Restarting my career after motherhood
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A career break may happen to anyone by infinite reasons beyond motherhood. Most people have such career-pausing or career-delaying events (health issues, depression, fatherhood, taking care of an elderly relative), most conceal it, motherhood just happens not to be concealable.
And things don't change as fast. Not even in IT. And even if changed, legacy is always there, begging for someone to take care of it instead of going to the newest shiny thing.
People out of the market need some warm-up time? Yes, they do. Even machines need to warm-up, dammit.
What people should understand, is that the economy turns because there are mothers, fathers, and kids. I would be retired at 35 if didn't marry and hadn't a kid. Once upon a time I was buying a car, the saleswoman was worried about her job because of her pregnancy. I said "I am buying a new car because of the kid. No pregnant women, no car sales." (If I were single or divorced, would have a couple vintage cars.)
The problem is that capitalism by nature cannot and will not account for this, at least not for publicly traded companies. Capitalism always ends up optimizing for the maximum amount of profit allowed by the law - and simple maths explain what is going on. When you have 10.000 employees, a turnover rate of 5% annually and a person that has been out of a continuous career for a year needs a month more time to get up to speed (to simplify, I assume they operate at 50% of the productivity during that time) than someone who is freshly hired from somewhere else, that is 500 person-months or (assuming 50k/year) ~1 million $ a year. Obviously the larger the company and the larger the salaries, the bigger the cost savings. And I didn't include the loss of productivity in the people who on-board the new hires either.
This is why employment and anti-discrimination laws and regulations matter: they level the playing field for everyone.
As a hiring manager, As long as someone can think about technology in the right way I’m happy to hire them and let them grow into a new tool chain. The thinking right part is the rare piece, the knowing XYZ tool of 2022 that’s an improvement on XYZ’ of 2012 doesn’t concern e.
Fantastic attitude.
In addition, one obstacle I've encountered is they want people that are pliable and easy to browbeat. That means they can be robbed with wage theft. I've heard the term "good little bitch."
I d take a proud jail reformed who's trying to change though.
I understand how frustrating it must be to stay professionally flat compared to your peers. We absolutely should celebrate people taking their time off to literally raise the next humans, instead we're turning them down because they spent 5~6 years off the industry. How is this not counterproductive for humanity as a whole?
Let's not pretend it's not.
Some countries give more than a year paid parental leave, in what can only be described as vote purchasing.
Parenthood is compensated.
It is worth it though for most people (because of the extra happiness) so I'm not saying that we should necessarily compensate it further, just that financially it's not compensated for.
It's a personal choice to have children, and it's impossible to be a parent X hours a day and also spend those same X hours "in the lab".
Just like it's not possible to spend all your time in the lab and also be a (present) parent.
The limited time for everything that can be done in a lifetime is not about "fairness", and nobody owes you to be able to do all things in life, even if it were possible, which it isn't.
- pay taxes
- make good governance choices
- buy the products you may be making
- make the products you might be selling
- make the products you consume
the list goes on...
But this is the most subsidized one of all (even in the US), and people do it whether it's subsidized or not.
You could say that they are getting "paid in love".
If it's already worth it for them, why should they be paid twice?
Most of the benefits you list may be better off with fewer kids with the same government support.
I definitely think we should invest in schools and such, to make the best people we can. But I'm sick of parents complaining that children affects their economy or has opportunity cost.
Parents don't deserve a handout. Children do, however, deserve a good education.
Literally everything in in life has opportunity cost. Nobody owes removing that cost for anyone else.
If you spend all your money on partying nobody owes you the cost of nice clothes.
I am not a parent but when's the last time you called a parent of yours and paid them with that love? I 100% have not done so recently.
Parents aren't getting a handout, we're ensuring the continuation of our society and so many forces are attempting to shape it actively.
What's the point of paying you for it, if the act actually is its own reward?
