, overtime is for losers
... I have no idea if any of my co-workers have children, and I don't really care. Why would it have any impact on your job?
We're all salaried and are able to take time off for quick emergencies, so other than that, what am I missing?
I'm 27 now, and dad since 2000 when I was 23.
;) you'll save a lot of time because many common things work out of the box without long compilations and so on.
In this years I started to optimize my time
in two main ways:
1) I never spend time in non-productive things,
that's I only try to learn new things, or to get
the work done. Less IRC, avoid any time hacking
with useless programs that need 3 hours of configuration and so on. Just hacking & work.
2) I sleep far less. I used to sleep 9 hours, now I'm ok with 6.5 or 7. In the weekend I tend to sleep a bit more.
3) Use Debian
4) Reduce the work time asking for more money, or otherwise avoid to get low-profile works that are not very good in terms of money/education.
So my point is, if you have less time, start to
focus on good quality hacking and work, and this will compensate for the extra hours you no longer have. If you used to sleep a lot, try to sleep less: after some time you will be ok even with 7 hours, and to be awake early is an interesting experience in spring.
i wasn't aware coders were allowed to reproduce! it gives me hope -- not the practical kind of hope, just the useless, abstract, pie in the sky kind.
My parents both work as computer contractors, my father mainly for a couple government agencies and my mother in the IT department of a major hard drive manufacturer. They'd both been in these jobs for quite a while when I was born. (I'm currently in college, so that was in the 1980's). They still hold the same jobs. Over all this time, they've always been there for me.
Being a contractor means that you're home more often and/or at different times than your spouse, which is really nice. On the other hand, my mother told me that when she was younger she put in the long hours all the time, but often she'd end up on the loosing side when that happened. She doesn't stay so late any more, and she's been one of the few people who survived the massive layoffs after the dot-com busts.
Of course, I'm not my parents, and I don't know what sort of toll these things have taken on them, but I do know that they were wonderful parents to me, even at times when we were having to deal with all sorts of external problems at once -- elderly relatives, cancer, managing all sorts of things which we were forced into managing, etc.
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
It mainly depends on how telecommuting-compatible you and your job are. If that works out for you, you're in luck. Nothing beats being paid for writing PHP code with one half of your brain, and watching TV with the family with another. (Effective multitasking takes some getting used to, but it's a great skill to learn.) Bring a laptop to your kids' soccer practice, put the kids to bed early, or have a babysitter for a part of the day, etc, and you can still put in those 12 hour days from home.
I'm in the same boat -- baby due in Nov.! I hate to alter the subject a little, but do any SysAdmins have advice along the same subject for SysAdmin fathers-to-be?
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
I've been coding for about 9 years and have an almost five year old daughter.
I made a conscious effort to ensure that when I was at work, I was there 8am-5pm and that when working I 110% focussed on the job at hand for the whole day.
Interestingly enough I have actually found that my productivity has gone up as a result. I can focus better, make better architecture decisions, solve problems more easily and the code I write as a result is better than anything I've done pulling much longer hours.
I work smarter now, not longer. As a result I can spend more time with my daughter, it's great.
1. I have decided to remain a contractor rather than opt for a full time job.
2. I am also working on a commercial application that will provide me with a second income stream. This will supplement when I have a contract, and provide a modest income for when I don't.
The point of these two decisions is to allow me to spend more time at home more often. Although writing my own product and doing contracts both make significant demands upon me, these demands are tempered by having periods of a few weeks at a time where I can spend time at home playing and teaching and supporting and all that good stuff. When not working a contract I also get to pick and choose my hours (within reason) with my own company's product development, thereby once again affording me more flexibility about when I can stay at home with my family.
It all comes down to having as much independence as possible. Independence for me has come at the cost of losing a guaranteed regular income (i.e. not have a permanent job), but as I have gotten older (I'm 35) money has become less and less important anyway. Quite frankly, I have come to really enjoy not working for "The Man" and I am much happier, if less well off, that I have ever been.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
I'm in a situation where there are 5 people in the company, one secretary, two owners, and two coders. You'd think that would be high pressure, and it is at times. However, my bosses are family oriented, employee oriented, and one I would actually consider my friend.
That means that even though I'm going through a divorce, I can take care of my 3yr old daughter during the day, and work (from home 100%) at night/weekends to get things done.
Of course, that means that I also put up with being told not to cash my paycheck for a week every so often, but that's a small price to pay for a family-oriented boss who is supportive in a time of great non-work-related stress.
And it's good for my daughter too. And for that I'm truly thankful.
Bottom line, it's the boss's attitude that's important. And whether you can produce in a non-standard working arrangement.
If employees are willing to put in the hours, the company doesn't value the time anyway. If they cared about their employees, they wouldn't put such demands on them.
When I worked for a start-up, I was willing to put in extra hours as needed, but it was generally only needed to compensate for the gross mis-management of the company.
For example, we were developing a set-top video device, and there was only 1 test-model for the whole company. At one point, I needed to test some code on a wednesday morning, and my boss literally had me sit and watch for a chance to test it until friday evening. I wanted to do other work, but he explicitly said I was supposed to sit there and wait. On friday afternoon, he "authorized" me to come in on the weekend to do it, and acted like he was doing me a huge favour by letting me go in for no extra pay. Of course, I refused, but it also meant I was first on the chopping block when the company downsized a few months later.
When I was there, a typical work week was 70-80 hours (these people could have had a higher hourly wage at McDonalds), after the downsize, I kept in touch with some people there and it was closer to 100. 100 hours a week at a $50k/year (canadian) job; it's insane. It comes out to $10/hour for an exhausting an emotionally destructive job. Obviously these people have no life at all; the only people bringing dates/spouses to the christmas party was senior management.
The attitude I try to take is this: the work will be there tomorrow. If you get complaints about how trouble tickets are not cleared fast enough, make your case that there is not enough of you to go around. Set an expectation about the hours you are willing to work. If a critical system is offline, make an exception, but if there is a problem that inconveniences one person, let 'em wait. I do not yet have a family but I have found brandishing an imaginary one wards off panhandlers in the streets of San Francisco like a charm, as in "I've got my own family to take care of". Think of the people you support like they were panhandlers - at least when they make unreasonable requests!
Don't worry so much - you have 9 months before you're a parent, and your job will be outsourced by then. Make sure your wife has opportunities lined up for after she gives birth, so you can take care of your child while she brings home the money.
If you have these, then I would change jobs....Death March coding is stupid. If it's you who get yourself into those, start doing your job instead of posting on fscking Slashdot when you should be coding. If it's not you but the company doing this, leave. Companies shoudl NEVER ask you too many times to do out of the ordinary things. If they do, then get out.
Gorkman
So lemme guess - either your kids are old enough to sleep without waking up every half hour asking for mommy or daddy, or you just don't sleep at all. Or both.
That doesn't have to be that old... mine was sleeping 6-8 hours a night from about three months old on. Nowadays, now that he's not taking naps, he sleeps 11-12 hours straight. My husband and I alternate on putting-to-bed duty, so at 8 or 8:30 I get to take off my Mommy hat and put on my Perl coder hat.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
If your job is mostly programming, you can mostly work from anywhere. Just come in when they need you. Demand it.
I'm a Freelancer and do my coding at home. That has it's advantages. One of them being that I'm there often and that I can turn away from the machine as soon as my daughter wants something from me and it will wait and wont be insulted,
I can turn my attention to her imidiately. You should take that advantage too.
The only problem I see with coding is that your doing something a three year old can't imitate. Be shure to be doing practical stuff aswell when your child is around. Be it housework, gardening or fixing things. Large portions of the brain only develope properly if children have a larger variety of manual tasks they can observe and 'ape' in the first 3 years. I believe this is also one of the reasons that so many programmers children are autistic.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I'm glad you're thinking about this now, and it's so good to see everyone on the 'family first' train.
My husband and I have two kids, and we both work for the same small software company (he's a programmer, I'm a tester.) I guess we got lucky, because it's a very family-friendly environment. *Most* of us have kids. The degree to which the engineers put the kids above the code varies from person to person, but it's not the company that's forcing us to make those choices. In fact we have a very lenient paid-time-off policy that allows us to go be parents with impunity, and not have things like sick kids and kindergarten graduations eat into our vacation and sick time. Those hours are assumed to be absorbed in the extra hour put in here and there. The kids are even welcome in the office when necessary, and our 10-year-old has spend more than a few hours here playing Neopets in our training room and playing with the other employees' kids.
My husband and I both leave on time every day, give or take half an hour, and when things do come up the IT department supports working from home via VPN.
So my point is... the posters above are right, IMO, and it's about where you do the job, not the job that you do. Find a company that supports your priorities, and then in return give them the best you've got during the hours that they have you.
I should add this, however: I don't expect anything in the way of promotion here if I'm not willing/able to go 'above and beyond the call of duty.' The ability to compete and 'climb the ladder' is something that we have sacrificed by setting our priorities the way that we have. As the kids get older, and we're able to put in more time, perhaps career ambitions will become a concern. But for now, our jobs are safe, we do them well, and we don't have to miss this time with our kids. Others may argue with this, but for me it's been a personal trade: family for ambition.
Final note: Those sleepless nights with a new baby can do interesting things to you. My husband woke up to the baby crying in the middle of the night, and in that half-asleep, still-kind-of-dreaming state, he stared at her for a few minutes trying to debug her...
Congratulations!
Reading the posts, I agree with those saying that the startup environment is (probably) the worst place to try and have a "real life" (with kids or not), and more stable, professional organizations are going to be a bit more family-friendly.
:-) Before getting married and having kids I stayed at work, worked at home, worked weekends, because I felt like I "had to," and because I really had nothing else to do.
Personally, I've found that being married and then having kids has given me a much stronger reason NOT to work deadthmarch hours, to practice better at-work time management (Slashdot time notwithstanding
With kids, my priorities have shifted -- work is important, and at work, it's my top priority. But I come in at a regular time, and leave at a regular time. I'm available for emergencies, and have worked occasional evenings and weekends, but I'm still making the soccer games, school fairs, PTA meetings, and dad time.
I'm in an department with a lot of single coders, and being relatively young with children probably puts me at the "oddity" end of the scale, but if anything, the kids have helped me get balance, get organized, and helped me keep track of what *really* matters in life.
Easy. Become a manager. Then you won't really have to work.
I think programming is the best job for parenting (as long as you have a good employer).
::) ).
.. miss the flextime days with little responsibility besides my work.. I also hate working at home.. work and family don't mix. But I've found a balance here now too..
Eight years ago when my kid was born, I would schedule my job around my life instead of the other way around. Worked great. Once went to work from midnight to 8am. No prob.
I NEVER EVER EVER work weekends tho.. Don't care if there is a deathmarch.
Other days no prob putting in 12 hours.
Since I don't believe in day care the deal I had with my wife was: she gets the mornings to go to college (she was studying at the time) while I stay and take care of our baby (who thankfully didn't get up till 9 or 10am.. we trained her). I head to work at noon (I'm not a morning person anyway).
I spent noon to 5pm talking, and going to meetings.. I did the real work from 5pm to 12 or sometimes 2am (ok.. sometimes I'd get carried away and get home just in time at 7am to get my wife late to school!!
Worked great!
Since then, my kid started school (mornings free!!), and I've moved to South America (that's another story).. I work freelance and teach.. I hate it
just secretly outsource your job to India, but show up the 8 hours (but no more) anyhow.
Table-ized A.I.
I must admit I'm surprised by this post. I've been a parent for 6 years now (my girls are 4 and 6) and have worked at three different companies over the last decade -- and I have to say that I think this is one of the most family-friendly jobs I know of. Working at a large and stable company, your hours will be 9-5 most of the time. I don't have to work nights or weekends (unlike e.g. if I drove a bus, waited tables, etc.) and I don't have to be in the same spot at the same time each day (e.g. teaching). My programming deadlines are measured in weeks or months, not hours & when I need to take time off for my kids (or elderly mother) it's no big deal.
I think maybe the problems described are those of working for a startup, or high-pressure job -- not, in my experience at least, having anything to do with software itself. Find yourself a job at a big place like Motorola, Intel, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, etc. ... I've known lots of
coder parents & have had nothing but
family-friendly bosses.
