Men Get Serious About Work-Life Balance

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-30/alpha-dads-men-get-serious-about-work-life-balance

by draugadrotten • 13 years ago

73 59 13 years ago

kirinan3• 13 years ago

This resonates with me. Im a software engineer, with a young child (< 1 yr), and am pretty young myself (23). I've been working full time since I was 18 (juggling college and full time work), and got married fairly young (20). Because Im young (regardless of home responsibilities) software shops expect me to work 10+ hour days, and I pretty much have to lay down the law: if you are interested in any amount of talent that I have (which I have no idea how much/or little that is), then you are going to have to deal with 8 hours of me putting in a rigorous amount of work. Do I go heads down for 8 hours most days? Yes, and I usually feel like I couldn't work another hour after I leave anyways. However, it gives the appearance that I don't care about my career or dont care if the company is successful or not. This is the opposite of the truth, I want to reach my peak as a developer as much as the next guy, and I always strive to get better. I spend more time than most people on developing my skills and always try to participate in the community whenever possible. I think business and life should be separate, and honestly people should also not judge other people. They don't know their circumstances, nor do they know what that person wants out of life. You are free to hire who you want, and think however you want, but in the end its your loss, not mine.

coldtea3• 13 years ago

>However, it gives the appearance that I don't care about my career or dont care if the company is successful or not.

That's why 8 hours should be law and overtime should only be used in emergency cases (and paid accordingly).

So that those young & naive, desperate or overly ambitious to foolishly work 10 or 14 hours do not drag down (as "not serious enough with their career") those that want a stable work-life balance.

As soon as you let individuals and businesses decide how they go about it, it's a race to the bottom (those that do want it, fuck all the others).

kirinan3• 13 years ago

Its nothing about overly ambitious, its about what you said: a stable work-life balance. Start up culture has lead us to believe that if you don't work 100 hour weeks, you don't want it bad enough or you don't care; that's patently false. If you really need to work 12 hour days to get something done you need to examine how you work. I guarantee you that you could improve your tools (knowledge of your tools), change the way you develop software or spend less time playing foosball and more time in front of the screen. I'm not against working a 10 hour day when a system is down or if something crashes that needs fixed: I'm against doing it everyday. No one is going to be like "Oh I wished I had worked more" when they are on their death beds, and I wish people would start thinking long term and about their health and future.

pdog• 13 years ago

> As soon as you let individuals and businesses decide how they go about it, it's a race to the bottom...

Or, you get free markets and laissez-faire capitalism, the greatest wealth-producing system known to mankind.

_yosefk2• 13 years ago

I'm definitely with you, in that I'd like shorter work weeks to be the standard, and I don't want to compete with people wishing to work more hours. But what if someone really needs the extra money brought by longer work weeks? Making it illegal for them to work for a price they're willing to accept could hurt them quite a bit.

A case could be made for shorter work weeks as a means to reduce unemployment, as well as to force people to take rest from work, but you'd definitely be pricing some people in need out of the job market, and I'm not sure there's a workaround for that side effect.

tootie• 13 years ago

Having an in-demand skill gives you a ton of leverage. I'm a 35 year old father of two and a tech arch. My job requires long hours around releases and the like but if there isn't an urgent need, I will just get up and leave whenever my family needs me or I just really want to see them. They can fire me if they don't like it, but they really have no choice because I'm too hard to replace.

infinitone• 13 years ago

How does one become a 'tech arch'- sounds like one of those niche jobs that only specialized companies have.

fistofjohnwayne2• 13 years ago

I'm in a similar situation. I've got a six-week-old and too often I find I'm juggling competing guilts. Do I let the startup I work for down or do I neglect my family?

flyinRyan6• 13 years ago

The startup you work for will probably go down no matter what you do. It should be pretty obvious where your loyalties should lie, at least to me.

rjh292• 13 years ago

On a related note: I am UK developer working a 40 hour week with 32 days of holiday a year. I would really like to move to the US and work there, but is it really the norm to work 10-12 hours a day? Do people actually work solidly for that time, or is there a lot of slacking? I've become quite accustomed to a 40 hour work week and have no motivation to do anything longer (if anything, I'd work less and get paid less). Thanks in advance.