It feels like you and I agree that maybe kids aren't for our lives and yet we're pretending its just a wildly rewarding activity like watching movies and not a situation of basically being worried or having to pay for or care for another human for the rest of your natural life.
Even for two people who (I am assuming) do not have kids that feels kind of insincere.
We know its not like watching a movie, or riding a bike or even going to the gym unless the gym costs you ~250k while simultaneously acting like the rude jerk I did when I was a teen.
I hear that the smile on your child's face is infinite reward.
> We know its not like watching a movie, or riding a bike or even going to the gym unless the gym costs you ~250k while simultaneously acting like the rude jerk I did when I was a teen.
Yet, like I said, people do it gladly. They do it even knowing about the way it affects the woman's body, knowing about the sleep depravation, knowing about the terrible two's, knowing about the "you're stupid and I hate you" teens.
If it were as simple as "this activity costs 250k and is a rude jerk" then nobody would do it. Yet they say it's so worth it.[1]
So if it's so worth it for you, then do it. But I don't want to hear about how you're the victim of your own choice. Everyone is. I'll never be a fighter pilot, nor an astronaut.[2]
Pilot and astronaut is the road not taken, for me.
If someone chooses to have a baby and stay home for 5 years, then that's about 11% of their working life not spent improving their career. You'll never have those 11% again, and I won't pretend you walked two roads at the same time. Because nobody can.
And those 11% are placed in a critical point. If someone took age 60-65 off, then that won't affect their career as much.
If someone leaves university at 25, has a baby and takes five years off, then they are now 30 with zero work experience.
That's not fairness, that's physics.
[1] Though one guy I know said he used to not be able to comprehend why anyone would not want children. Now after he's had children he understands. He would absolutely do it again, but at least he understands people who don't want them.
[2] not a real one, anyway. Maybe if prices go down a lot in my lifetime I'll be able to take a lap, but that's it.
And it's also not personal in the sense that the government often takes an active role in raising and educating kids (wether you like it or not).
I just wish parents stop acting as victims of their own choices, and that they should bare no consequences.
And people won't stop having kids, subsidies or no subsidies. So that's a non-issue.
Birth rates are below replacement levels in most Western countries.
What we do know is what we used to have, the population pyramid, definitely won't work going forward, long term.
Multiple countries in GDP leadership positions are incentivizing having and raising children because women who are able to - exercise bodily autonomy - pursue an education - and generally have rights, though in no country are they equal choose to have less kids.
IMHO they choose to have less kids because its clear the current set-up is a raw deal for women at best. Not having enough kids to replace the current working generation is an issue in: the US, the UK, Italy, Spain, and a number of other countries. This greying of a population is a massive concern and also one of the reasons that some have pushed and bet on robotics. To replace human workers.
Separately, its mostly women, if not exclusively women, bearing the consequences of the action of you know. propagating the species. Its absolutely mind-boggling when you think about the fact that propagation is a requirement of our continued existence and only half the species pays a massive tax
At the same time you can't mandate it. And there's no denying that statistically women choose family more, when choice is given to them.
I know several couples where the wife is essentially asking to retire (in their thirties), to be home with the children and video games, and that the man should continue working for them. Even if it jeopardizes their shared FIRE plans.
If they do that, who is actually paying the tax? Financially the wife for sure. Life quality the husband for sure.
As for replacement, the population age pyramid is not sustainable. It relies not on stability, but growth. The greying of population is inevitable (compared to the classic pyramid) thanks to medical advances and the fact that exponential growth has to stop, mathematically. We can choose starvation, war, plague, or reduced births.
I hear this often and it's such an incorrect assumption. People had kids way before subsidies. Humans won't stop having kids if subsidies stop.
For the young and poor who only have their labor to sell, the situation would seem pretty decent.
There is no practical need for this to be centrally managed, other than you can't trust people to be responsible and plan for the future.
People already manage a big part of the pension savings by themselves.
