Work/Life Balance

[hobbsyoyo]

Do you all struggle with this? How do you find the right balance? In particular, how do you balance ambition and the desire to advance with familial/personal obligations?

I have always been an over achiever and I used to think I would just work really hard to advance in my profession. Yesterday I had the first inklings that I may not be able to do this.

There is a big pressure to work yourself to death to advance in industry (most industries anyways) and as you climb higher, the pressure increases. I spend 4 days a week two hours from my home at a job in St. Louis and then come home for a 3 day weekend. On the weekends, I usually do satellite team work. This weekend, I spent basically all of Saturday and Sunday in the sat lab working even though my wife was off of work. Now I'm at home and she's at work and I'll only see her a few more hours tonight before I head back to St. Louis.

I got a massive feeling of regret and sadness yesterday that I had missed out on a weekend with my wife. At the same time, work had to be done in the lab, it was important that I was there. This leads me to believe that at some point, my career will stall out because I think if I have to choose between family time and work, the former will win most of the time.

How do you all balance similar situations? How do you advance without becoming an absentee husband/father/friend?

 

[warpus]

Do you all struggle with this? How do you find the right balance? In particular, how do you balance ambition and the desire to advance with familial/personal obligations?

I put in my 35 hours a week and go home. Once I'm home, work mail is for the most part off limits. If I ever have to work longer than necessary, due to a deadline or some other reason, I will stay late and flex the time. So if I spend 2 hours working "overtime" (which is not allowed, technically), I will take 2 hours off another day. I'm also allowed to work from home, so if I'm feeling creative and am bumming around at home with nothing to do, I could put a couple ours into a project, and then take them off later.

So I allow a bit of my work life to bleed over into my personal life, but not much at all. My personal stuff bleeds into my work life as well, from time to time. If something comes up, whether it's me having to go to the dentist, a family emergency, a lawnmower that needs to be dropped off somewhere so it can be fixed, etc.. All that stuff is fine to miss parts of the workday for, as far as my boss is concerned.

The balance works well, but a lot of people really suck at it. They'll work 1-2 hours extra each day, and when they go on vacation they just sit around at home and work from there, whenever their time is needed. Screw that, I fly to Asia for a month and nobody hears from me until I'm back.

There's no way my life is going to revolve around my work.. not even close.

as you climb higher, the pressure increases

I try not to climb higher, as I don't really want a lot more pressure and responsibilities here at work. As such I have made it clear to the higher ups that I do not want to end up in a managerial position, where I'm overseeing the work of others, unless those people are all junior programmers, and they make me a senior programmer who lays out ideas for code and does a lot of coding himself. I'm in this job because I enjoy programming, not because I eventually want to be in charge of people who enjoy programming.

Having said that, I do want all those increase of living wage bumps we get every 1-2 years, not to mention the performance reviews and increases based on those. Those I'll take

There's also the fact that I'm far more experienced now, and as such am in charge of more important projects. This is the sort of career advancement I am interested in! It doesn't mean that I have to work longer hours, the hours stay exactly the same (35 a week, no overtime allowed). It just means that I have more responsibilities and get to work on more interesting projects. I'm also given more faith by the higher ups in terms of me designing stuff on my own and having for the most part full creative control over my projects.

So the pressure increases for me, but it's the sort of pressure I crave - more interesting projects and problems to solve, and more important stakeholders who care about the outcome of the projects.

This weekend, I spent basically all of Saturday and Sunday in the sat lab working even though my wife was off of work. Now I'm at home and she's at work and I'll only see her a few more hours tonight before I head back to St. Louis.

That's really hectic, I wouldn't be able to put up with that. I hope they're reimbursing you for all that time!

How do you all balance similar situations? How do you advance without becoming an absentee husband/father/friend?

Huh, I guess I have it good, because it isn't really an issue. I've been digging in my heels over what is and isn't cool as far as work is concerned, so a lot of boundaries are there by my insistence. Other people at work haven't been so lucky. You make one concession and next thing you know there's precedent and you're coming in 1 hour early every day, not leaving any earlier to go home... No way. They could pay me $10,000 more a year and I wouldn't agree to working more hours than I do.

I hate stress, there's no way work is following me home, unless it's an emergency.

 

[Borachio]

Do you work to live, or live to work?

(Hey! That's very nearly a conundrum! Or do I mean a palindrome? Maybe a gazebo? Let's face it, I don't have a clue.)