One of my direct managers, at NeXT Software Inc, was pregnant with I believe third child, was one hell of a developer/support consultant, in professional services, and at least at NeXT and then Apple both companies were quite respectful of families and definitely Lynn was highly valued for her skills and professionalism.
If companies are still asking for 12 hour days, 6 days a week they will soon no longer exist. Family should be more important and encouraged by companies who want to instill loyalty in its staff.
>
> Then just don't do it.
What he said.
To the original poster: isn't now a little fucking late to be asking Slashdot about it?
I mean, let's put the article poster's question:
Suppose you've spent the past 5 months doing some work on a stable codebase of boring-ass procedural C code that talks to a Sybase back end, and wraps it in a GUI on Win9x. You're almost done -- the project's feature-complete, QA's been pretty good, and the release date is 1 month away.
Suppose further that your project manager comes in one day and said "Dude! Remember that salesweasel from Sun? And his friend from IBM/Rational? And the .NET guy? And the guy who's best friend's brother once sat in Larry Ellison's chair? Well, guess what! We just signed with them - the whole application is going to be done in Java, using the latest in OO and UML techniques, and it's gonna use .NET, so it can talk to an Oracle database! Did I mention we need it to run on XP, Linux, and OS X, too! We've just signed the check for $1.8M, which is 100% of our IT budget for the next 18 months, so there's no turning back."
Now suppose further that after telling you this, your project manager asks you something like:
I'm not the original poster. But I confess that "Dude, it's a little fucking late to be asking me, isn't it?" would at least flicker across my consciousness... :)
...how did you take a career in software development and become a parent?
Find a job that allows you to be productive telecommuting.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
MOM!?
/. ??
Since when do you
::whimper::
Error 407 - No creative sig found
You gotta lead the guy, show him there's an end at the end of the tunnel, give him what to do and track the progress. Most important of all, show him that you DO care about his family and his newborn and are willing to sometimes forgive him taking off in the middle of the day for a family emergency.
Instead you've chosen to convince yourself the guy "was useless" and no doubt pointed this out to him numerous times. That's what I can being an asshole, and no one likes to work for assholes.
Believe it or not, most people have children sooner or later. And by ignoring the people who are 25-35 years old (which is what you do), you're ignoring the creme of the crop of what you can find on the market in terms of experience, passion and skill.
Congrats on the kid.
In virtually every profession where the work isn't measured in hours, but instead by results, this is a huge issue. They often do not go home at shift change everyday. Some days they have to finish the job because its important that they complete a task.
Working by results has the advantage in that some days, you finish early or can work at a nice slow pace. Other days, you must work like dog. If you're having too many days where you work like a dog, a mistake has been made. Maybe you mis-estimated, maybe your boss did. Maybe another team delayed you. Maybe the workload is just too high. In any of these cases, there is a problem that the company's managment needs to address. If you're willing to participate in regular Death Marches...I feel your pain, but I know its a death spiral. Such a lack of planning and proper resource allocation over an extended period indicates seriously flawed leadership. A Death March is only acceptable in times of extreme growth and should be rewarded significantly. Supply and Demand. If they need that much work done...they need to pay for it.
It basicly boils down to time management. If you can manage resources in a machine...as we coders always do...you can figure out how to plan a day that gives you time for work, time for family, time for play and time for sleep.
the toughest thing i've found is keeping current and reading. i've found that i have to be much more descriminating in what i pursue. i try really hard to think much more strategically and study only things that i know will put $ in my pocket. the downside is that it's almost impossible to be on the bleeding edge - but this is from a pretty conservative person...
Being a parent IS a full-time job. Especially in the first year (my kid is 14 months old, so I dont know yet if it'll ever get better) :)
:)
First of all: being this a very mind-intensive job, we work a lot better if we get proper sleep. In my case, that was the first thing to go. Not all kids are the same though, so you might be luckier than me.
Second, forget about late night coding. No more hacking new technology till 6am. No sir. You'll be too tired.
Third: Productivity will make a steep curve. But dont worry, you'll get back to a "decent" degree in a few months.
Parenting is also a team work. If your wife is understanding and has a quieter life than you, she might ease yours a lot. If that's not the case, YOU will have to understand and share the burden with her.
I was always the type of kid that hears mom calling for hours before leaving the computer and sit for dinner. This is typical among hackers AFAIK. We get in a trance and is hard to snap out of it. And we're lazy too. Of course, that had to change. When you're a parent you have to snap out of it and do the daddy-man. It gets hard to get back to the bug you were fixing. Oh well, life is hard then you die.
You'll eventually look like a normal person, because you'll have to behave like one. That is IMO the turning point, you will never be a obcessed hacker again. There will be other priorities.
But phear not. It's not all that bad
The price was far higher than I thought, but it was worth every single minute.
I'm still learning, and every child is different, so dont take my word for it. Your experience will probably be a lot different.
A friend and I started our own company doing control and automation programing for local plants. That was 5 years and 3 and a half(one on the way) kids ago, all is well and I make plenty of time for my family. Sleep on the other hand... well it's for Pu**ies anyway right.
-- Note to liberals, yes please flee to Canada.
Mr. AC, it has come to my attention the YOU FAIL IT. This is not acceptable behavior.
A good development team will operate in peaks and valleys. Ideally, there should be times where you are very busy followed by periods of much less activity. If you have management that understands this cycle, a programming job can actually be quite beneficial to having a family. Your family will (hopefully) enjoy seeing you much more during your less active periods.
If you're not operating like this, it means (like mentioned above) that you have a management problem of some form. Either you are understaffed , have team members not pulling their weight (management's responsibility to deal with this), or have unrealistic deadlines. This will cause you to always operate in "crunch mode." It is absolutely not tolerable. If you're in a position like this, you are being set up to fail and I would recommend leaving. I'd rather flip burgers or drive pizzas around than deal with that BS. It's simply not worth it.
as the proud parent of a cat, a dog, a snake, 2 rats and a sugar glider, w/ a PITA old lady who lives w/ me, and being a systems administrator/programmer/architect, I can kind of feel your pain.
;) ).
My job is very catch-all, high-stress : manage a very large ( > 4000 CPU ) cluster, do design, research, programming, etc., bearing a 10-person workload w/ 3 seniors and 2 very junior juniors.
Shit, this afternoon my boss, who knows everyone in the group is burnt out, had the balls to ask me if something for a non-production system would be ready by Monday, WTF?!?
Anyways, then I have to come home, cook dinner, feed and play w/ 6 animals, and help out w/ some of the cleaning up and whatnot. While oftentimes doing extra work from home.
The only thing that makes it worth it is the thrill of doing some kick-ass hack at work, or coming home and playing w/ all of my loving animals ( I guess I can lump the old lady in there when she's not bitching
Anyways, back to the point : how do you juggle all of these, stay sane, and take care of it all?
Drinking, my friend. Heavy fucking drinking.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
(the only mgr I had who did not have kids was a complete jerk anyway, and he was soon fired for it).
:)
He was fired for not having kids?
Geez. You work with some sick people.
Come on people! Do you know how stupid you sound when you can't use a word correctly? Let's get this sorted out once and for all:
jive - To cajole or mislead.
jibe - To be in accord; agree: Your figures jibe with mine.
I and my ears both thank you...
That is all.
I worked from home for the first two years of my daughter's life. My wife and I both consulted for the same financial company, were paid quite well, and had enormous flexibility about when we worked. I programmed many times at 3am with a baby in my lap.
It also helped that our boss was a woman with kids. As mentioned by other posters, where you work is more important than what you do when it comes to work/life balance.
I've been working at home for the last 3.5 years starting shortly after my daughter was born (I now have a son as well). Though I miss aspects of the office environment, I love being close to the kids and seeing them more than many Dads get to. I does mean I spread my time out over the day a lot more, however, and it can be stressful to get the work actually done.
But, the only reason this works is because I'm a programmer with a lot of flexibility in what I do, very few on-this-hour deadlines and one of the best bosses ever. It's hard to find a boss that lets you put family first at all times, but there are some like that out there. And if you find one, hang on to them and don't let them down! That's the tricky part. Flexibility is only granted to those that have shown the ability to handle it well. I try to get everything I'm asked to do done on time if not earlier, and with exceptional quality. IE, the more you preform efficiently the better you'll be able to get the flexibility you need.
Effeciency is by far the most important benchmark in my mind. If you are not efficient, you won't do a good job. Concentrate on what you need to get done and try to eliminate as much waste and you'll be amazed how much you can get accomplished.
Now, having said all that, do put up a gate between you and the child(ren) and teach them early to understand what "working" means. But at least you can step back over that gate frequently.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
Dude, you just touched a nerve with that "discrimination" concept. I grok where you're coming from -- but please understand that the "discrimination" feeling cuts both ways.
It doesn't matter whether a team is pulling 80-hour weeks or 40-hour weeks: If Paul Parenthood starts leaving work undone so he can be with Paul Jr., you just suggested that Joe stack the workplace deck with kids who can also leave work unfinished, all for the noble purpose of enabling management to shovel all the work down on those of us who don't have kids. Nice to have you out of the closet.
I realize that's not what you meant, and it's certainly not what you (or Paul Parenthood) intends, but it's what happens.
The common line (usually from a manager with kids) is something like "Well, we're asking you because you don't have children, you don't understand how much harder it is now that Paul has kids now, and because you don't, well, you obviously have so much more spare time than he does, well, we'd like you to do Paul's work."
If asking Paul Parenthood to keep up his productivity is "discriminating against him because he has kids", then so is asking Sam Singleton to pick up Paul's slack when he says he can't.
If there's any advice to the new parent here, it's to be aware that your single, childless, and/or childfree co-workers may feel just as shafted by management as you do!
If there's a silver lining behind this cloud, it's that the friction between parents and single/childfrees is caused to lousy management, not some evilness inherent to breeders or kid-haters. The two camps don't have to hate each other -- nor should they.
I'm lucky to work at a place where I, as a childfree employee, can say "Dude, I need to take care of Geeky Stuff [LOTR comes out, supplies for a LAN party] this afternoon", and he'll say "Go for it, I'll hold down the fort while you're gone." Likewise, my co-workers can say "Dude, I need to take care of Parental Stuff this afternoon", and I'll say "Cool, I'll hold the fort while you're out." More importantly, we're just as comfortable asking those questions in front of -- and sometimes to -- our manager.
It's rare, but there do exist managers who are sufficiently clued to realize that as far as Sam Singleton is concerned, seeing LOTR or setting the weekend's LAN party is just as emotionally important to Sam, as setting up the kid's birthday party is to Paul Parenthood.
If you're in management: Go thou and do likewise. For the sake of all your employees.
... I feel I have some insight that may aid you.
My dad is currently a programmer for a large insurance firm. Prior to that he worked for National Gas Pipeline, and before I was born, he worked various other places (Bell Labs, in particular). He's not too aggressive about his job, and I'd even go so far as to say he's very passive. He doesn't go for the promotions, nor does he try to work his way up the chain. That's fine, because he likes what he does, but it also makes him a target for dickheads. Like making him work long hours. In fact, I bet he's doing more work right now, on his home machine. He worked long hours, and while most of the time he managed to be home for dinner, he wasn't really "there" for much of anything. In fact, the only things I can remember us doing were going to 2 major league baseball games, and playing catch. All the rest of the time, he was at work late for some new deadline, orreading more bullshit printouts from the IBM S/370.