Watch this talk: https://youtu.be/O133ppiVnWY
Tl;DW: we can not prevent the end of exponential population growth. We can only choose how it ends. By starvation, war, disease, or fewer births.
Pension systems have relied on growth for a long time, but it's just not mathematically possible is the long run.
I know some advocate shrinking for sustainability reasons, but a policy of shrinking is a policy of irrelevance. Other cultures with a growth mindset will continue growing and ruin your sustainability plans.
Let's have abundance instead of austerity. Instead of intentionally reducing the population for sustainability, we can make the current population sustainable with technology. We don't need to stop population growth. It's already stopping. We now need to stop population shrinkage to reach a stable equilibrium.
Others in this thread have, in so many words, said that being a parent should be paid by tax payers as a full time job.
It's a waste of resources and society's investments to pay doctors and lawyers to quit and instead be paid to be full time takers.
So that lessens abundance, creating a poorer world.
It's like the conversation about UBI. If it's actually U and (as often stated by proponents) enough for a middle class lifestyle I would quit today. No way I'd be a sucker paying taxes to support government funded FIRE, without doing it myself.
And so would most of the population.
On a small scale I've soon this in friends' relationships. "Can I stay home with kids and video games, and you just support us?".
I think you should examine this statement a little more. If the time of economically successful people is too valuable to "waste" on childcare, what you are saying is that either economically successful people should not have children (with the obvious corollary being that only economically unsuccessful people should have children), or economically successful people should not spend time raising their children (meaning they should foist their children into the care of economically unsuccessful people instead). I hope you can see the clear issue with the former, and while the latter is pretty much status quo it has big issues as well.
If the children of doctors and lawyers do better when their parents care for them instead of other people, and become doctors and lawyers too, then society didn't lose after all. Childcare is an investment in the future, not pure waste to be avoided.
I don't think society should pay doctors and lawyers their regular hourly rate for childcare for 18 years per child. But I do think that parenthood deserves to be subsidized, and more than it is now, even for economically successful people, up to the point where the fertility rate stabilizes at the replacement rate.
But we pretty much are already.
First with paid parental leave (sometimes over 400 days) and then forever after that, by pretending that this is not a gap in work experience and therefore calling anything short of bumping salary and seniority in line with people who were working as "discrimination".
Like people who are away for a year, and come back promoted.
And that's not even mentioning how much of the slack coworkers he to pick up from a parent needing to leave at 3pm every day from now on. We're all meant to pretend they work just as hard, and deserve to be paid just as much.
(Not every parent offloads work like this onto their coworkers, but a lot of them do. So it's a huge cost statistically not paid by the person who made the choice)
LOL sorry, not even close. But it doesn't matter whether we are or not, not in the slightest. What matters is whether we're subsidizing enough to stabilize the fertility rate. Which we're empirically not.
People no longer want to have 4-5 kids, no matter if you 10x the paid time off or double the subsidies. This too empirically.
And no, actually. Your "LOL" aside, we actually are. Anyone who takes time off for child raising gets a bump literally forever.
So yes, actually.
I'm not saying fully compensated, obviously.
But people do it or don't do it based on if they want, not the money (given a basic level of comp, which we are waaaay beyond).
To increase birth rates we have to start paying people who DON'T want to have children, to do it.
Like wow, how much would you have to pay people who would only do it for money? One million in cash just day one?
Just the physical toll for the parent is huge.
And statistically rate of happiness goes down during thirties for people who have children.
And then on top of that your idea is to have people who don't want children raise them? I'm not betting on this improving quality of life for the child, if the child is just a paycheck.
So we really want people who have children no actually want to, too.
Having young kids I think it's more like full time parenting, on top of any regular day job. Unless you can find a spouse willing to do all the kid work, which is like non-stop 12-16h days until all are in school.
Heaven forbid your SO wants to homeschool and expects you to do at least 40% of parenting, with your day job.