VLM2• 13 years ago

"Do people actually work solidly for that time"

I've been doing four tens per week (plus occasional disaster overtime, etc) for many years now. The key seems to be exercise at lunchhour including hot shower (if possible/applicable). Then it feels a heck of a lot more like five hour days. I'll never go back to five eights per week unless I absolutely have to.

necubi• 13 years ago

No, that's not the norm, at least not in SF. I work at a later-stage startup and do 8 hour days with the occasional crunch period at 9-10 hours. That's not to say shops with crazy time requirements don't exist, but it's definitely avoidable. Companies with older senior management are more likely to have sane work schedules.

However, you'd struggle to find a job with European levels of vacation. Most jobs will start out with 10-15 days of paid vacation, plus ~10 holidays.

flyinRyan6• 13 years ago

The thing that's going to hurt the most is vacation. In the US it's common to get 1-2 weeks and only after you've already worked a whole year. So that means working an entire year with zero vacation.

The 4-6 weeks you can get in Europe is extremely rare in the US (where I worked, I finally got 3 weeks after 7 years of service).

venomsnake• 13 years ago

These are absurd expectations. Very few people are able to pull more that 8 hours a day consistently without sharp decline of productivity.

With me - after 4-5 hours in the flow - I am done, squeezed like a lemon.

The only benefit after that is for task that require very out of the box thinking - when i am sleepy dead tired etc the crazy stuff comes on its own. The thing I am most proud of inventing came at 3 am.

skore• 13 years ago

> With me - after 4-5 hours in the flow - I am done, squeezed like a lemon.

That's what I'm currently trying to establish for myself - 4 to 5 hours of work a day tops. I used to think that I could do more, used to work hard on trying to do more, but the truth is pretty simple. If you want to get more done, you need to become more efficient, not work longer hours. And structure your life around those 4-5 hours so that within them, you are able to deliver.

I recommend limiting work hours to everybody these days, but it seems that the mindset is simply too ingrained.

> The only benefit after that is for task that require very out of the box thinking [...] when i am sleepy dead tired etc [...]

Maybe those "you need to put in more than 10 hours a day" people should switch to 4 hours of work, plus a full-out boxing match plus 1 hour of "crazy stuff" work?

Next up on News At Ten - The crazy new crossover trend sweeping through Silicon Valley: A breakthrough mixture of Extreme Programming and Fight Club that has blue collar workers eyes twitching.

thrownaway2424• 13 years ago

Key phrase: in the flow.

If the people I work with would shut their traps when in the office I'd get everything I get done in an 8-hour day today done in 2-3 hours, tops. I find that the people who appear to love to work 100 hours a week are the ones doing most of the yapping.

Poiesis• 13 years ago

"(which I have no idea how much/or little that is)"

I humbly suggest that this is part of your problem.

ims• 13 years ago

I think OP was probably just being humble himself.

7Figures2Commas• 13 years ago

Flexible schedule != work/life balance.

If you're out of the office by 3:30, but still available by email and willing to work "well into the evening", your work is your life. Pretending that you have some sort of "balance" simply because you're not chained to a desk in an office is pure naiveté.

Vekz• 13 years ago

Also be wary of companies passively pitching work/life balance as a culture point.

I spent time at a company that superficially was very 'work/life balance'. When pressed on the specifics of what that ment to them regarding hours on call and in office They responded with a "We're talking more or a 'work/life harmony'" which ment your work should be your life.

VLM2• 13 years ago

This is psychologically the same as the classic "Our execs might exclusively be old white men, but we do have mandatory diversity training for the front line grunts, so its all good".

Another one you often see is loud trumpeting about training budgets, which happen to be 100% allocated by mandatory safety classes and such. "But we won't discipline you, if you read a book you paid for, on your own time, if it doesn't interfere with your work."

sliverstorm2• 13 years ago

Haha yup, it's very easy to have work/life balance when work is your life. In fact, it would be impossible not to!

sliverstorm2• 13 years ago

I'd say that depends on how often you are tapped "well into the evening", and how urgent it is when you are. If you are summoned once in a blue moon and response is not obligatory, you are fine.

flyinRyan6• 13 years ago

Have you ever actually been on call? The issue is, you are not free for one second when you are on call. Maybe you never get called, but you still can't do anything that takes long to disconnect from because you have to be able to get to a computer within a reasonable amount of time because the one time you do is when you finally will get called (and if the company is low enough to ask you to be 24/7 on call then they probably won't mind firing you the first time you're a little late responding to an issue).

gamblor956• 13 years ago

This already happens in accounting and consulting firms right now. Indeed, each one of the Big 4 and the Next 8 have "flex time" policies that in theory allow employees to manage their own schedules.