Something you may not have thought of, I have a nice little anecdote for:
Now, this may be an atypical situation, but in his last job, during a massive round of layoffs, they gave him the choice of quitting, or moving to Houston. If he chose to stay, they would deny him his severance pay. He chose to stay. Well, unfortunately, that severance check was not a small one, and it REALLY damaged our ability to do simple things like replace the boiler, or fix the falling front wall. And now, at his current job, he's looking at being outsourced. It affects him as a person, and therefore affects the whole family. I realize that layoffs and underhanded corporate tactics are a part of any job, but as I mentioned before, he's so passive that he just sits there and takes it. Now, you have to decide on your own whether you are aggressive enough to not put up with shit like that and have your own life outside of work. His passive nature also keeps him from going for opportunities. Just last week, I managed to eventually talk him into applying for the city of Chicago as a Systems Engineer. He has over 20 years of experience, and a Masters degree. He would be a good candidate, plus being a steady government job and a nice pay raise it seemed good. Well, the amount of time it took me to convince him was one day too long and he missed his window. Don't be like that, because it'll get you roped into working long hours with no compensation and no family time.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
I was one programmer in a three-person startup company. I had two kids, both under 5. I was a single dad. I had to work 15-20 hour days, at times, to get the company off the ground. I had no problem - I left at 5:24pm when my train departed downtown, and got home by 6:15pm to pickup the kids from daycare. I fed them, bathed them, got them ready for the next day, and got them off to sleep. After that, I resumed my coding until 1-2am, then got up to do it all again. THEY never knew what I did after they were asleep - only I did. They came out just fine.
Don't code when they're around, don't ignore them for the CRT - don't ignore them for the boob tube, either, for that matter. DON'T IGNORE THEM. And when they have a recital/play/sporting event, GO HOME AND TAKE THEM.
Forget the boss. If they don't get it, get a different job. Pick one - family or career - to be numero uno. Once the other becomes secondary, it all works out just fine, and you will never look back.
I moved into web development soon after my divorce and decided my daughter came first so I've always been freelance. I pick her up Mondays and Wednesdays from school and stay with her 'til 7.30pm. I also spend every Saturday with her. Money has been very hard but I can honsetly say I have a much better relationship with my daughter than most stressed-out 9-to-5-ers making loads of money. London property prices can squeeze every drop of energy out of people so I also decided to forget that and rent. I've had to fight to be able to see my daughter 3 times a week but I'm basically hard-up and happy that I have plenty of time with my daughter. It's something you just can't attach a monetary value to.
Without the free time I might not have been able to learn as much about Linux/OSS either.
Having two children, ages 1 and 4, I'm currently struggling with the career vs. family issue. My company is family-friendly, for which I am grateful, but the demands of fatherhood threaten to arrest my career. I was also married around 5 years before having children. During that time, I spent evenings and weekends "geeking out"--doing things that were both fun and career-enhancing. I always maintain that it's important to make your (technical) mistakes at home so you can do it right at work. Also, many a small project that I didn't have the time budget to do at work I could do at home and save a lot of time (and look good) at work.
Now, it is a constant struggle to keep up with the changes in technology. I used to look down my nose at older programmers who couldn't find jobs because they had just worked their 8 to 5 and hadn't kept their skills up-to-date. I would say it was their own fault for being so lazy. I don't walk so tall or talk so proud anymore. Where once I would jump in on the leading edge of a wave, now I let the field mature for a couple of generations, because I just don't have time to fight with beta-quality technology. Real life presents difficult choices. I'm with those that say sacrificing your children (or your marriage) for your career isn't worth it, but when a geek is "who you are," you may find spooning gruel down the throat of a squirming baby less rewarding than you first imagined.
Here's where I would summarize with some hard-earned wisdom if I had any. Instead, I'll just say, "Hang on and don't feel too sorry for yourself. You're not contending with anything millions of other parents haven't already faced."
100,000 lemmings can't all be wrong.
Exactly the attitude I already follow. So I guess the answer is -- change nothing. Thanks :)
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
You do have a good point though, sometimes I really wish I had gotten warts in high-school, or fathered a child I had no way to support. What an awful, sexless high-school. (btw, that was sarcasm)
Although not a coder, per se, I do a lot of design work and IR&D. Your concerns on being there for family strike a very deep chord in me. I am way past the age for doing the "family thing", as all my life I have been trying to put my job and training first, so that later I should have been rewarded with a decent position and would have time for family later... but for me it didn't work out that way at all. Technology keeps changing so fast that all the skills we develop are damn near obsolete by the time they are used. Employers keep a sharp eye on new graduates, still learning the latest cutting edge stuff while off their payroll, then we that are in the workforce find ourselves competing with a steady stream of newly minted graduates that know the latest technology but are totally ignorant of the preceding technologies. My personal disaster happened when one of the new guys was hired in as my boss, and the first thing he did was take my old computer away from me and expect me to use another machine of his choosing...
I had no earthly idea how to use that machine. It was running Windows. I had twenty years experience with assembler/DOS/SuperVGA-VESA and felt I could do damn near anything with my trusty old Borland C++ compiler. I did all sorts of device drivers under DOS, but I had no idea how to do anything under Windows. My pleas to let me use technology I was familiar with was only met by condecending utterances from the man-on-high that I was to "get with the program". I felt my work had nothing to do with presentation - I was only doing analysis work on satellite tracking. It had taken me twenty years work to understand my machine well enough to have it do *exactly* what I wanted it to do. It takes a lot of time to learn all this new technology, and our experience is the integral of all the things we have done. Problem is with technology these days is only thing most employers seem to see is the integral of over the last two years or so. So a very deep experience base does not mean much these days.. Geez. Look how much experience I have with Borland C++ for DOS and all the VESA SuperVGA graphics I have done.. who needs that kind of stuff. So the technology guy is constantly running ass-out just trying to stay current. Its like a never-ending marathon. How does one ever take time out for family?
My relationships to family have deteriorated to the point of damn near non-existence. I do not have a retirement plan, and I am still going to school in addition to trying to stay employed.
I never found the time to get married.
Much less have kids.
Would I encourage technology career to anyone? Well, only if they *really* liked it. Enough to forego wife, family, kids, parents, everything else.
At this stage in the game, I kinda wish I had just stayed a technician. The pay and prestige as an Engineer in my estimation is not nearly commensurate with the effort and committment required to sustain an existence in the field.
I certainly understand your concern about the kids. My career is so demanding I felt I had to forego kids for the very same reasons you are concerned about your inability to find time to nurture the family relationships. You are only echoing the mantra of every decent Engineer type I have ever met... that "if you can't do it right, there ain't much sense in doing it at all."
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
The trick is to keep things balanced. Try to be there when they need you and to do good enough at work to further your career. Now matter what through, you have to face the three realities: 1) sometimes you won't be able to be there because of that pesky thing called a job, 2) you will probably have to give up on some of your career aspirations because you (I hope) don't want to put all your energy into your career anymore, and 3) keep an eye on the balance.. it won't happen automatically and it'll never stay balanced once done, so you have to keep going back every now and then and make adjustments (how often is up to you, but it isn't a do-and-forget kind of thing.. unless you want to look back in 20 years and realize you failed at the dad thing). I've found major life and work changes to be good times to do the rebalancing thing.. beginning and end of projects, beginning and end of the school year, etc.
Oh, and one more thing.. I don't know who said it, but it is very true about balancing work with family.. "you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all the people all the time", I'd add "the trick is to please enough of the people to enough of a degree that everybody is happy enough".
Welcome to the net of 1000 lies. Upgrades are scheduled soon that should bring us to the 10,000 lies mark.
What is this thing, this, "life", you speak of?
You HAVE a job, so why the hell are you finding faults where there are none? What would you do if you stopped programming? Is it like you can just drop everything and then get any job you like?
PS: Since when do people refer to accidents as being "blessed"??
My wife understands that death marches happen. As long as it's not too often or too much of the time, she understands that it goes with the territory.
The flip side is that programming pays enough that she can stay home with the kids. She doesn't have to work for us to make it. And one parent home with the kids is much better than daycare...
flipping the wife over.. I started doing this a few years ago- and no more kids.... No nothing gets in the way of work.
On the plus side, eventually you will have new opponents in head-to-head video games, and for a while at least, they are an easy victory. You'll feel old when you can't win against your own kid and you try your hardest.
(1) Don't wait for everything in your life to be just so before having kids. Life will never be perfect. After having kids, you'll also realize that all the things you used to fret about were really pretty insignificant.
(2) You might just find you have *more* time to be a dork. I have. Unless you have a live-in nanny or Grandma lives across the street (or unless you're a total deadbeat), after the kids are in bed, you stay home. Forget movies, hanging out at the bar after work, etc. What are you going to do from 8:00 p.m. onward?
- Try and work for someone who has kids himself. He or she will understand when emergencies arise, as they will.
- Set aside a time every day that you spend with the kids. It can be breakfast, or dinner, or the 11-o'clock-news. But set it, and make it happen.
- And one more: Extreme programming, among its many other virtues, helps programmers to Have A Life. Look for a place that at least pays lip service to it.
That child that is in your wife's belly now will leaving for college in the blink of an eye. When that day comes, you'll wish you had been around more. And if the singles in your company complain about your occasional absenses, remind them that the kid your rearing will be paying them their Social Security benefits.
[this
A lot of people fought and struggled so that your wife would have the right to an abortion.
If she was a true feminist she would honor those people and have an abortion. Otherwise, she isn't a very good feminist is she?
On Sept 11 my daughter was 12 days old and I had a job working for a trading firm, writing software in lower Manhattan. As I was late to work, I never actually made it into Manhattan (we lived in Brooklyn at the time), so I saw the whole thing from my window. After a few days the firm posted the disaster recovery site on their website, and I began waking up at 4am to take a train to Manhattan to a train to New Jersey. There, they expected you to proceed as nothing had happened, keep pulling those 14 hour days, even though instead of a tiny cube, I was crammed onto a table in a conference room with *9* other people, and looking out the windows we could see everything.
:)
:)).
This isn't so much about Sept 11 but that I never so badly wanted to be with my daughter and had absolutely no interest whatsoever in coding. Having a kid brings out some pretty strong emotions that you really aren't prepared for, and then to be thrust into a situation where you are away from her for such a long period of time was practically unbearable. Frankly, I made all kinds of plans to give up coding altogether.
However, I'm still coding, three years later, in a different city, in a different industry. Sure there are late nites, but now that she's older, it's easier; I don't get a lot done at home when she's awake, so I have to limit my "fun" stuff till after she has gone to bed. That means I can play from 8pm to 11-12 and still be able to function the next day.
Bottom line is this: Make sure you are not in any kind of deathmarch situation when s/he's born, and hopefully for many months afterwards. It'll be absolutely crazy, for you, for your wife, and for the kid too, even though s/he's thinking entirely about eating and sleeping.
I thought pure joy was the day I got my first mac, or when I successfully booted up my first home-compiled linux box, or when I met Patrick Stewart in Central Park. Nothing even comes close to the feelings you get when you hold your kid for the first time (ok, meeting Patrick Stewart comes *a little* close)
Good luck to you and may your kid grow up healthy and happy...and be able to kick your ass in Quake 10 (cause you know it's gonna happen
Wanda
Overseas jobs will grow , while yours will shrink
unless ofcourse you boot Georgie out of the Whitehouse
Programming does not "jive" with parenthood. It may however jibe with parenthood. Sorry. Just a pet peeve of mine....
I have never worked anywhere that demanded THAT much of my time. Of course, there were times when work got in the way of family life. But there were trade offs: My daughter was the first kid in her school to have her own computer; the first kid to have high speed internet access; her enterprise school had a great computer classroom, and a good webpage, thanks to "Dad". She had her own library card and learned early on how to search for and reserve books online. Then there was all the help with research, report layouts, science projects.
Here, let me ask her.... Her response: "It's great! Every time I have a computer problem I can just go to you. I don't have to suffer like my friends."
I'm a (minor) hero.
Proverbs 21:19
You'll need to adjust your hours to that schedule. For a lot of people that means shifting from being a nightowl to working early morning hours. Late afternoon/early evening seems to be prime coding hours for single people. Usually it doesn't work that way if you're married with kids. Everything is driven off the kids bedtime. That sets your family dinner and bedtime story times.