And one gives up so much time and energy being a parent, unless you're wealthy enough to outsource large chunks of the work. (Daycare in the US is 10-25K per year.)
The whole point is that being a parent is compensated in a way that no other choice is.
Parents take on a significant burden. They are compensated for it. There is no choice I can make as a non-parent that will provide me with similar compensation.
If just this financial support provided by some governments then consider you could take on a very low pay job with a nonprofit and get similar 'compensation'. Albeit spread across the length of that career instead of front loaded as paternity leave/credits.
> Some countries give more than a year paid parental leave
You yourself are making my point by saying “similar compensation” “albeit spread across the length of a career.” There is nothing for non-parents that is equivalent to parental leave.
And these leave benefits are just so miniscule compared to the effort and finances required for each child. So why complain about missing them?
> If society does nothing to help then more parents will choose to have fewer, or no, children.
Fewer people is our best option (it is still a terrible option, don't get me wrong) for mitigating the effects of climate change.
Your parents having you is a miniscule benefit to you?
Parents who are highly educated doctors, pilots etc argue that they should be able to stay at home for 1-2 years with almost full salary, which the tax payers should subsidise, and at the same time they also pay an uneducated 16 year old 10 bucks an hour to babysit when they go to the movies?
And you have 1 educated child care professional easily caring for 10 small children, and making a very modest salary.
It doesn't really add up.
That is my point.
Most would consider the implications of that to be highly immoral.
I think it's already immoral how society punishes people for being childless when it's a natural thing and can be 100% caused by characteristics that you are born with and have no control over.
Only because of the subsidies. It's hardly "natural" for all humans to reproduce.
All living humans come from a long unbroken chain of natural selection and rejection of bad genes and reproduction of only the fittest to enable adaption to a changing environment.
If you create subsidies so that every human can reproduce, you are going to reverse natural selection and create survival of the unfittest where every bad gene will reproduce endlessly.
Not having children is just as "natural" as having children, it all depends of how your particular set of characteristics do in the current environment and foreseeable future.
It is “natural” in the sense that we wouldn’t be here to talk about it if it wasn’t the case.
Obviously the human race somehow made it until we created developed societies. I think you are confusing survival of the human race with survival of our current pension system.
Who knows if it's really better or worse to suddenly allow everyone to reproduce?
For sure it's not "natural", and as far as I can see it would actually reverse evolution to regression instead.
And it seems like we can't really stop it anyway with how many men today are becoming outsiders in society because they get rejected to reproduce.
Yeah that's the point, so there really is no need for every man to have children, should it be the norm I'm wondering. Can we get rid of this natural selection, and should we? I don't know. Why is it so self-evident that every person should have children? Clearly it's not natural. It's just another artificial "equality" of a social welfare state.
The whole idea that child bearing should be perfectly and equally distributed across the whole population is a construct of the social welfare state, enabled by subsidies, and is just an artificial form of equality like any other. As such I think it should be examined and debated like everything else, and not taken for granted as self-evident or "natural".
The median is close to the average in kids per women in the developed world. Having four kids is harsh on many women’s bodies; eg my grandma had 8 kids, but she died in her late 50s. While no doubt some couples will want to go for four kids or more, I don’t think it’s ethical to encourage it over a more standard 2 something for most couples.
This is an incredibly bold statement. Most people like having sex, and in a natural state (sans birth control, online dating, internet porn, etc) there are going to be a lot of pregnancies. The idea that tax credits, welfare or parental leave is what is driving this situation is ridiculous. This feels more like a dog whistle about the welfare state, but even if you take away those "subsidies", people ain't gonna stop having kids, that's just not how the majority of young people of child-bearing age think.
We balanced this out up until recently by sending men to war and other dangerous jobs that made them die before they had a chance to reproduce.
There is an enormous asymmetry between the sexes in our biology and that's the feature that drives natural selection and evolution.
The only reason why all people are able to reproduce are subsidies, otherwise natural selection would reject a lot.