 

[really]

What was it you were doing that was so important?
Could it have waited?
Could it have been delegated?
Did it need to be done at all?

In the past I found that colleagues in the US worked crazy hours and were expected to work crazy hours.

I on occasion did long hours but it was predictable and limited - outside of that if something didn't get done it probably wasn't important.
Reflecting on my work, mistakes, possibilities for improvement, automation, whether it was needed at all helps me keep ahead.
I also think it makes you a better employee and more likely to be promoted.

The best manager I worked for was promoted quickly and highly. He always asked why someone was asking for a particular report. It made the requester think about what they were asking and refine their question or drop it all together. It also meant avoiding duplication, or being able to reuse reports for more than one purpose or whatever. If he felt it wasn't needed or justified it wasn't done.

The worst managers I worked for tried to do everything and were online at all hours answering every little question. They struggled to delegate and work ended up being duplicated or fragmented. Since they were working ridiculous hours they expected me to do so too.

 

[Tahuti]

How do you all balance similar situations? How do you advance without becoming an absentee husband/father/friend?

Have an own business. Occassionally I am employed, though never full time. Though in your case, such might lead to sumptuary restrictions you cannot afford to take.

 

[Mise]

You can't have it all, unfortunately. I work in a job that is relatively low pressure, but there are few real career opportunities left for me without a significant increase in responsibilities. I don't really want that. I've had to come to terms with the fact that I'm simply not that ambitious. Not career-wise anyway. I have ambitions outside of the workplace, but at work I want the easy life.

I think you have to make a choice at some point. You can't have it all, unfortunately.

 

[Borachio]

Have an own business. Occassionally I am employed, though never full time. Though in your case, such might lead to sumptuary restrictions you cannot afford to take.

What? What does this mean, please?

Sumptuary restrictions are restrictions on what you can wear according to your position in some social hierarchy. I thought. Like only peers are allowed to wear ermine. Only cardinals scarlet. And so forth. (Restrictions, btw, which belonged to another age. And were never effective, in any case.)

I can't see why Mr Hobbs, as a self-employed engineer, might be restricted in this way.

 

[brennan]

Work can get stuffed. Life is way, way more important.

 

[Tahuti]

You can't have it all, unfortunately. I work in a job that is relatively low pressure, but there are few real career opportunities left for me without a significant increase in responsibilities. I don't really want that. I've had to come to terms with the fact that I'm simply not that ambitious. Not career-wise anyway. I have ambitions outside of the workplace, but at work I want the easy life.

I think you have to make a choice at some point. You can't have it all, unfortunately.

Well, you can, though there is a catch. A really succesful businessperson might have plenty of leisure time and a insanely large living standards, though it involves massive risks (or just luck) in order to get there.

What? What does this mean, please?

In this case, the necessity to be thrifty.

 

[Farm Boy]

I had this dilemma. I decided money and prestige were a sucker's game. They aren't really, but they weren't my game. Not super useful, I know, but I have faith you can strike a better balance than I did. That balance is going to keep shifting, btw. If you add in some mini-Hobbs at some point, you'll make sure you don't miss the stuff you want/need to be a part of. Watching just how fast kids grow really does ring home that you can't hold onto time. It isn't going to wait for you, so pick the window seats that let you get the view you want.

 

[Mise]

@Kaiserguard: Yeah, well, how many of those are there? Like 1 in 1,000,000? 99.999% of people will never achieve this, no matter how hard they work or how smart they are. The odds are... not good. Better to accept you'll never be one of them and figure out what you really want out of life.

 

[Tahuti]

@Kaiserguard: Yeah, well, how many of those are there? Like 1 in 1,000,000? 99.999% of people will never achieve this, no matter how hard they work or how smart they are.

Exactly. I prefer the life side. To some extent, you only know when you have satisfying work when you the distinction between life and work isn't particularly strong.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I put in my 35 hours a week and go home.

I'm curious, is 35 hours/week considered full time where you work?

I'm also allowed to work from home, so if I'm feeling creative and am bumming around at home with nothing to do, I could put a couple ours into a project, and then take them off later.