Larry
If theres an arrangement that you can move to that would suit you better, go for it. Its my opinion that these things aren't necessarily part and parcel of IT and tech, its just they tend to be given the nature of management in these areas. Whats cool and groovy for 20 somethings chugging their free sodas and stay up all night and think management is a joke can be a pain in the ass for older people. Horses for courses. But all that said, when I was a kid my dad worked long hours. It was a tricky time for the industry he was in, its how it had to be. Its OK though, I didn't turn to drugs or crime. We had and continue to have a good relationship. I respect him for providing for us and working damn hard to do it. It wasn't a bad example to follow. What I'm trying to say is, don't be too hard on yourself with regard to this issue. You'll know yourself when the balance is wrong I guess.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
A lot of companies are starting to learn now that it's better to have well rounded employees than to work your programmers for 80 hours a week. I recently interviewed with Microsoft and was very impressed with how adiment the supervisor with whom I interviewed was that no one on his team was to work more than 40-45 hours/week.
This is good news for those of us who want to do something more with our lives than just sit around programming. And it's especially good for people who want to carry on a productive life as a father. There's definitely a lack of that sort of thing lately.
Heh, just the other day I was hacking a Perl script while playing with my 9 month old son on the floor. Wireless laptops are great. ;) It can be done, just don't burn yourself out on coding. Make sure your employer knows you only want to work a normal 40 hour week, and if you do any side coding on your own time (open source, contract, etc), make sure your wife knows what the deal is and understands why you're spending time doing that. It helps if the coding brings in much-needed extra money, but I still manage to find time for open source.
:)
I also find nothing puts a baby to sleep better than laying on your lap while you are typing away on the keyboard. Well... when he's too tired to bang as hard as he can on the keys that is.
I've been a professional coder for over 10 years, and and programmer in general for more than 20. I've also been a parent for 4 years, one 4-year old (obviously!) and a 1-year old. The answer to your question is probably the answer that goes for most any job: depends on the environment you are in.
Some companies do actually care about your home life, and some companies don't. Some panies understand that employees with the ability to spend time with their family is important, others do not.
I am fortunate that, while my company isn't the greatest in many respects (i.e., advancement possibilities, technologies in use, creativity always appreciated, etc.), one thing they are utterly fantastic in is that if I need to take time off because my kid is sick, no problem. If I want to come in late some that I can go to a class picnic, fine. If I want to work at home so I can play old ColecoVision games with my son, that's fine. All of this is regardless of how much vacation or personal days I have left. My boss understands, his boss understands, and as long as I do good work and do what is asked of me, it's all fine.
Fortunately I tend to do much more than asked and am very highly-regarded by most everyone in the company, but I see the same attitude towards those that don't have my record of success or my proven abilities. Everyone enjoys the same atmosphere.
Now, there are times when I have to stay late, and there are times where I have to put in a little extra effort and time, but frankly everyone tries their best to avoid these things, and these situations are few and far between, and when you are generally treated well all the others times, it doesn't bother you as much to work one Saturday every few months, or work a 45-hour week every so often (when people go out of their way to make sure 40 is the norm).
So, find the right environment, and it works fine. It's tough to do, and you sometimes have to give up some other things like working with all the latest and greatest, but I think you'll overall be a much happuer person. I am. I've been with this company for almost nine years, and I've passed up at least five opportunities just about every year, even with a bad economy the past few, jobs that would have paid me more and probably been more exciting from a purely geeky point of view.
But when you have a family involved, things look a little different, and this company has treated me right in the areas that count, so I've stuck around. I suggest looking for something like that, and I think you'll be glad you did.
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Go and read "Iron John: A Book about Men." A little offtopic, but it does tell you a lot of things about men that feminist try to viciously, rabidly hide from you. It made me realize how much I lost, and what I have to do to get it, because my dad thought I'd be better off if he got a job that paid ten thousand more per year, but was located in a city an hour away from where we lived.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
Every half hour?? I don't think I've ever had that problem with either of my girls except when they're sick.
My 2nd daughter is almost 2 months old, and she's been sleeping through the night for about 2 weeks now. So at 6 weeks old this wasn't an issue.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
We have been married for 12 years. All 12 of those I've been a hacker. There was a short time when I was out of the house more then in, but that was one job out of quite a few.
The only thing that made that possable was my wife. Without her all wold be lost. My kids are being raised with a strong father figure and a wonderful mother that's always there when they need her.
IMO: The mother makes the family.
You'll be lucky if you get three hours of awake time after you've put your kid to bed.
At the company I used to work at, I knew at least 7 people who kids.
Look, here are a ton of great ideas in these responses, but I'd like to add one more that I haven't seen yet.
I have a 5-year old, and a 2-year-old, and they (with the wifey of course) are the absolute center of my existence. When we relocated from Switzerland to Manhattan, I went without work for 9 months. In that span, I spent a tremendous amount of time looking for the desk job in big companies here on Wall Street - Goldman Sachs, Guardian, etc.
But it was a complete waste of time, and I would have never known it.
I also contacted several smallish companies (less than 20 staff) that had minimal-to-no IT staff. They also happened to be financial research firms, and needed desperate help building business systems that were proprietary, internal, and provided competitive advantage. It is these companies that I am making a relatively good living from today, and I DO IT FROM HOME.
I'm paid (and trusted) because of my experience, multi-talented background, and that I have a network of folks I can contact in a pinch to get anything done. I'm not asking for the big bucks, just enough for a family of four to live in comfort and some reasonable financial safety.
I see my kids every day, I am home for lunch every day, and we all love the setup more than you would ever believe.
A VERY important addition to this little tale: my 5-year-old was recently diagnosed with epilepsy - not the hollywood-version where she flops around like a fish on the floor, but the type where she just stares off into NeverNeverLand, and has no idea that the conversation has moved on (when she comes back to you) - in short, this little girl is fighting a battle for control over her mind, a battle that she frequently loses.
Now, realistically, be the wife here. You got a 2-year-old who has 'defensive lineman' written all over him, and he is a handful... On top of that, you have a 5-year-old that you are now homeschooling - there's no rational expectation that she will get patience and understanding in a room with 30 other kids, and an overworked/underpaid teacher that is pressured over the big numbers, not over the quiet little girl sitting in the back...
DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!
Understand that becoming a parent is not always the perfect picture - and always being gone is a recipe for disaster, as not only are you spending all your time making someone else rich, you are also committing to not being there for your family when they may need you the most.
If you really have been at this for some years, and have been successful at it, then you should be able to find two or three smaller companies that need your expertise, and take on projects with all of them. None of the projects will be grand on an individual scale, and none of these companies could afford a large-scale project anyway! You take the three projects, and add the income up to a very good 'salary' with the ability to stay home with your family, and you also get the challenge of solving a diverse array of problems for different people.
You will have fun! No whiners because you stop work to have dinner with the kids, as you will be home anyway. You are a grownup now, and can(should) set that schedule yourself!
"The mind is a terrible thing to, um, uh, oh bollocks." -- Me
Commercial is hell, especially if you have to fly. It's always more flying than they let on. Even if you bring it home on a laptop you're always hunched over the damn thing and not living your life. You get a chance to be with your kids exactly once while they're growing up if you're lucky and they're healthy and nothing bad happens. Government sites are a lot better. They are more likely to have an 8-hour a day culture. The real people work harder than that, but it is much more descent.
Both my wife and I are very senior engineers, with over 20 years programming experience each. We have two kids, 13 and 9 (both girls).
It really helps to have understanding managers - ideally, managers who are parents themselves. I would not want to be at startup where the life of the company depends on deathmarch mode work - in fact I turned down several such jobs during the bubble specifically to avoid that.
One thing that helps a lot is that we're both pretty damn well paid (~$250k total). This means that we could buy very good day care when that was needed, and hire sitters/minders to stay with the kids during summer vacation.
Try looking for a situation where the boss doesnt care what your actual hours are, so long as the major milestones get hit each month. This works better when you are not in a big team - you can pretty well set your own hours.
In sum, it can be done, but not at a startup which expects to own you 24/7.
Kudos to the author for realizing that his kids are more important than the software release.
I worked for a large manufacturer of sexy computers and OS for over four years. During that time I had two children. I always felt pressure to work more/harder, and always did. Before I knew it, I was spending 100+ hours a week at the factory, and was not every seeing my familly (left home, they were asleep, got back home, they were asleep). I realized (thanks to my wife) that this was not the right thing, and took a job at a defence contractor.
Yes, by changing *where* I worked, my hours at work were cut in more than half. Now, after working at the new job for a couple of years, I've realized that the problem was not really my former employer, but me. I did not now how to set reasonable limits, ensure that team members and boses understood those limits, and then follow through. I was promising too much, taking on too much, working too much. It wasn't my employer forcing me to work too much.
Now, the change in *where* for me was big because in Startup type of companies, only a stupid boss is going refuse a person's demand for more work. In the new company, however, the culture was not to allow a person to work too much, and after being forced to work reasonable hours, I finally realized that the problem is and was mine.
So, I think you are right, the *where* is more important than the *what*. But, one needs to look at one's *attitude* first, because that is more important than the *where*.
I am living proof of the Peter Principle
This shouldn't be an employee vs employee situation.
It is up to management to maintain staff levels appropriate to their needs. It won't matter if your employer is a software development house or not. Bad management is all over.
I work 6-7 days a week for a very large non-tech business. The workload is crushing. It is entirely due to a perpetual lack of planning and predisposition to load up everyone till they 'break'.
Be less concerned about the sector, and more concerned about the actual people you'll be working for...
Nothing could be so bad as being one of this bunch of pathetic liars.
...but you didn't have the baby because you were blessed. It was because...well...let's say we keep the secret between you and me.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
In a previous life I was a programmer. I was still coding when our son was born. Because I worked for the US Federal Government. Specifically the DoD/US Army. I was quite lucky in the flexibility available to me (I even got paid paternity leave). I know a number of people who worked in the civilian sector and, while they didn't have the benefits and support from the company that I had, most of the companies were smart enough to realize that helping parents with childcare costs and flexible schedules meant that they got more productive employees. You should check with your company to see what their policies are for parents.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Come now, is there really any profession better than programming?
I have 5 kids aged from 14 down to 7 year old twins and its a LOT of work with domestic stuff and sport taking up 7 days.
I have ALSO been using 6-7 days a week for past 10 years running own software business.
If there's one thing about running your own business it's that it takes the same amount of dev time as anywhere else + extra work + overhead = big hours.
By placing well equipped home office in building on our property next to the house I can be ready for dinner/homework rush hour and STILL do effective evenings and multiple sessions on weekends between family commitments.
By removing the travel component alone this gives me the quality hours that DO make a difference to the family because of the WHEN it's done.
For example better to spend 2 hours from 5-7 or 6-8 at home than it is to come home at 9pm when all the hair has been pulled out.
I do a lot of regular domestic duty and the home life runs along just fine.. yet I STILL am then able to meet the regular 60+hr work week easily.
You CAN do both if you can arrange for every hour or part thereof to be effective as I find it needs approx 100 hours per week EFFECTIVELY spent spread between both for such a large family and business..
ps: even doing all that I STILL can get away for a different break from both to be able to keep this up year in and year out - check out the car pages at www.findmap.com.au/alexm/cars for example..
cheers,
Alex.
Where I'm working this summer, it seems everyone had a kid in the past 10 months. One left for another job, the rest are still there.
I think it can work, it depends on the company, and of course how well the individual can manage time.
I work at a research lab for the U.S. military, and it's actually a lot more fun than its reputation...
.com, but in my opinion the stability, pay, and hours more than make up for it.
The pay is quite good, I only work 40 hours/week, and I'm represented by a union. Plus, the work is really interesting - not at all like you might think.
Sometimes I miss the loose and super-casual lifestyle of working for a
There's another perk as well: I don't need to constantly try to keep my resume up to date with the latest buzzwords that don't even relate to my job. Since I've got great job stability, I can actually take the time to learn the particular problem domains really well instead of constantly worrying about my resume. That's something I've been missing.
Another plus of working for them is that they're VERY supportive of pursuing your advanced degree. Almost everyone I work with has or is working towards an MS or PhD. I.e., I found a pocket of really smart people that I never knew existed. In the private sector, having my MS was a big distinction. In a military research lab, I'm surrounded by people that are really well educated. There's a lot to learn in a place like this.
Downsides, however, can be a hassle. For instance, it's a lot harded to publish a computer science paper. It has to go through Washington to get verified that it has no classified material in it. That's a downer, but not one that matters to me too often.