Better medical treatments and lack of wars are not child subsidies.
Lower education and religion is probably the biggest cause for these higher birth rates. In the victorian era, people would simply not get married if they didn't have the means to raise children, and they would be childless, and there was nothing strange about that. To give subsidies for everyone to have children comes from the post ww2 politics.
Using your own logic: if natural selection is that fragile, then it should evolve or die. We're not called to uphold it in any way; our own selfish genes inevitably predispose us not to worry about an evolutionary mechanism that does not directly affect us or our children.
if you’re not looking to inherit while you’re young, you end up in a whole different social hierarchy
Well, if I were going to argue the case I would probably start with the impossibility of any man ever getting that opportunity. Of course, whether those figures are enough or given out in the right way to the right people at the right time, all of those details can be argued over, but if you're going to start with fairness as your argument you'd better address the elephant in the room first.
> AND that men are forced to take an equal time of
Why is it right that anyone is forced to do anything so that your political views are enacted?
let me give you an example
good equality: have more women enter workforce so the pool of candidates is bigger and the salaries (expenses) decrease
bad equality: pay for parental leave of both parents
What year is it again?
> That's a pretty hefty price to pay for everyone, to save those women who were unlucky to have a cruel or unfair husband.
Uh, I don't think that's the trade off here.
> I don't know if it's possible to say if it's "worth it" or not, but this independence sure does not come for free.
When one option is to go full Taliban, it's actually pretty easy to say if it's "worth it".
It makes perfect sense, and it would also be fair and benefit both single/childless people as well as people with children.
I agree with you that it might be impossible to enforce such a law without having the downsides you mentioned. However I would very much like being able to take 6 months of parental leave without being called lazy. This goes both ways.
I'm confused.
I didn't say it was fully compensated. Of course it's not.
But why should you have children, and expect "someone else" to pay for everything?
Nothing else in life works like that.
But yes, I've heard of the German child benefits, and tax rules for married couples, that are not optimal for an equal and fair society.
You say the compensation is "not enough". What would be? That "someone else" pays for the entire cost of your child? Why stop there? Why not demand salary from the government for choosing to raise a child?
There are many choices people make that they expect others to pay for.
I saw a study saying smokers are a net financial gain for society because of the huge savings on pension payments.
(And there are other reasons, that are more important)
But it is a life choice. Other ones are to become an artist. But barely anyone says that anyone who chooses to be an artist (bad or not) deserves for "someone else" to foot the bill for their life.
Or maybe you'd be happier we me saying that yes, in the same way that you must be this net worthy to collect fancy cars. Makes it easier, sure. But nobody owes paying for your choices.
You may feel that having kids is an optional luxury; the evidence suggests this is not a majority perspective.
Yet there's no right to sex, and rape is illegal.
But fact is our world is overpopulated, it would.be better if we'd size down, and we have superegoistic societies in general. (But who would push our wheel chairs if we all wouldn't be so superaltruistic and raise children? Simple answer is there still would be enough, because people want children, even if it is a lot of sacrifice. I fully agree that it costs a lot and is a huge sacrifice, still its a free personal (if you so want lifestyle) choice that most won't regret.. or do you?
As for subsidizing parenthood and children: the more the better. I don’t have kids, but as a human person I have an interest in the next generation of people being happy, healthy, well adjusted and well educated. And that of course begins with creating an environment in which the parents of those children can be successful.
So ROI is infinity, without comp.
It's finite with comp. And note that I'm not even saying the right level is zero.
The amount spent on keeping shipping lanes protected, the world "stable", and older people having access to medical care are, in the US, subsidized more I believe.
It's not my choice to need care when I get old.
Do you really mean "no value"?
Even though people do it anyway, and think the trade is worth it?
The ROI of children is vastly lower than most other endeavors in life. Start a company, not a family.
Seriously go outside, get some sunlight and touch grass.
It states in a blunt shocking way a truth that exists manifestly in many of our actions, but is never said in that way.