Due to government restrictions, I am not allowed to do that - the same goes for a lot of other people in my industry where a lot of work is restricted or classified. But assuming it was allowed, do you think working at home a whole lot will improve family life over working at work a whole lot? It would cut down on commutes, which helps. And being at home with the family, even if you are busy doing work, is better than not being home I guess. But I'm not sure it's an end-all be-all solution if you are having to put in more than 40 hours a week at work.

The balance works well, but a lot of people really suck at it. They'll work 1-2 hours extra each day, and when they go on vacation they just sit around at home and work from there, whenever their time is needed. Screw that, I fly to Asia for a month and nobody hears from me until I'm back.

Honest question - I know you don't want to advance, but assuming you did, do you think those people who work too much would tend to advance faster?

I try not to climb higher, as I don't really want a lot more pressure and responsibilities here at work. As such I have made it clear to the higher ups that I do not want to end up in a managerial position, where I'm overseeing the work of others, unless those people are all junior programmers, and they make me a senior programmer who lays out ideas for code and does a lot of coding himself. I'm in this job because I enjoy programming, not because I eventually want to be in charge of people who enjoy programming.

You see, I actually like managing people and do want to wind up in management. But I'm worried I won't be able to get there without working myself to death. Even then, it's not actually the volume of work that bothers me, it's the time commitment that goes with that work.

That's really hectic, I wouldn't be able to put up with that. I hope they're reimbursing you for all that time!

Well, to be fair, it's a one-off situation that I won't likely ever be in. I got an 8 month co-op that's 2 hours from where I live and go to school (still have 1 year left). At the same time, a position of leadership opened up on the satellite design team that I am a part of at school (no one gets paid on the team). The prof in charge of the team asked if I wanted the job and I took it because I knew with me being out of school for so long that I wouldn't be able to come back to the team and still advance due to the way advancements on the team tend to work.

So I took the position essentially so I could advance and continue to advance in the future. No one pressured me to do it but I knew that taking the position would amount to a lot of work and hassle on my part. So that's where I'm at now, trying to juggle all my commitments because when my co-op ends, I'll go back to school full-time and I want to continue advancing on the team which probably couldn't have happened if I didn't take the promotion when it was offered.

As I said, this is a one-off situation I probably won't run into after I graduate. But I can easily envision situations where I have to make similar sacrifices in order to advance and now I'm wondering if that would be wise.

Do you work to live, or live to work?

(Hey! That's very nearly a conundrum! Or do I mean a palindrome? Maybe a gazebo? Let's face it, I don't have a clue.)

I honestly don't know. I love my work, but I love my at-home time just as much.

What was it you were doing that was so important?
Could it have waited?
Could it have been delegated?
Did it need to be done at all?

Part of my current difficulties is that it is very hard to delegate on the satellite team. We don't pay people and we can't really fire them. So when you assign people to do work and they don't do it, well, someone has to pick up the slack. Since I'm the lead for my subsystem, I'm responsible for our output so ultimately when no one else does the work, I have to. But I am working on some new initiatives to make people more accountable for their assignments so it should get better. Also, the prof who is in charge of the whole team is thinking along very similar lines to myself so there will be a lot of changes.

The best manager I worked for was promoted quickly and highly. He always asked why someone was asking for a particular report. It made the requester think about what they were asking and refine their question or drop it all together. It also meant avoiding duplication, or being able to reuse reports for more than one purpose or whatever. If he felt it wasn't needed or justified it wasn't done.

Yeah, work smarter not harder. Problem is, sometimes you can't avoid having to put in the long hours. Or can you?

Have an own business. Occassionally I am employed, though never full time. Though in your case, such might lead to sumptuary restrictions you cannot afford to take.

Yeah, that's not always an option. Plus, just having your own business doesn't necessarily mean you won't have to work crazy hours - sometimes it's just the opposite.

You can't have it all, unfortunately. I work in a job that is relatively low pressure, but there are few real career opportunities left for me without a significant increase in responsibilities. I don't really want that. I've had to come to terms with the fact that I'm simply not that ambitious. Not career-wise anyway. I have ambitions outside of the workplace, but at work I want the easy life.

I think you have to make a choice at some point. You can't have it all, unfortunately.

That's what I'm afraid of, an unavoidable choice.

Edit: @FarmBoy

The realization of how much I would have to sacrifice to achieve professional goals if I have kids actually has me re-thinking whether or not I want kids. I do, but I don't want to be an absentee dad and I also want to advance in my career. It seems hard to have both things.