Overall, I'm very happy and recommend you check it out.
I have 3 kids, and I have worked comfortably as an independant consulting setting my own hours (getting paid reasonably well so that I don't have to work silly hours). I also remember seeing a 60min show once on SAS in North Carolina. Companies like SAS http://www.sas.com/ sound like a great place to work if you have a family. SAS has very low turnover and as a result that seems to have attributed to their success. Employees are also discouraged from working more than 40 hrs a week. Apparently they are very productive, a good model for other American companies. One does not have to work excessive hours to get stuff done, just be efficient. I don't know if this is all true, but it sounds pretty good on 60min. Wish i worked there :)
More like "we don't know about condoms". Children are an STD.
Like everyone has been saying, and even pointing out what industries they work in, I've done this for ten years at the same location here in the good old U.S. and the only times I've really killed myself it was self imposed - and it was before I was married and had kids.
Now I use the flexible hours available at my company to work early (home by 4:00pm usually) and sometimes work at home. Sometimes, SOMETIMES, I have to work overtime - maybe a week out of the year. Sometimes when there is an emergency, I can fix it from home.
I don't work in commercial product development, I develop special purpose in-house code, a whole gauntlet of different things.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
So it took you two "5+ years" to introduce sperm to ovum.
I've professionally been a programmer for a while now...
Which explains WHY it took so long.
If an intelligent adult like you asks the question, you probably already know the answer.
Time to become self-employed, Dad.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
You should have limits you set and abide by, with your job, if you're CONSTANTLY pulling overtime then you should put your foot down about the understaffing. There's no real excuse for being railroaded into working overtime week after week after week by your employer, if they're that damned busy they oughta hire some more help!
And this coming from a business owner, not an employee, I've been in jobs where I was constantly asked to work overtime/etc managing servers, I just put my foot down and said "ok fine get me business class DSL in my house, and I'm gonna work from home a couple days a week", so I'd go in Mon, Thurs and Friday, and work from home the rest of the time over VPN, they were happy, I was able to work "overtime" (salaried of course) and I was happy, I spent much more time at home so I could at least see the wife and rugrat.
Now I work my business from home full time, heck I don't even have offices, why bother... everyone who works for me works from home on a performance based pay system.
--- www.f-theocean.com
There's something about working for a sufficiently large place and getting, perhaps, some job security (or whatever passes for that these days), but some long term perks that people might not be thinking about.
For example, next year I get another weeks worth of vacation. We don't have sick and vacation days, we just get "paid time off", which works out so much better. I'll have 28 days. Retirement savings plans, 401k matching, things like that are all things to consider when you have kids. Even life insurance... my company gives you 2x your salary for free (although that's not enough, you can pay less for extra, or just have a lot).
I generally work overtime only for brief periods a couple of times a year... might total a weeks worth of evenings.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Do you think programmers are the only people who are required/asked/demanded to put in extra hours that they don't want to work!? YOu don't sound like you have alot of life experience. Almost any job can require insane hours, from factory workers to doctors. This isn't a unique problem to the field of IT. I'm a DBA, i'm on a pager rotation and support applications that if unavailable may cost the company millions of dollars. Unfortunately sometimes i'm going to have to work long hours because a system has gone down or a new application is going production soon and the crunch is on. Just recently I started coaching my daughters t-ball team and told my boss that on Monday nights from 5-8 i'm unavailable, period. Now, my manager is a true micro-manager and the first night of t-ball guess what happens. My phone rights, I view the caller id (company really shouldn't subscribe to that feature) and notice its my boss. I didn't answer the phone.. He knew I was unavailable and there are other competent people on our team that could handle whatever his last minute request was. After I got home I checked my voicemails (he called a few times) and indeed another member of our team (the guy who was on call) was working on the problem. Any other time and i'll gladly help where I can but you have to set boundaries.. Sometimes negotiating with your manager is like negotiating with a kid. You have to be firm and unwavering.. Your a parent, you know what happens if you give in just once.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
and am now concerned that commercial software development is not a good job for a dad to have.
Did you ever think that maybe a child is not a good thing for a commercial software developer to have?
Prioritize, man.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
The truth is that software development is, by comparison to most professions, very low stress. I've been able to telecommute, help out in my kids' classrooms and coach their sports teams. When they were infants i was able to help with the midnight feedings and (with the help of caffeine) i still got in my hours.
Many real-world jobs have far less flexible hours, significant travel, early mornings or late nights for meetings, and they often don't pay as well. Being a coder is probably one of the better jobs you can have as a parent, IMO.
It's impossible to explain to somebody who doesn't have children, but the fact is that you will find a way to be a good parent if you are motivated to be a good parent (fortunately, this will be completely obvious to you as soon as your child is born). You'll just figure it out because it's the most important thing you can imagine. Really. I promise.
If you value time with family more than a career consider a job as a university lecturer. The pros are: - write code how you want - work on stuff you want to research, not what someone else tells you to do. - more free time, less stress. Cons: - Salary isn't good compared to commerce - Pay rises are dependent on the quality of the papers you publish (unlike the commercial work force academics earn their pay based on academic merit) - You really need a PhD to be considered for a post.
Who cares if they wake up and you have to leave for a bit to take care of them? You still got 10 minutes of work done that you wouldn't have, and yet you were still there for the family[1] when they needed you. Of course if it is a regular thing that you have to work after the kids are in bed there might be a problem. Might because some jobs will let you work from the office for 6 hours a day, meet the kids off the bus, and work the other 2 hours after they are in bed. (If you do this make sure it is an honest 2 hours, otherwise the rest of us who want to do this won't be allowed!)
[1]Well the kids, You have to figgure out how to take care of the spouse too. I'm not sure how to fit that in. It can be done, but don't forget about it.
Th15 iz /. n0b0dy g3tz m4rr1ed h3rE!!!!!!1!1111111111
Just kidding dude. All you gotta do is teach the wife and kids to code. Then you can contribute to free software projects, or make up your own!!!!! A great family pasttime.
the fact that you are having a kid proves you are getting laid with some regularity.
... after all, "it's the *Virgin* Mary, Eddie. What did Joseph have to do with *anything*?" (Simon Birch)
Actually, it proves that she's getting laid
Get all the sleep, see all the movies, go to all the restaurants, and have all the sex you can now before it's too late! This is probably also your last chance to spend money on yourself, so go buy a few CDs or whatever it is you like to waste money on.
I don't mean to scare you with any of that...your kid will be far more fun than anything you give up. But savor the other stuff while you can.
P.S. I'm one more person who has never worked at a software shop, and I've never had a problem.
>productivity is "discriminating against him because
>he has kids", then so is asking Sam Singleton to
>pick up Paul's slack when he says he can't.
The solution to this dilemma could be to give Paul a two-year (paid) leave, during which he is replaced by an employee with a limited-time contract, and giving a guarantee to Paul that when he's over this very important period he can have his old job back.
No employer would perhaps subscribe to such a system voluntarily, however it can be implemented as a law, as is the case in Germany and other European countries, for instance.
And of course it does not matter whether it's Paul Parenthood, or Paula (his wife), or whether they both want to share the leave and do 50 % each.
The other question is can you stay 2 years without any coding...? ;-)
Doesn't matter. I have two teenagers, but it's a rare occasion when I'm not home for supper with the family. If the schedule is in a tight spot, I may be onto the VPN shortly after supper, but we nearly always have that piece of family time together, usually more.
/., was that it was something my 18yo son and I did together regularly.
Don't think this is just for small children, even if you think teenagers are ignoring or avoiding you, you need to be there for them, too. Perhaps the best thing about Star Trek Enterprise, the bane of
BTW, my late father-in-law used to tell his kids, in exasperation at the mealtime conversations, "The Kennedys talked about politics at dinner." Our same 18yo son has understandably become quite interested in politics, in the past year. So we really do talk about politics at the dinner table.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The whole concept of "death marches" are simply caused by the complete disconnect between Upper Management, Marketing and the people who actually do the work.
Without proper planning where you manage Scope, Time and Resources to find that balance - you get death marches. Willing to be one who works in that environment costs not only your life, but your sanity and having time to watch your kids grow up.
Handling projects correctly isn't freakin' rocket science - Perform proper RAID analysis;
1 - Identify Risks - no matter how small, both the good and the bad that could come from the project
2 - list the Assumptions and tie a name of a person that validates those assumptions (ahhh, that 4 letter word "accountability")
3 - Document your Issues, and again - assign names to get get those issues resolved
4 - Define in plain english all the terminology the project uses so everyone is on the same page. For example, the word "server" to me at the client end might mean something totally different to the people on the technical end.
Now, break down the tasks and estimate effort using people that know what the f**k is going on, write it up and stick to the plan. Yes, the plan will change but with proper MANAGEMENT of the plan and MITIGATING the RISKS you won't have to DIE or worse, come home to some guy doing YOUR job with the wife.
So, what if the Stakeholder (e.g. Suit, Marketing Puke or Client) wants something added? Easy! You have a process that outlines the costs the additional scope will add to the balance of resources and time and what risk it poses to the project for all to see and agree upon. Usually someone with some sense steps in and says WOAH! points out the problems, then people keep moving along.
As a consultant, I use my "Three Balls" analogy a lot; Draw a triangle and put a circle at each of the 3 points. Label the circles "Good", "Fast" and "Cheap". Tell them to "Pick Two". This is also known as a "Flexibility Matrix" of sorts, but I like to keep the jargon to a minimum.
If that stumps them, make it easier - Draw two circles connected with a line and put in the words "Right" and "Right Now" and tell them to "Pick One" The latter is for those 30,000' view executives whose ties are on too tight choking off the blood supply to their brains.
Never have a philosophy which supports a lack of courage
Here's the hard part...
Keep in touch with your wife, you wouldn't believe how easy it can be to become so busy with the home and kids that you lose touch with each other. My wife and I set out early in our parenting years to make sure that we would stay in touch.
Your marriage is your kids' foundation and their security, keep it strong, and continue to be openly affectionate, if not in public then in family settings. IMHO it also helps cut the rush into teenage sex, because they see that adult relationships aren't cold or sterile. (I didn't say have sex in front of the kids, just regular acceptable affectionate behavior.)
Finally, from a veteran of 23 married years, this Summer:
Cuddle naked.
Too often getting naked together is taken as a prelude to sex. But sex requires many other things to be just right, and can be harder to arrange. There is a lot of comfort in simple body contact. It was a bit to get over for my wife, cuddling naked without the expectation of sex, but we managed.
And now we find that the mood and everything else come together for better and more frequent sex than before.
Forget about raising normal children if you're a programmer. You can raise them allright, but they'll end up being complete and total wierdos. Programming is a low end job nowadays, sort of like light assembly, crop picking, and basketweaving.
Let's get one thing clear. Programming won't provide the finances you need to give children a survivable level of education or the standard of living your parents gave you.
Take whatever you make now, subtract 30% for unemployment periods, 4% for higher taxes next year, another 10% every year for wage deflation and you'll have reality. Yes. Jim Kerry will return middle class taxes to 29% next year.
The kinds of jobs which are going to be around in 20 years are going to take about $300,000 of education to qualify for. If that doesn't happen in 18 years the kid's going to spend its entire life paying back debt, living on the street, or reading slashdot in your apartment.
How about having enough room for a child? Apartments get pretty crowded with those little vipers scurrying around, puking on the carpet, sticking their fingers in the substandard wall outlets.
Will the child ever know what it's like to have a back yard? Will the child live in a neighborhood where kidnappings aren't a daily ritual? These things take more money than a programming career can provide.
As for having family time, consider enlisting the wife in the workforce and reducing your committment to win the bread, something not really possible for a programmer but a goal to shoot for nonetheless.
The kinds of things which put out normal children are easily accessible for project management and above, but for those below P.M. it's pretty bleak.
Those people have more kids then they have body lice! They also have your job or soon there too as long as is does not involve creativity or original ideas.
Then again, how many gutter tips does one person need?
If I were Linux, I would sue this fucker for slander. He has gone too far.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
You know how to spell and know the difference between your and you're. Fess up. You're no programmer; you're an English major.