Now, I wonder if I have to add the /sarcasm tag or not... source:
I live in an aging society with 'free' healthcare, where most of the resources are consumed by unhealthy people with chronic conditions (read : boomers with diabetes). A lot of large scale social programs (which I like) are built on the assumption that most of the people inside it are healthy and will not need serious care for a long time (read: full of young people).
I think that raising children produces a lot of social benefits, that unfair social expectations puts a lot of pressure on women, and we should put a LOT of value on the labor required to raise healthy and stable children.
Family ambitions and personal ambitions are two separate things (although for some people, typically women, they do match).
Personally speaking, I do have parental and professional goals, and I don't think of any of the two as neither superior nor compensating respect to the other.
> they spent 5~6 years off the industry
It doesn't need to be like this (I have firsthand experience as parent). In a balanced family, two parents can be have full professional and familiar lives at the same time (although it's challenging). Of course on the first year or so there's a physical need for the child(ren) to stay with the mother.
Based on the description of the article, the wife and the husband deliberately chose extreme positions - the wife as fully involved stay at home mother, and the father as all-time worker:
> I took care of everything, so my husband could focus on work, which was super important as we were a one-income family
I sympathize with the difficulty of finding a job, but there are more balanced (in terms of gender roles) structures that benefit all the parties. Most importantly:
> I wanted to devote a few years of my life to raising them. I wanted to see their first smile, their first step, their first fall, and I was privileged and lucky enough to be able to do it.
One definitely doesn't need to stay 24/7 with the children to be a fully present parent, and
> my husband could focus on work, which was super important as we were a one-income family.
one doesn't need to offload the children to the partner, in order to achieve professional success, unless there's some workaholism involved; this is also not a great way to start the relationship with the children.
I don't think anyone honestly believes that children are not better off by having more balanced input from both parents where possible. And the more people that do this (where the working parent is a workaholic) the more difficult it makes things for working parents who want to have a more balanced home life.
This is similar to the modern issue of dual income families. In the area where I live, homes are very expensive. The majority of home owners here could simply not afford a home without both parents working.
Which means if there weren't so many dual income families, homes would simply have to become cheaper here. The fact that many families here are dual income puts financial pressure on everyone else to do the same.
Maybe you didn't mean it like this... but I find the use of the word "extreme" here in this context somewhat discomforting. Perhaps I'm an old-fashioned 35-year old, but her reasons for wanting to stay home don't come off as extreme to me.
Fully working = 8-10 hours a day
Still leaves a lot of time for parenting- and doesn’t seem so extreme, I’d say it’s one of the most common division of family life in the world
I didn’t say parenting only takes 8-10 hours. That’s the time the working parent works
That still leaves time to parent when off-work
If spouse A has earning potential of $300k/yr, and spouse B has earning potential of $50k/yr, and child care costs $40k/yr, it's absolute batshit insanity to take a "balanced approach" and A. lose money on a net-of-taxes basis whilst B. seeing your children less.
Those who don't find the time do be a parent because of work (again, excluding particular jobs) are either workaholics, or uninterested parents, or both; it's not about finance.
To be noted that from approximately the second year onwards (so, I'm excluding approximately the first two), children spend significant hours (whole morning and small part of the afternoon, depending on the parents' choice) in children care. Especially in a family where the mother works part time, the difference from a stay-at-home mom, in terms of time spent with the children, is little (or none).
That's nothing. I've been continuously employed for over 20 years. I just got a job a few weeks ago after two months of unemployment. I kept a record of every application and in the end there were more than 130 of them. I ended up with several offers and got a great job but I had far more than 20 rejections for every offer I received and I consider that a very good result for the outcome I had and wouldn't refer to it as "a slap in the face".
Best advice I would give to anyone taking a break from work is to stay in touch with your old coworkers-take them out to lunch occasionally, stop by the office and bring cookies, etc.