 

[Mise]

35 hours a week is pretty standard here. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 1 hour lunch = 35 hours a week.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It seems pretty common here for employers to not pay you for your lunch so you have to work 8.8 or 9 hour days depending on how long your lunch is. It sucks pretty bad

 

[Borachio]

35 hours a week is pretty standard here. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 1 hour lunch = 35 hours a week.

It is, I guess. I used to be obliged to work 60 hour weeks, minimum. Different worlds.

(Mind you, I didn't complain. I wanted the money.)

 

[Zelig]

I try not to climb higher, as I don't really want a lot more pressure and responsibilities here at work. As such I have made it clear to the higher ups that I do not want to end up in a managerial position, where I'm overseeing the work of others, unless those people are all junior programmers, and they make me a senior programmer who lays out ideas for code and does a lot of coding himself. I'm in this job because I enjoy programming, not because I eventually want to be in charge of people who enjoy programming.

Most non-tech companies do a terrible job of handling management for programmers. There's really very little skill overlap between awesome programmers and awesome managers, "promoting" the best programmers just leaves you with a weaker programming team and someone who isn't particularly good at managing it.

And thinking of managers of programmers as a step up over programmers is a mistake in the first place - managers aren't leaders, they're there to eliminate distractions to professionals getting their work done.

Due to government restrictions, I am not allowed to do that - the same goes for a lot of other people in my industry where a lot of work is restricted or classified. But assuming it was allowed, do you think working at home a whole lot will improve family life over working at work a whole lot? It would cut down on commutes, which helps. And being at home with the family, even if you are busy doing work, is better than not being home I guess. But I'm not sure it's an end-all be-all solution if you are having to put in more than 40 hours a week at work.

Working from home is awesome, I'll never again work a job where I don't have the option. Baseline minimum for me is two days a week from home, company can pick which days.

It seems pretty common here for employers to not pay you for your lunch so you have to work 8.8 or 9 hour days depending on how long your lunch is. It sucks pretty bad

Huh? 35 hours is with them not paying for lunch, if they paid for lunch it would be 40 hours.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Companies here also abuse the hell out of salaried employees. It is my understanding that in the US, if a salaried employee has to work over I think 60 hours a week, they have to be given overtime. That doesn't happen at a lot of places and to be honest, there are way too many places that make salaried people work up to 60 hours a week, every single week. That's abusive IMO and one thing I do know for certain is I will not work at a place that is run like that if I can avoid it. And if I can't avoid it, I'll try and change jobs as quickly as possible.

If I'm required to work more than 40 hours a week, every week, then I will be paid for that.

@Zelig

I'm assuming that they are getting paid a salary that assumes they are 'at work' for 40 hours even if 1 hour is for lunch. Here, they pay you for 40 hours but don't pay you for lunch, so you are 'at work' for 45 hours. It's the difference between being at work from 9 to 5 or 9 to 6 but getting paid the same.

 

[kochman]

Do you all struggle with this? How do you find the right balance? In particular, how do you balance ambition and the desire to advance with familial/personal obligations?

I have always been an over achiever and I used to think I would just work really hard to advance in my profession. Yesterday I had the first inklings that I may not be able to do this.

There is a big pressure to work yourself to death to advance in industry (most industries anyways) and as you climb higher, the pressure increases. I spend 4 days a week two hours from my home at a job in St. Louis and then come home for a 3 day weekend. On the weekends, I usually do satellite team work. This weekend, I spent basically all of Saturday and Sunday in the sat lab working even though my wife was off of work. Now I'm at home and she's at work and I'll only see her a few more hours tonight before I head back to St. Louis.

I got a massive feeling of regret and sadness yesterday that I had missed out on a weekend with my wife. At the same time, work had to be done in the lab, it was important that I was there. This leads me to believe that at some point, my career will stall out because I think if I have to choose between family time and work, the former will win most of the time.

How do you all balance similar situations? How do you advance without becoming an absentee husband/father/friend?

I think that at some point, most of us go through this consideration. You either decide you want the $$$ and you'll do whatever you need... or, you decide, screw it, I've got enough, I'd rather focus on the rest of my life.
So, it's just a matter of what you prioritize.

If you missed out on a weekend with your wife, you can probably approach it in one of at least two ways.
1) I've got the rest of my life with her, not a huge deal
2) This is happening too often, and I feel regret

Believe me, if you get divorced or whatever, you're company isn't going to care and love you.