Family is forever, your job is temporary.
Get your priorities straight!
I'm a software engineer. The demands of the job vary- at times, I've been called upon to put in 60+ stressful hours every week. At times, ~40 non-stressful hours has been plenty.
Bear in mind that your employer does not necessarily have your best interests in mind. This isn't a knock at any current or past employer of mine, or of anyone else. It's simply a fact- they will always welcome you working more hours (salaried folks, you know what I'm talking about). It's up to you to set limits. Many employers will respect those limits. They may limit your career advancement (either in terms or raises, or promotions, or both) - keep that in mind, but set priorities. How important is your family versus your current (or potential future) rewards at work? If you don't think that this is a difficult question, you may not be thinking hard enough.
In December of 2002, I found myself stressing out that I was spending too much time at work (over the last ~2 years) and not enough time at home. I kept thinking, "I must do something about this soon!"
At that time, my step-daughter took her own life. She was going through a lot of troubles. The brutal truth of the matter is that I was spending so much time and energy at work that I was often not home, and when I was, I was not interacting much with my wife or step-daughter.
I believe that my inattention and lack of commitment to my family at that time was a primary contributor to that situation. I don't believe that it was the sole cause, but I do believe that it was a primary factor. I'll never know for sure. No one will.
Had I quit my job at that time, I would have sacrificed my family's primary source of income. We could not have paid our bills, including the mortgage on our house. We'dve lost our home, our car, and our livelihoods. Clearly, that would not have been a good situation.
I believe that I could have found a better balance than the one that I did.
All I can do for others is suggest that they seek a balance.
While I'm on the soapbox (I very rarely post on slashdot), I'll also mention that she was on Accutane. I have no evidence that this was a direct cause of what happened, but I firmly believe it to be true. If you have children, I strongly encourage you to learn more about accuatane before you allow them to consume it. Check the PDR, periodicals, the web, or whatever other resources that you feel comfortable with. Also, ask yourself the same question that I (implicitly) encourage you to ask above: Is this issue worth it? Is your child's life/well-being worth this risk?
Linus Torvalds is an excellent father and coder. He can do both... so why wouldn't you?
Mind Booster Noori
I work at a startup. Our engineering manager has kids. He is very reasonable. Yes, we work hard, but we also go home at 7pm, not midnight about 95% of the time.
Small companies are better, too, in that they can provide flexible hours -- I can work at home 1-2 days a week, and/or work a 4x10 schedule vs. 5x8. Try that at a large corporation.
But you will still find that it's hard to see your kid(s). They tend to sleep from 7pm to 7am. Me, I see mine in the morning before work, but not in the evening, since I work ~10am-7pm.
Working from home a few days a week is great -- try that. But make sure you have an office where you can close the door and ignore the knocking! Your kids will demand every ounce of attention they can get.
If after five years you didn't notice that you didn't have enough time with your wife, you probably won't notice with the child either.
Any manager who thinks working 80-100 hours a week (for more than a few weeks during the final stretch) is a pointy haired Dilbert-esque manager.
I've also seen people who surf the Internet for 6 hours a day, then spend another 6 hours writing wicked code. Yeah, they spend all day at work, but do they have to? Nope.
I've personally found that programming and parenthood it VERY difficult to balance:
- Every place I've worked, both big and small, impose unhealthy expectations of developers.
- As a community we are often our own worst enemies because we often "volunteer" extra time by staying late on our own, especially when single and not yet with children. The pattern of behavior is easy to understand: usually we're young, eager to learn and produce, but it then sets the bar very high regarding what kind of commitment a developer is supposed to have towards work.
A few of things to keep in mind:
- It's only a job, if you love programming, then they cannot take that away from you. Save your fun programming for yourself.
- It's only a job (yes, I said it twice), if your current employer is a prick regarding expected commitment, leave. I really mean it: leave. A-holes who expect gratis death-march labor without giving back in a big and meaningful way deserve to be put out of business. Period.
- As far as is scientifically known this is your ONLY LIFE. The extra time you put into work and not spending time with your loved-ones WILL NOT COME BACK! Always keep this in the forefront of your mind.
- Stand your ground: DON'T do weekends, DON'T do extra hours. Even if you get paid hourly, this financial situation is no license to assume that all of your free time is up for sale. Commit extra time, but place limits. If found that if you behave as if your time is valuable people will respect that. If they don't: leave.
- Whining a-holes that are in a situation where they can "freely" donate ridiculous quantities of their "free" time that bitch about "Paul Parenthood" going home without "finishing their work" can talk to the hand. Grow up: until science provides (scary) alternatives to continuing our species though procreation we are responsible for RAISING OUR CHILDREN. You are someone's child, think from the child's point of view does this make sense: "Ok Daddy/Mommy stay at work late or on the weekends because the 'project's gotta get done' and you don't want all the shit to flow to the D.I.N.Ks. and singles, besides, why would you want to spend time with me?" The first time one of you mal-adjusted idiots complain to me about folks going home after business hours are over will find your sorry asses on the unemployment line. Seek professional help.
- If your managing programmers (and I did this OFTEN as a engineering director) CHASE PEOPLE OUT OF THE OFFICE. You won't have whiny a-holes because you make it clear that your EMPLOYEES are there for REGULAR BUSINESS HOURS. IF you REGULARLY expected people to put in long hours than PAY THEM HOURLY! I'll say it again PAY THEM HOURLY!!! It is the ONLY ETHICAL THING TO DO. Any argument to the contrary is self-serving rationalization.
Conclusion:
Personally, get out of the software business. DON'T stop coding if that is your calling, just code for yourself and others. Spread the fruits of you labor.
If you only went into programming as a job, then continue because you don't really care, but there are better ways to make a living.
Because all Dads know what boys their age are thinking...
Much as this is good for Paul Parenthood, what about Tom Temp? He gets hired on knowing his job will disappear in two years, gets minimal training (he's gone in two years) and has no career prospects. As much as I sympathize with Paul Parenthood, your proposed fix is worse than the original problem! There is a very good reason the United States wants to stay as far from socialism as possible. - in attempting to be nice to Paul, you're exploiting Tom even worse.
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
To find out why, cf:
eXtremeProgramming.org/rules.html
eg: "No overtime"
Disclaimer: I have not yet entered the work force.
I'm the child of a programmer. (Yeah, I've ended up as a programmer too--or will end up as one, once I finish school.) I don't really have a baseline to compare it to, but I think my father does fairly well.
He's technically a consultant, although he's been working eight-to-five at the same job for several years. Being a consultant gave him the flexibility to find time to coach most of my sports teams (a couple years of Little League and AYSO, plus nearly a decade of roller hockey). The few hockey teams he didn't coach, he was involved at the school or even league level.
Consultancy doesn't give you the benefits--health, retirement, etc.--of a normal job, but it makes the trade-off more explicit: each hour you take off from work has a specific dollar amount attached to it. The decision is simple: is it worth $30 or $60 or whatever it is you make per hour to see your kid sing or play or do whatever (s)he is doing? Your schedule is yours to determine, as long as you make sure you get your contracts done.
My father's division used to belong to a large non-technical corporation; recently, some of its employees bought the division from the corporation it belonged to. My father was one of the investors, so he's changed from a consultant to a salaried worker. (His job duties have also changed--they're having him dabble in managing other programmers while still doing most of the design work. He isn't a suit--yet--as most of his time is still consumed by interacting with the computer and designing various parts of the program he works on.)
Since that change, he's been spending more time at work; he still seems to find time for actual events, but he's been missing dinner more often, and stuff like that. I can't tell if the change is because he's working for a salary now, or if it's because he's now working for a small company instead of a large corporation, or if it's because of his new job duties--there are no control groups in life.
I get the sense that my father's situation was somewhat unusual, so you may want to take this whole thing with a bit of NaCl, but it's something to think about.
I will say this, though: if any of your kids are technical types, they will idolize you. And even fi they aren't, they'll be glad to have the kind of dad who can fix all the gadgets around the house.
Hey, you try to find an open nick these days!
Do your growing family a favor and jump from the sinking tech job ship. Resistance is futile, your job will be outsourced to someone willing to be paid less than 1/4 of what you're asking. You won't be able to support your family trying to compete on price for lines of code. Move on.
Um, do I sound bitter?
XP rules will guarantee you a 40 hours week and I think that should take your worries away
If you want to give away your life (which is the only thing you truly own) to a bunch a parasitic assholes. That's your own lookout.
I realised 15 years ago, When my 7 year old son asked my wife if I was in Australia. I was 7 miles away, killing myself to make other people rich. I became aware that deathmarch all-nighters was for the stupid and greedy, promised riches by the same scum now selling used cars and get quick rich schemes. I never made any real money from those soul vampire gigs, although some of the parasites and wranglers ended up with mansions in the south. I now work my own hours, for a very large semi mfg. I get a lot of shit for not putting in the required 50-60 Hr workweek, but I'm happy with 8 Hr. days. Even if I'm kissing off $50 Hr.
Live you life. You only get one and they want to steal your mind.
JimD.
One of the AntiBorg.
Arent you people payed for overtime?
...
Some of my buddies at work were just asked to work through a weekend. Most that took the offer were not parents. But they got something like 750 euros from that weekend - a weeks pay.
So is it ok in America for a boss to just say: "Be here on Saturday and Sunday"? And you don't get anything? What are you guys making by the month/year? I mean if it's > $100 000 then I guess I understand why the company thinks they own you
The Rules of Parenting -- for ANY Job.
Have a weel defined room for work. Predefine set hours to work in. Only work in those hours. Stop working outside of those hours. If you are going to extend those hours or reduce them, discuss with spouse first.
Do not work excessive hours, unless it is pre-ok'd or only temporary.
NEVER let an appointment conflict with an event of your childs. Cancel the appointment first. Always.
My contract says 37 hours a week. I tell them to fuck off if they want me to do overtime. Then again I'm in the UK where we have a much more relaxed work ethic.
I have a six month old daughter and a pile of debt but my family will always come first.
I was member of the team that developed a network management tool. It took 20+ coders, architects etc. more than 2 years of intense creative efforts to roll it out. Finally our small - 70-something people - French company was bought up by an American giant because of the huge potential of the product. I observed, during these years of creative geek frenzy, that those who got children invested themselves less into the team's effort. The quantity AND sometimes the quality of their performances receded almost imperciptibly, as these people shifted their priorities to their ( newly-founded ) families. So my advice would be: once you get children, make sure you are not in a coding team anymore, but are capitalizing on your former experience, e.g. as a consultant. If you want to keep coding or building great architectures, this is going to eat up your energy - you're simply not ready for redirecting that energy into a family. "Making choices is about rejecting what we don't want" ( André Gide, French author )
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
and i never seem him around ...
...
he quit his job when i was born so he could see me more and shit, but as soon as i went to school he got a new job and i've hardly seen him since.
wtf do i care he was looking after me when i was 2? it's not like i remember it or anything
Those of us that can not pick up and leave when we wish are slaves to our jobs. I lived with this mentality for several years, but I was then wrongly and illegally fired. It was the best thing that company ever did for me, though. Now, if I feel that the job is getting in the way of life and my bosses don't want to make changes, I'll leave. I could easily switch from coding to anything else. I still code in my free time and give to the coding community, but I could be just as happy doing manual labor. It's all what you make of it. And if you have a desire to change, only you set your limits of how far you will go and what you will achieve.
As far as children, obviously you are not a parent. I am not either, but I am an uncle and I love my niece more than anything. I know that that love will be much more once I, myself, am a father.
Geee all of a sudden having a life is being seen by your boss as a bad thing and might cost you the job you need to live that life.
Well if you were a closed shop with a CBA (Collective Bargaining Aggreement) you might not have to worry about wanting (horror of all horrors) a real life.
Ask yourself have you been a good employee? Hardly ever late, put in those long hours, given your best to the projects you worked on? Then why the Hell should you have to give up your other dreams? Why should you not give time and energy to the ones you love? That is called being human.
With a Union you would not have to worry about those "young bucks" who will slave away for 90+ hours a week for less than half your pay because they don't have a life and would not know one if it bit them in the ass. Those young bucks get to start out on the bottom of the ladder and as long as you do not screw up on your job you will NEVER have to worry about losing the job.