However, partners have significant autonomy over how they run their teams. If you're lucky, you get a partner who is like the partner in this article and actually lets you employ your firm's flex-time scheduling without harming your career. If you're not, you get a partner who cares more about year-end revenue figures than work-life balance. The latter is by far the more common scenario.

josephlord• 13 years ago

At the moment my wife is the primary money earner and I am trying to use the time while my son is at school to develop apps and do a contract development for a friend. It would be nice to get to the point where the apps became a lifestyle business in the sense of supporting our lifestyle but at the moment it is only profitable if you don't account for my time.

Fortunately we can afford this at the moment and I keep costs very low and do everything[1] myself which is great for learning but not the best business strategy.

School days 9am to 3pm don't give long to get in the zone and productive but with Agee play dates and after school club I can get a bit more done.

Until 2 years ago I was working in what was essentially a business development role which involved significant travel. It was just about working as my wife's role was fairly quiet and our son was in nursery (8-6 although we didn't use the full period most days). We couldn't have continued this when my wife's role became busier and less flexible.

[1] Design, development, website, accounting, cloud server admin.

dchmiel• 13 years ago

I always thought of striving for balance as the wrong goal and that flexibility should be it.

Why not give workers flexibility to work when they are productive on work tasks and flexibility to focus on family when that is the most productive outcome. This could alleviate a lot of pressure that everyone feels with the need to balance work and life. What are we trying to balance? 3 hours a night with kids every night for 18 years doesn't mean you balanced your life.

Some people may want to drive their kid to school and then go into work focused. Then chooses to work out and take time to eat a healthy lunch and then work some more and then picks their kids up from school. Stay with them at home till the other spouse comes home and then switches into work mode while the kids are being fed and washed by the other spouse. Read to them a bedtime story and tuck them into bed before some more highly focused time to work again before going to bed at a time they find reasonable sounds good to some people.

Not all people but some. We just need the flexibility to choose to work when we're most productive and when don't feel guilty being away from the kids. How many here like wake up late but work late into the night boarding on the next morning, while others are up so early its still night for others?

We're not identical cogs as much as our education system and society, based upon the needs of the industrial revolution, tried to produce. Give people choice and you'll be rewarded with healthier, well adjusted and productive employees and families.

needacig• 13 years ago

"What they illustrate is that men might actually be better at handling women’s issues than women."

This is a ridiculous statement. Women face a different set of pressures and stereotypes around working and parenting than men. Those pressures are starting to become the same for both men and women, but they're not the same yet, and until then, it's not possible for a man to be better at handling women's issues without also being a woman and being better at it.

throwawayindc• 13 years ago

Asking for some emergency personal leave, to help sell my house and salvage my marriage, just cost me my job. I have worked a lot of long hours, weekends, etc., over my tenure here. But there are still plenty of tech companies where work-life balance is not even a thought.

mikestew• 13 years ago

And folks should think long and hard about this before thinking about "not wanting to let the company down" and the like. Loyalty is too often a one-way street, and the direction is not from them to you.

flyinRyan6• 13 years ago

For everyone who says "what's wrong with working long, I enjoy the work" they need to see stories like yours. The first time something doesn't go their way, the company may fire you. It doesn't matter who many hours you gave to the company for free before that. Don't expect a thank you for it because you won't get one.

ceautery• 13 years ago

"men might actually be better at handling women’s issues than women. They don’t believe in “balance.” They believe in getting what they want, even if"

What a ridiculous generalization. And calling wishing to care for your family a women's issue is absurd. I couldn't finish reading the article after that.

An anecdote about work/life balance: I was up for a promotion last year. Also, my wife wrecked her car last year. When I could have been busting my ass in the office meeting arbitrary project deadlines, I was leaving the office hours early to pick my kid up from school, helping my wife negotiate with insurance companies, driving her to the rental car place, to the repair shop, to another dealership, etc.

My project fell behind, and a couple of people complained that I wasn't returning calls fast enough. I lost the promotion. I lost it with a song in my heart, and I'd do it again in a hot second.

hobs• 13 years ago

Or you could have rented a car?

jacalata• 13 years ago

What do you think they were doing when he was 'driving her to the rental car place,'?

bobwaycott• 13 years ago

> The only thing missing is the guilt and self-flagellation, which, if they were women, would be accumulating on the floor in puddles around their feet.