Just like in programming, I'd rather write a hack program to replace that monotony. That hack program is networking. :-)
I disagree. I've only gotten jobs through submitting CVs to websites. I've received over a dozen offers and had 6 jobs through this method.
It does actually work. It gets better the better your resume gets. I've never used a referral to get a job offer even once.
It was exactly this kind of situation combined with how I actually got my job that led to this.
In that situation, I'd sent out >100 resumes and got back 100 rejections. I still keep them all because I never wanted to forget the fundamental Epic Fail of looking for work that way.
The thing that crystalized the lesson:
1. I ended up "networking" into a job interview - 15 minutes after I got an offer to start immediately
2. The company I ended up working for (Intel) sent a rejection letter also - to my original resume application - 6 weeks after I'd started working there!!
I then got my next job use the same networking technique to get time in front of the hiring manager, and similarly I had a job within 15-30 minutes of interviewing.
This contrasted with having spent time on resumes, postage (pre-Web) and actively corralling status from each company.
Basically it's question of statistics: which will work more efficiently:
1. A random lottery-odds resume campaign where the resume has nearly no differentiating information to distinguish you from anyone else where the judge of that process doesn't have a STEM degree and is likely overworked and marginally paid above minimum wage
2. A 6-degrees of separation path (no more than 6 hops in a social network) via carefully selected people who likely have STEM training who each have an investment if they pass you through yet have far more knowledge about your qualification because they've talked to you as part of the network building.
The math is pretty damn obvious and trivial. Lottery odds with a faceless bureaucracy or pretty good odds if you are half good with a small set of people who can judge your worth on your merits.
I've used the latter for 40 years and its never failed. Any failures of mismatched jobs were 100% on me (biotech is a weird duck compared to computers or semiconductors).
A few years ago a friend of mine did over 100 *interviews* before finding a job. She presented a talk about her experience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzz5AaCWMps and blogged about it as well https://medium.com/codebuddies/my-adventures-in-job-searchin...
I remember this about mixing hot and cold water https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGpKH0Sobcs I knew the effect before, but I thought it was not so fast.
I loved doing them, I miss them and I am happy I tried it out but reality is, that I need a way to have an income!
But I am so happy you remembered the videos + experiements. The hot/cold water mixing experiment is super fun!I received lots of photographs from parents whose kids did it, and loved it:)
My regular advice in life is to read whatever patio11 wrote about your problem. I'm not sure what applies. Do we have a @patio11 signal?
Perhaps
* https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr... HN discussions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3170766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21303181 and a few more https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
* https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-patrick... NH discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4533498
I have degrees in Computer Science (BSc), and Neuroscience (MSc) with two years of being a researcher at the University at the Machine learning + Neuroscience department (hybrid). In parallel to my studies, I also started my own company for luxury wedding & events planning. My company was very successful and it was my only income stream for five years. I sold my company shortly after becoming a mother.
Career wise, I am looking for a role that utilizes my analytical and technical skills but at the same time, it connects me with people online and in-person. I love content creation (social media, blogging, video creations and more).Not sure what the suitable role is.
* Add a small Bio section to your blog, and perhaps an explanation of the work you are looking for in the article. LinkedIn?
* Take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring and post in the correct thread if it's still open.
* If you are looking for a technical job, write some technical articles. (Don't expect to make money from them. Only some fun if you are lucky some karma.)
* Also a few small contribution to Open Source may help to learn the current tools.
* I'm not sure if something like https://www.kaggle.com/ helps to get hired, but you may get an update in the tools and also have a few recent technical anecdotes.
* There is people that work as social media manager. I'm not sure if that what you are looking for, and perhaps something tha mix some SWE will get a better pay.
One thing she did which probably helped was publish YouTube videos about tech topics. She'd just pick a topic, research it, and make a training video on it. She also started using twitter a lot and having conversations with prolific tweeters in her area of expertise.
Basically she upped her public profile and got noticed.