The only reasons you should lose your job is if you screw up so bad repeatedly that you are a loser and need to be replaced OR if the company is losing money and they have to lay off workers to stay afloat. BUT all the young bucks get walking papers BEFORE you ever will. Last in first out. Progressive discipline. Wonderous words from the land of organized labor the folks that brought the 40 hour work week and weekends to you all.
Really you high tech types need to wake up and smell the java and start seeing yourselfs for what you really are. Replaceable workers, but also human beings who deserve to be treated better than the dirt these comapnies want to treat you.
Union since 2002 and never looking back!
I was working in software development when both my children were born, and I did wonder about changing career. However, the more I looked into it, the more I realised that the career I have built up so far would take a long time to match if I did something else, both financially and stability.
In the end, there is some trade off. Yeah, I might need to work longer hours during major project roll outs, and I might get stressed by the apparent ineptitude of our project planning department (you know the story, 3 months work, 2 man days) but in the end it's what I'm good at, I get paid well for it, and it provides the necessaries for life.
I still see the kids for at least 3 hours a day if they're bad (no going to bed when they're supposed to) but I see them all day on the weekends.
When I was young my dad worked as an electrician (actually, he still does), and he worked a lot of nights. The problems programmers have with not seeing their families is nothing compared to what working nights does for family life! I could spend a week and not see my dad because he was in bed when I got up, busy when I got home from school and then he went to work before I went to bed.
So,... who is the father-to-be?
It's not the hours that has me worried these days, it's the outsourcing. With a newborn kid, you now need an income stream for 25 years. The way the industry is going, it's not as obvious that this is in the cards and or going to be easy.
With that in mind, a working spouse makes raising kids more challenging but also present a security blanket in case of layoff and that seems to be necessary in today's market. That said, an IT friend of mine is married to a medical doctor. With that kind of job security it doesn't matter so much and life was ok even after he was laid off. But that's an exception not the rule.
It's too bad we didn't get rich durnig the boom.
"After 5+ years of being married, my wife and I have been blessed by her becoming pregnant."
And I'll bet you still don't know what causes that, eh?
I am a sys admin in a university setting, so the pay is on the low side but I have alot of flexibility with my kids.
I am a single mom. I went to college to learn to do something that would allow me to work one job and be able to pay the bills, and to get a job where I didn't have to work nights and weekends. I wanted to be able to do that before my kids were teenagers.
So now my daughter is graduating high school this weekend, and my son is a freshman in high school. My daughter has Asperger's and my son is 14 going on 15 which has to be the WORST age of all!!!, so I miss alot of work. But my boss is pretty flexible.
I worry about it sometimes, and think about how nice it would be to work in the commercial world again and make twice the salary I do now.....
But to be honest with you my kids come first. If I had to go back to waiting tables because that schedule would work better for me taking care of them, that's what I would do.
You can get another job, but your kid can never replace you. I am the only mama my kids will ever have, and that makes the parenting job the most important one of all.
I've had a number of different jobs as an adult - clinical chemist (hospital lab work), medical device chemist, medical device tech rep, sales rep, marketing, manufacturing engieer, and most currently applications developer. Every job required lots of hard, and often unplanned, work. Nights, weekends, multi-week road trips, forgotten vacations, you name it. If you work at anything remotely interesting and want to be involved as more than a clock punching automaton, you WILL give up much of your personal life. If being a stay at home dad is important, you WILL give up advancement opportunities (ask all those stay at home moms about this) and miss out on critical assignments. It's about choice. Whatever you choose, something has to give - the lie is that you can have it all. You can't. Accept it, choose, move on and don't look back.
There is no value judgement implied in this message. I chose to do what I did and gave up time at home with the kids. It's not a good choice or a bad choice, just the one I made. If you choose to spend more time at home - go for it and have a great time.
Dogu
If things go well you will be OK. If you get on a years long death march project you will bring that stress home with you. I am not sure you can have a happy family if every member of the family is not happy. You could then quit or get layed off when the project finally tanks. After your unemployment and COBRA runs out you could take a job consulting which may require you to have a 90 minute commute and gives you no security or solid benefits. Then you will be doing three month to one year contracts not knowing how you will pay the mortgage next year. IT has had it's boom period and is maturing so it will require less and less experts and specialists to do the work. Along with that, all of the safe, mundane development is being done where it is cheaper. I would say become a nurse or an auto mecahnic. The nursing skill works in most markets and seems to be the growth industry. Cars aren't going away anytime soon and I think the same analytical thinking and problem solving skills you use in programming can be used to fix Lexus's and BMW's.
sometimes I travel, sometimes I work late.
In short - just like my dad did (he was in Public Relations).
What's the problem?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Try to move your programming career into an industry that doesn't outsource all that often like banking, mortgage, tax, some medical.
It's all a question of balance. You may not get the coolest jobs if you're only willing to work regular hours, but you can always code an open-source application on the side.
Humans are adaptable, so don't worry, you'l adapt.
If your employer can't handle your family obligations, then Family First says you get a new employer who can.
Ah, but the deck is stacked. An employer doesn't have the right to fire an employee who's unfairly offloading his responsibilities onto his colleagues. I've run into plenty of parents who are just coasting, knowing they're essentially un-sackable now. People wonder why 20-somethings are always on death-marches - maybe it's 'cos parents don't pull their weight in the workplace.
As a programmer I can get even more time with the kids. But it's not so regularly scheduled. When the crunch is on my time is in the office; when the crunch is off I can take time off. I'm on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week, but rarely do I have to drive in at 8pm. I am paid for what I put out, not for the hours I sit at a desk.
Dear kscguru,
Please consider your analysis again: according to what you state, Tom is exploited because Paul gets additional benefits, but that's twisting the situation around, IMHO; rather, Tom comes from a pool of people that was jobless before (this pool is arguably never empty in any system) and now at least has a temporary (2-year!) position, which i hold to be superior, since he can feed the family, develop his career, improve his CV etc.
So I argue that the system creates a large set of new (if admittedly temporary) job opportunities. Who is exploited by _additional_ jobs being being created?
Also, bear in mind that the temporary position is for two years, I dare say this longer than some people stay on their non-temporary jobs!
I believe any country should take care of its inhabitants and value families, even more so if the country is as resourceful as the U.S. and Europe(an countries).
You are arguing against the benefit systems I outlined, but I would like to ask you, if you had the choice, which one would you personally prefer if you had a child forthcoming, a system where you have to cope without additional support (cf. original poster, who is even recommended to quit is old job by some commentators!) or a system where they give you a 2-year leave while your old job is guaranteed?
Wow, what a bunch of dumbass moderators. This post was copied exactly from one a few posts down. Can you spot the extra hidden message?
I'm a professional developer creating software for the healthcare industry. I've been programming professionally for about 10 years (and just plain programming for about twice that). I'm married and have four children, the oldest being eight and the youngest about four months from birth.
I've never had a big problem balancing family and work, but my situation may be atypical, in that I work from home. I have a home office, a broadband connection, and do all work from there, except for occasional meetings and such where I have to leave the house.
It's an ideal situation. I'm around my family and my children MUCH more than most fathers; they just take that for granted, of course, and I'm grateful that I'm able to grant it. There have been a few "death march" situations over the years, but working at home makes them more palatable. Even if I'm in my office working, I'm still around.
My advice to anyone who is worried about work vs. family is to err on the side of family. There is nothing more important. Work is secondary. Remember what you're working for.
jive: a dance
jibe: to be in accord
This has been a spelling nazi announcement.
My advice is to find something in the
G ood Luck.
defense-military sector.
Let throw a few names:
Rockweell
Raytheon
Lockheed
Northrop
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
You mean to tell me...there's still developer jobs here in the US? I thought they were all farmed out to India!
ttn motto
I've been at it in nearly every capacity for 30 years. Happily married for 27 with three daughters ages 20-25. I have been on more death marches than I care to remember.
Suggestions:
1. Continuously set and reset expectations of both your family and employer about your own behavior: where you will be, what you are doing, what your plans are, what your interest and commitments are. Fundamentally, COMMUNICATE!
2. Apologize to the appropriate people when you fail to live up to the expectations you have set. Set an example to your family on how to apologize when you screw up. You will screw up and they need a good example of humility.
3. Demonstrate you value people: family and fellow employees. There will always be another death march, but there may not be another kindergarten graduation.
4. Tell your employer, if they don't tell you first, that the work place must be fair. If they expect a death march, then you need to be compensated for time-off spent on possibly short notice life marches with the family. It's a two way street.
5. Love God, Love your Family, don't give a damn for what anyone else thinks!
Proverbs 3:5-6
To a non-parent, a job is a definition of self. You do your job to the best of your ability because of pride, desire to advance, and social acceptance. You do your job well not just to earn your peers' respect but hopefully to make yourself look better than your peers. It's a competition - you against your peers, your company against the other companies. It's a challenge to be overcome and there is a lot of satisfaction in that.
To a parent, a job is something you do so that you have enough money to make certain your kids and spouse have clothes, food, and a roof over their heads. A job is a source of money so that if you are lucky and make enough you can enjoy fun events or toys with your kids and spouse. A job is a source of health insurance to keep you, your spouse, and children healthy at a cost that doesn't bankrupt you if something bad happens to one of them. A job is stressful because it means time away from your kids, time that is forever lost. A job is stressful because you know that you, yes, in counterpoint, you CAN be fired for unfairly offloading your work to your peers (yes, I have seen that happen, a single mom with two troublesome kids was fired by my employer because she left work early so often to deal with brats' schools).
It's a matter of priority. To a parent, children are infinitely more important than anything at work. Work changes instantly from a definition of self to a source of income. And yes, you can be fired quite easily for not maintaining your job, which is a tremendous fear of all parents.
Fortunately, many managers are also parents, and they understand what this means to their employees who have kids.
You will understand when you are a parent.
It's not that one group is better or worse then another. A smart manager will put a parent in a role where they'll be successful based on their particular strengths. The ability to work late is not necessarily an advantage, depending on the quality and velocity of work produced during the period.
You need to learn how to make the mental transition to become this type of employee (focused and a little more serious). Time management is a skill you will master by necessity ; why wait for experience to teach you. Get busy, man!
Funny, but ill-advised, and certainly not "insightful." VB is an amazing productivity tool. Your kids will code circles around you while you are busy picking up mod points.
What we really need is an open-source VB equivalent. It's worrying that so many slashdotters don't seem to grasp this.
Similiar situation. In our case we moved to a small town and I took a job developing a single program for a publishing company. I started out working in an office at their facility about half time while the kids were in daycare/preschool. Once they understood that I was a 'compulsive' about programming they eased up and I started working at home. At the end of three years I was exclusively at home (and loosing lots of sleep - often programming after the little ones were in bed)
So you're saying not to get married in the first place. Find a woman you hate and buy her a house or something, 'cuz it's cheaper and you have more time to yourself that way.
I personally have three kids - 7 years, 3 years and 5 months. I've been married for 9 years now. I've been a programmer since before any of the kids and marriage. My family life is excellent though, even with my work. However, I telecommute, so I get lots of time with the family.
Before I was telecommuting (the first three years of my oldest sons life), things weren't so great though. Having to balance work, my extra activities (programming for linux kernel, and doing Debian stuff), things got really stressful.
I don't do any LUG type stuff. I spend all my spare time with my family. So all I can say is, try to cut back on the outside activities like LUG meetings, and try to see if your employer will accomodate some telecommute time. Just remember that your family comes first. Programming pays the bills, but it ain't your life.
I often find it hard to write code with all the distractions of an office - productivity coding evenings and weekends is, comparatively, astronomical. Not all people are creative or attentive as office hours may require. Sure, with kids, home will be full of distractions too, but the good kind. (Good meaning better to spend time w/ kids than to show your boss how to print for the 2314th time, etc).
VNC, Timbuktu, Large Flash Memory, etc. are all deeply useful for the whole 'pick up and go work somewhere else' for a bit. I've been coding for decades, but am just getting into Linux, and playing with bootable distributions like Knoppix just blows my mind with the potential for making the location of your ass completely meaningless. Chair in the office = armchar = rocking chair next to crib = park bench = beach and so on.