Seriously?! What kind of editor allows such gendered bullshit to make it into an article like this?

knodi• 13 years ago

"Men Get Serious About Work-Life Balance"

When the government fixes income inequality gap, then I will. I don't work hard because like to I work hard because I have to.

plg2• 13 years ago

Anyone at the top of their chosen field of study/work who talks about "work life balance" is full of shit. If you choose to pursue a work/study goal that involves being at the top of your field (truly) then you cannot have a full family/social life. If you choose to have a (truly) rich family/social life then you will not achieve success at a (truly) top level in your work/study life. You have to choose. I don't care if you're make or female. You have to choose. If we're talking about truly top performance it's not a matter of balance. It's a matter of choice. One or the other. You cannot have (truly) rich, excellent, full, top performance in both. Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit. Now: if you are ok with semi-success in both then you can balance but you will not reach the top of your field. You have to be ok with that.

null_ptr2• 13 years ago

I disagree. I think family and social life help rest and heal an intelligent mind. I think a person that is at the top of their field is there not because they work 80 hour weeks, but because they have a certain spark in the manner that they approach their work; an ability to look at things objectively and from a distance, something that is hard to achieve by obsessively focusing on a single facet of life.

plg2• 13 years ago

That is certainly the story that we so often hear from people at the top of their field. They say "my family is so important to me, spending time with them really grounds me" and then in the same breath you find out they leave for work before their kids wake up, and come home to have dinner with them for 1 hr and then go back to work, and then work all weekend.

A sports analogy is apt here: I have a friend who when he was young used to play competitive rugby at the national level. He said that through high school and even varsity (university) teams, what really put people at the top was their drive, motivation, training, and also of course skill. At the national, world professional level however, it was different. One needed these ingredients of course to gain entrance to this level of play ... but once there, now what really separated the top say 10% from the rest came down to something rather simple: the extent to which you were willing to injure yourself. The best players were the ones that were willing to get concussions over and over again, to perform manoeuvres that resulted in high probability of broken bones, etc. He ended up quitting because he was not willing to hurt his body to such an extent that he would pay for it for the rest of his life. In essence the top players were the ones who were willing to become extreme, who were willing to sacrifice things most people valued in their life (their future health) in order to stay at the top.

So it is in business, finance, academia, you name it. The people you will find at the top are the ones who have made the choice to sacrifice things that most people find valuable, in order to be the top of the top in their chosen field of work / study.

Said differently: if you are trying to achieve top success, you will face the following over and over again: there will be times where you are faced with the choice: work late into the night and miss your son's birthday party, or go home and try to catch up in the morning. Take that work trip for a week even though your wife is sick at home and needs help with the kids, or don't take the work trip.

There will always be someone else at work who will be willing to do the things you are unwilling to do.

It's nice to talk about modern and sympathetic work environments that value well rounded lifestyles but man, it's a jungle out there, this is a fantasy, when the shit hits the fan.

partner30• 13 years ago

I made partner at a Big 4 before I turned 30. There is no way in hell that I could have done that if I had a family.

Was it worth it? Highly debatable. I've also since suffered a whole host of illnesses likely brought on by the almost constant 12-14hr days. But as a couple people have mentioned, if you want to get somewhere, you will have to give something else up.

moconnor• 13 years ago

In January I negotiated to reduce my hours to 27.5 a week as part of a promotion; this lets me drop my two children off at kindergarten and pick them up again at 3pm after work and let my wife take a full-time job.

Looking after young children for more than just a fun hour in the evening before bed is hard work - certainly much more demanding than working full time ever was.

Working part time is challenging too - nobody is sharing the role, and I find the hours I am working are much more focused now I know I have a hard stop every day. When working 40+ hours a week there was always time for another cup of tea, a short walk or browse on the net. Now, during working hours, I am working.

Last month my wife negotiated a reduction of her hours to 25 per week. This makes us both a lot more flexible and brings in time for things like having breakfast together once a week, working on side project or going on week-long work trips without running into childcare difficulties.

My advice: if you want to try this, you have to negotiate for it. If you don't try, nobody will offer it to you. Great programmers have an incredible amount of negotiating leverage, particularly at the moment. Use it or something you care about.

gordaco• 13 years ago

I'm a little annoyed that "Work-life balance" almost always refers to "Work-family balance". Not everyone has children, or, more exactly, not having children does not mark you as "one of these guys who CAN work 14 hours". You know, I want work-life balance because I want to do things not related to my job for about 8 hours a day.

showsover• 13 years ago

Same here.

Sometimes I feel like I can't complain about working longer because I don't have any kids or wife to care for. I do have a fiancée, but that seems to count less, because we're both young.

I'd really like to get to working 10-hour days 4 days a week, but I don't feel like I have any leverage.

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