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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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
My daughter (who is 8) has her own blog. She was concerned about security, articulated to me a permissions system she would like to implement, and we wrote that system together.
Surprisingly enough, I brought that system to work with me today and we are using an expanded version of it for an enterprise system.
M
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'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
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.
...outsource your parenting responsibilities.
I know three nannys here in the Seattle area. All of them work for Microsofties.
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.
Broke is right, with the child support.
Sometimes I think suicide is a valid alternative, then I realize it's only 10 more years...
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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.
I'm pretty confident you've never worked in a place that develops real, big commercial software, especially a version 1, or if you did you didn't last very long. Death marches are a near inevitability unless the software you are developing is trivial stupid or your company is willing to ship buggy software.
You could dream the product is going to be perfectly engineered and the bug count is going to taper off perfectly on schedule (only time I've seen this happen is when the management team just futures enough bugs every night to keep the slopes on their bug graphs on projections. They usually start supressing tracking of futured bugs at the same time.
If you think manager take the bullet for missed schedules you are working on a different planet than me. If the manager sees his project's timeline slipping past then end of a make or break quarter he is going to put you on a death march and you are going to march or get laid off at the next opportunity. If you are lucky the manager will give you time off after you ship equal to the extra time you were forced to work though this is usually a small fraction of the amount of extra time you probably did work. You might get a little stock or a bonus if the product is successful. Meanwhile the manager and the executive team who were probably missing in action most of the late nights and weekends, probably busy partying, will get a shit load of options and huge bonuses.
Welcome to capitalism, ain't it grand.
@de_machina
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
I love my job. It's rewarding, incredibly satisfying, and I hear reports almost daily about how much the work I'm contributing towards helps people. I go home after a long day of coding and can feel like I haven't wasted my day in the long scheme of things.
I'm not married (yet), but I am engaged. I can honestly say that no matter how much I love my job, I love my fiancee more, and am much more dedicated to her.
Spouse first, children second, work third.
I don't need a good job. If this job interferes with my family life in a way that hinders my being a good husband and father, I will undoubtedly drop this job.
I think the grandparent post has the right idea.
My 2 cents, fwiw.
--AC
That's like a store owner saying, "hey, I don't want my stuff getting stolen, and I only want my friends allowed in here!" then claiming "the store owner articulated to me a security system" after said system had been thoroughly developed by you. Oh wait, let me guess, you explained it in simple terms to her all the way, to which she responded "I like that" or "that's good." Oh please; that is not "articulation," and your daughter did not develop that (thought quite simple) permissions system.
I suppose you're eager for the times when you can brag to your coworkers about her perfect SAT scores, shortly before she has a nervous breakdown from the demands of a boastful, overbearing father.
Your daughter expressed a simple desire, you yourself came up with the means to do it. This is not unusual nor a sign of prodigious intelligence. I bet you won't flinch at writing her college essays for her either.
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.
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
It's not the kids that mind, it's Mom that wants to have someone else handle the kids for a few hours to get some peace and quiet that wants me home :)
No. This all started with her telling me she was afraid of wierdos on the Internet, and she no longer wanted to do a blog. We tried basic authentication to keep out people she doesn't know, but she got sick of having to hand out the username and password to all her friends, who can't remember an alphanumeric password to save their lives and can't always read their own handwriting.
She asked me why we couldn't let people put in their own names and passwords, so I showed her how to build a page that does this. Then we built an admin screen for user accounts, and she started to get the idea about if-then statements. Her next question was why can't she make it so everybody sees some stories but only some people see other stories. Then it was why can't we make it so some people see pictures and not others.
What we ended up with was her asking if everything could be turned on and turned off, and I said yes. I explained to her about recursion and how a function can call itself, and before long we had an n-level explicit permissions system under development. It probably took 2 months of coding, mostly on the weekends and with weekly milestones.
At each phase, this was her thinking, I tried just to help her write the code and understand what the control structures do. If you want, I can ask her to tell the story. She tells it far better than I could.
M
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.
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.
Linus Torvalds is an excellent father and coder. He can do both... so why wouldn't you?
Mind Booster Noori
Do you seriously think anyone gives a rats ass if your kid is in the hospital at 4am? Tons of people are but we only give a shit if we know them. I mean, lets be honest here, do you regularly spend your late nights with other sick people at the hospital waiting on strangers? Didn't think so. Don't let YOUR rugrats get in the way of MY schedule. Suck it up and take some responsibility for having a kid, this also includes not whining about having to take care of them, sick or healthy. When it comes time for my children to be in the hospital, I don't expect people to sympathize with me.
So Yeah, if someone misses the opening of LOTR, who gives a fuck, but the same goes for every parent whos dumbass kid shoves crayons up their nose or any other serious injury or illness, that's life. If someone wants to spend their ONE LIFE watching LOTR on the first day, who the hell are you to deny them the defence of their pleasure? It sure as hell isn't you!
It is absolutely ridiculous to try and equate a movie with a child. Until you have had children, you cannot possibly understand their emotional significance to their parents. This is a genetic trait that is millions of years old. Be glad that your father didn't have problems deciding between a movie and his child.
Several people have made good points in this discussion. Personally, I am a software architect who has an eleven week old son. Thus this is something that I have thought a lot about in the past. I realized that there was no way that I could work 80-90 hour work weeks anymore. However, I realized that I have NEVER worked those kind of weeks consistently. Sure I've had my share of nights where I worked until 3 AM, but if I had to do that everyday (or once a week every week for that matter) then I would have burned out a long time ago. I've worked for several startups and consulting firms, never any 9 to 5 gigs. The beauty of working at such places is that it's about getting your job done. If it takes you 80 hours every week to get your job done, then you are in the wrong business and should reconsider careers.
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
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.
It is absolutely ridiculous to try and equate a movie with a child. Until you have had children, you cannot possibly understand their emotional significance to their parents.
The point that you are missing that they are YOUR kids, not anyone elses, YOURS. You have NO RIGHT to use them as an excuse to impinge on anyone else's life - no matter how trivial their life might seem to you. Why should someone else have to pick up the slack because you overcommitted yourself and are now flaking out or your professional responsibilities?
How important your kids are to you is absolutely irrelevant here. They are not important to anyone else - yet you expect other people to act as if they are. That's not reasonable. Right now the law is stacked in your favour - I'll vote for anyone who'll redress the balance.
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