Personally, I've gone the work as little as possible route, after years of trying hard. My previous years put me in a comfortable enough place. I am really glad to have had all the other time I've wanted to develop myself, my hobbies, my interpersonal relationships, etc.
I'll still have a pension if I stay the course (which I don't plan on at this point), I've got savings, etc.

Terrible nightmare scenario that I've heard of too often... shortly after retirment getting diagnosed with some fatal or debilitating disease, having a heart attack/stroke, etc.

You got one life... what do you trade your time for?

 

[warpus]

I'm curious, is 35 hours/week considered full time where you work?

Here in Canada most people do 40 for fulltime, but everyone at my place of employment does 35. (in writing at least, like I said a lot of people work longer than their contract stipulates)

But assuming it was allowed, do you think working at home a whole lot will improve family life over working at work a whole lot? It would cut down on commutes, which helps. And being at home with the family, even if you are busy doing work, is better than not being home I guess. But I'm not sure it's an end-all be-all solution if you are having to put in more than 40 hours a week at work.

I work from home because it usually means I'll get a lot more done - there are far less distractions there. I also work much better at night, for some reason.

If I had kids and stuff at home, I probably would never work from home, except for when I had to during emergencies. I just wouldn't be able to concentrate. And if a wife was there, I'm not so sure either, as I might very well view work as my time away from her.

And it completely depends on the scheduling of your family, I guess. Having flex time means that you can take off random days or hours and be home for certain times of the day or week.. But if your family members' schedules have them going to work or school 9-5pm, then you wouldn't really be able to take advantage of your flex work hours, since theirs are so rigid.

The cutting down on commutes is definitely a big plus.

Honest question - I know you don't want to advance, but assuming you did, do you think those people who work too much would tend to advance faster?

No, because they aren't programmers, they're people who do regular "office work", such as working with word processors, excel spreadsheets, answering phones, etc. They wouldn't know where to begin doing my job or managing programmers, and I wouldn't really know how to manage people who do their sort of work. So we're sort of in completely different roles and if we were promoted ot management - we'd end up in different types of managerial positions.

All the other programmers on campus who use the exact technology that I use have a cool boss who gives them flex time as well, plus the ability to work from home, etc. All the stuff I get, but a biiiiit better. Their boss is only in charge of programmers and sysadmis, while mine is mostly in charge of housewives using Excel.

But let's say a managerial position that has nothing to do with anything technical opens up. I wouldn't be at the top of the list of people who could get the position.. but that's mostly because my boss wouldn't ever consider it for me, since my expertise lies in another realm altogether.. and he knows that I wouldn't want a job like that anyway.

But say he didn't know.. It's so hard to say.. I think he'd look at my actual managerial skills and how well I manage my time, as opposed to whether I stay late to finish work, technically against union rules. I'd hope so, anyway.

You see, I actually like managing people and do want to wind up in management. But I'm worried I won't be able to get there without working myself to death. Even then, it's not actually the volume of work that bothers me, it's the time commitment that goes with that work.

Yeah, I never want to be in such a position of high stress, so I'm throwing the possibility of me becoming a manager of some sort right into the garbage, before it even becomes available.. unless of course they assign a couple coders to work under me and I still get to code, and I don't have to be on call. But that's never happening.

I have a friend who works for Yahoo mail in San Jose/San Francisco. His life is insane.. He gets up at 7am and returns home from work at 7-8pm. He feeds his cat and goes out to a fancy restaurant, and then goes home to watch some TV for a bit and then goes to sleep. He is on call 24/7, even on weekends. He says he ends up putting in at least a couple hours on weekends each week, and oftentimes he will be busy a lot more than that.

What does he get out of it? He gets to live in an expensive city and make 6 figures. He has a flashy car and eats at fancy restaurants. Yet he never has time to do anything other than his schedule.. The main joy he gets out of life is going to fancy restaurants and eating like a king. When I was there to visit he was super excited to be able to break out of his routine.. which mind you was exactly what his routine usually is - dinner at a fancy restaurant.

I would hate having his job, as I really value my personal time. He doesn't have any of it. You wouldn't be able to attract me to a job like that if it paid 7 figures a year. I'm not kidding at all about that either. I can be a stressball sometimes.. That sort of job would make me go completely insane. I wouldn't want to do it for a year and then quit even.