The trick to convincing your employer to let you work from home is quite simple: ... and later good debuggers... ... and later good coders....
1. Wait for a trivial feature request on a Friday. (In the real world, this shouldn't take too long)
2. Upon hearing the request, go white, wobble in your chair, get up, get dizzy and have to sit down again, and then go on a stammering rant about how complicated it is, how it'll break the entire software model, how you'll have to invent something nobody's ever been able to do before, and how many MONTHS it'll take to even get a prototype done. Say, "I'll go home tonight, and have a crack at it, and maybe I'll have something by Tuesday if I take Monday off...."
3. Enjoy your weekend, with a spot of coding during the brief rainy patch or whatever, get the job done.
4. "Work from home Monday" - actually work from home, though, don't skive off. Actually spend time on a frivolous but _shiny_ side-feature, while sitting by the phone so you can take emergency calls, just in case.
5. Show up on Tuesday, with the original "impossible" feature done AND a new shiny thing, raving about how much work you were able to get done working from 6pm Friday to 4am Tuesday at HOME.
6. Repeat as necessary until they get the hint.
7. Have babies.
8. When the ask what you're doing doing, tell them, and when they ask to help, let them. Little innocent eyes make good testers...
9.
10
11 ???
12 Profit
To a parent, a job is something you do so that you have enough money to make certain your kids and spouse have clothes, food, and a roof over their heads.
Yes, your kids are important to YOU. Not to ME. Not, indeed, to ANYONE else. Why is it, then, that I should do your work for you? Why do you expect that your employer owes you a living? Why do you expect your co-workers to pick up the slack just so you can sneak off early just to enjoy yourself?
There are millions of kids in the world, and they all have school plays and trumpet recitals and ballet classes and whatever. What makes YOURS so special?
I have seen that happen, a single mom with two troublesome kids was fired by my employer because she left work early so often to deal with brats' schools
Good for the employer. Few would do that, tho', for fear of getting sued.
I have worked in commercial outfits creating big software systems (and I've been working as a programmer for 21 years now). At every place that worked its programmers 60-80 hour weeks (often more) it was because of poor planning, poor feature management, poor testing, and a culture where "working hard" was more important than "working smart".
For example, one job I took in the month of February was for a project I quickly found out had been set for a delivery date of the previous December. At that same company, another project I worked on was due for delivery in mid-May but the VP did not order the servers and development workstations until late February and began his staffing of the project by hiring only contractors (I was the first full timer on the project sometime in March). In both cases we were expected/required to work extremely long hours, for weeks at a time, and I even made the mistake (chalk it up to my 2nd full time job out of grad school) of delaying a vacation to try to meet a date that was a totally lost cause.
The other place I worked at that had crazy work expectations was culturally imbued with lack of planning, no customer expectation management to speak of, and a president/owner whose "of the moment, and only for the moment" thinking had programmers adding complex new features at the last minute, without any kind of planning or coordination. Not surprisingly, simple projects would turn into year long nightmares as the scope expanded and the company made no effort to try to control customer expectations.
So, needless to say, I was relieved to leave both places. I benefitted greatly from the experience both jobs gave me (at the coding/development and the management levels), and I learned never to put myself in that situation again where management is incapable of planning and makes no effort to plan. You can smell a company that reeks of "long hour code jocks" during the interviews. Just run away, unless you want to live for the job.
(Coda: I now work as a programmer at a university where not only do I get to work on interesting projects that are meaningful but I also am never expected nor required to work longer than 40 hours a week; I have breathing space so I can plan and execute my work effectively.)
Actually, I know my kids are important to my coworkers and my managers. My boss asks about my kids and wife every week, and he tells me stories about his. My peers and I share babysitting chores amongst each other so that we can have grown-up time with spouses. One coworker has a child with cysitic fibrosis.... YOU would not understand, sql*kitten, but most other humans here WOULD understand what it meant when the entire department along with our wives and kids, including the single people in the team, all got together to join the walkathon to raise money for cystic fibosis studies and to help this guy's little boy.
This concern for children other than mine is not limited to my family and coworkers. It extends into my neighborhood. My neighbors watch my boys occasional evenings, as my wife and I watch theirs sometimes. As a community, my neighborhood watchs all of its children; sometimes I am outside playing with the local kids, sometimes it's the guy next door or the lady across the street. Conversations with my neighbors aren't limited to weather and cars, but children, family, local community events.
Obviously, sql*kitten, you do not understand what it means to care about something other than a career. I pity you. I pray you never have children for their sake. Feel free to keep my name handy, I know a good divorce lawyer. Someday, I guarantee you will need one (assuming you can find someone willing to marry a black-hearted, soulless person such as yourself).
but a dad. When my wife and I had our first child, a good friend advised us to become a single income household. he gave lots of reasons but the impact on children was the single most important. We are fortunate that my job (Army) pays well enought for us to be able to do that. Our life is not lavish - we average 9 years per car, 4 years per computer and it will be a long time before all our furtunature matches. On the other hand our children are healthy and well adjusted. You cant put a price on that. Another friend told me to abide by the rule of God first, family second and work third with the understanding that sometimes they will be out of balance but as long as you maintain a long term balance, you will be OK. Long hours in the Army tend to last months so when I can spend time with my family I do. My boss has always understood when I left for doctors appointments, soccer games and PTA meetings because they have alwasys known that somewhere down the line will be 90+ hour weeks. We both know that if we say its important, it really is (it has to work both ways and your family has to know that sometimes work is important). I count myself lucky in that respect becausee many of my friends have had bosses that work them for sport. Some things I have learned about time with my kids:
Doctors appointmnts are more important than I thought. Go if you can.
30 minutes of reading to your kids before bed is worth hours doing almost anything else.
Bring them to your office once in awhile if you can. I never knew how important this was until I changed jobs that did not allow any outside visitors and my kids couldnt see where I was when I was not home.
Show up for lunch at their school twice a year and they will talk about it all year and be the envy of 90% of their friends.
Make parent teacher conferences. If the teachers know you are involved, 50% of the normal issues never even happen.
include your family in any work related recognition. It lets them kow why you were gone and reminds your boss how important your family is to you.
Someday I intend to retire. I plan on having a family to spend time with. Your company will not show up at your funeral, your family will (ok, turth in lending, my company will!).
Good luck!
Obviously, sql*kitten, you do not understand what it means to care about something other than a career.
Oh, I care about plenty of stuff. The kids of relative strangers just aren't high on that list. Particularly when said parents assume that because I choose to be child-free, I'm happy to do extra work just so they can slack off. Maybe those single people were happy to join in - maybe they felt they had to, since your manager clearly discriminates in favour of parents at every opportunity.
Like I say, they're YOUR kids. If you can raise them without shirking your work, good for you. If you can't, it's not MY problem. By rights, people who slack - for any reason - should be as sackable as each other. Whether your kid was crying all night or you were playing tetris all night makes no difference, if you can't do the job you were paid to do, someone else will have to.
goo goo dah dah linux bable bable bable
Man - I haven't seen a single comment about marathon programming sessions for the shear joy of it. Or the sad fact that sometimes your bio-rithyms are such that you get really productive around 3 or 4 PM - and you want to stay in the "flow".
I find programming to be quite influenced by mood and inspiration - and it's difficult to fit in to a 9 to 5 day.
- Father (2boys)/Programmer(Cause I gotta be)
I work for a failing software company. We missed our IPO by about 2 months when the bubble popped. Now we're down from 500-600 headcount to under 80. What's nice about all the cuts and slowdown of business is that the hours are back to roughly 40 a week instead of the insane pace we had back in the boom.
That said, we have a COO and CEO that fly in every week from their homes and a CIO that sacrificed her family life for her career. So they don't have a lot of sympathy for a developer that needs to stay home with a sick kid 2 days a month. Still, our whole development organization is made up of about 75% guys with kids under 6 years old. I wouldn't change careers or companies any time soon.
The kid is more important. Don't be an asshole and neglect your kid for your job. He'll just end up robbing me at the quickie mart in 10 years.
Population is not a problem in any first world country. Nearly all MDCs have shown population decline in recent decades. Hell, not even china is much of a problem anymore, although their tactics are questionable, the PRC has their population under maybe too good of control. I've heard that within something like 3 more generations china's population will be something like 80% male. The only real problem now is india, as their growth shows no signs of slowing down.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Not saying you shouldn't blame it on bad management but that doesn't change the fact that the management is only going to get blamed if they don't do a death march and finish on schedule. As long as they do they are going to come out smelling like roses no matter how bad the death march was or who caused it.
I'm guessing the key point about the places where you worked were bad were developing serious software under a gun and probably trying to make quarters. So now you are sitting in a laid back university where making a quarter is a nonexistent concept so it probably doesn't matter a whole lot exactly when you deliver the software, right? Its not like your management there is probably any better or different its just it doesn't particularly matter when you finish so obviously you have no death marches.
@de_machina
The difference between my previous jobs and my current one at a university is partly due (as you say) to there being no direct financial pressure to deliver software on specific dates, partly due to there being no one at the university in the morally grey territory of benefitting from a sales commission received for having closed a deal that cannot possibly be fulfilled as promised, and partly due to my director and higher management understanding the importance of planning.
It might also have a lot to do with the fact that my director once worked as a professional programmer in our department and therefore is able to apply the lessons he learned years ago.
The other job I had where everything was planned appropriately, an iron fist controlled scope creep, and we delivered the final system months early and under budget was in an IT group at a major bank. I expect that here too the reward for the project director (an appointment as a bank VP) was given largely for the successful completion of the project. Upper management considered timeliness, quality, and budgetary discipline to be important, none of which can be attained without proper planning and execution.
If you're interested, here's the job outlook for all of Canada. The Ontario College of Teachers has a lot of job preparation information. I'm sure you'll be able to find the same for the states.
now I have to find out what 'scrum' is. The only other management style that I'm used to is, crisis management. pretty much the standard in telecom
Here's a link to a book...
s ea rch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=34MC0MKXUW&isbn=0130676 349&TXT=Y&itm=1
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/textbooks/book
The quick answer, though, is that it's a management technique that places proper time emphasis on those aspects of programming that need tighter control (like preventing people from constantly changing a programmer's priorities), takes away unnecessary obstacles (like documentation for documentation's sake), and grants freedom where it's really necessary (e.g., the fine details of "how to get it done")
Definitely a must read for anyone who has been frustrated by excessively bureaucratic development enviroments.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
You've just been added to my "friends" list
Nobody lays on thier deathbed and says "I wish I had spent more time in the office."
I agree that if I was about to have a child, it would be nice to have a 2 year paid paternity/maternity leave. But, I don't think it's an ideal solution. Here are three things that I see wrong with it right away:
1. When Paul Parenthood goes on paternity leave the company has to pay for two people to do one job for two years. You've just raised the cost of doing business considerably. So, businesses will be less likely to hire people.
2. A friend of mine described the situation in Brazil to me. This may be out of date since he left Brazil many years ago. Companies are required to give a woman 6 months maternity leave when she has a child and she practically can not be fired for any reason for two years after going back to work. If they violate this law the company faces a stiff fine. In effect, this law made it almost impossible for a married woman to find a job in Brazil. No employer wants to hire someone who could get pregnant at any time and would require the maternity leave.
3. You've chosen Germany as your example. Germany consistently has unemployment rates considerably higher than the US, even if you do count discouraged people no longer searching for work.
I have teenagers. They need me more now then when they were infants. They have after school activities & don't yet DRIVE.
When my kids were little, I'd work my 9-5, pick the kids up from day care, and spend time with them until they went to bed (like 9 pm). IF I needed to put in more work hours, I'd do it from my home office. I wasn't asking anyone else to pick up my slack. I was just doing my OT later.
Now that they are on sports teams, or going to the movies with friends, 9-5 doesn't work. Now it's 7-3 with OT as needed.
I've learned to be VERY productive during my working hours to reduce the need for OT. I don't spend much time chatting with the office gang, because they aren't my social life any more.