There were many differences for me though. For one I had a rich network (she doesn’t mention this) so when, a couple of years ago, my gf urged me to get a job I ended up with a lot of recruiter calls. But TBH they couldn’t grok my bg and I’m not really a big company guy.
Also I already had multi-year gaps in my work history so this wasn’t an existential issue for me as it might be for most people.
Third, I’m male and the biases in business are different. Not just in business: a father traveling with a kid is offered all sorts of help and accommodation while a woman with kids is largely invisible. I could write a whole book on this! But on the business side I wasn’t asked the kinds of family questions that I hear women are asked. In fact “I had to become a full time parent” is usually received with sympathy rather than as a sign of unseriousness.
In the end I did what I usually do which is start a company. My co founder is a widow, and also a former software developer, and she struggled* more like the author of this piece. The idiots who didn’t hire her really missed out!
My gf’s path involved an unexpected hack: she took only a few years off when her kids were small but she and her then husband needed the income so she started working for a tiny consulting boutique, initially part time. That let her slowly transition into consulting on her own.
* Disclaimer: we have never discussed this directly though: this comes through when we talk about hiring.
I don't know where you're meeting these accommodating people, I just get stared at like I'm doing something wrong when I travel with my child. God forbid I want to use the change table in the woman's washroom because there's none in the men's. I just change my kid on the grass outside, trying to ignore the looks and comments like, "Moms day off?"
Taking time off to raise your children is a personal choice, but it doesn't make any sense that it's almost never the fathers who stay at home.
The mother from the article writes: being a stay-at-home mum came at the cost of my career.
But why doesn't the father write: not staying home for my children came at the cost of their mother's career.
Children have fathers and mothers. Both fathers and mothers should carry this responsibility equally. It's not impossible. As long as raising a child is seen as a responsibility of the mother and less of the father, mothers will always face more difficulties in their career.
Disclaimer: ofcourse there are exceptions where there is only one parent who is availabile to carry the responsibility, but in general when the mother stays at home it's not due to external circumstances, but rather a personal preference.
Because on average, fathers tend to make more than mothers. That's not the only calculation, but it's a big one.
Because not every employer would allow this.
Do you have children? I'm father to a 16-month old. The first few months especially, our daughter would not go to sleep unless my wife held her. No amount of compassion on my part could overcome the ingrained link a newborn has with its mother.
You are basically arguing that new mothers can have their babies ripped from their arms while they get shackled to their cubicle, and that this will have no negative impacts on the child's development......all in the pursuit of "equality"? This strikes me as....misguided.
If father specialises for work, he can devote 100%. If mother specialises for work, she can only devote 90% (or whatever, to account for birth & recovery in first year).
Therefore all things being equal (i.e. “controlling for other variables” in statistics) father specialising for work will be more profitable for the family than mother specialising for work. Everyone (well, every couple) is free to choose what they want, weighing tradeoffs along many dimensions (money isn’t everything, but it’s a lot) but don’t be surprised if choices are biased towards “economically sensible”.
Sure, you can also do things “equally” but I estimate you’ll be getting less, on average (i.e. you will earn less per day working 3x per week than 5x (or 6x))
1. Father working full-time, mother staying-at-home for a few years
2. Father and mother working both reduced hours
Your conclusion is that sum of wages accumulated over the career length of both the father and the mother is higher in scenario 1 than in scenario 2?
If that's the case, then first of all I doubt that's true. And second, that means we as a society are sacrificing gender equality in return for disposable income. I think gender equality is not worth a small increase in disposable income (and I don't even think that staying at home economically is the better choice).
Some people will still take equal splits, but not all will.
> I think gender equality is not worth a small increase in disposable income
Not gonna respond to this part because I can’t really figure out what you meant, but one comment is: “gain for society, loss for individual” usually requires a fair amount of coercion.
I see freedom valuable and coercion damaging. Freedom to choose also requires you to be able to choose the “wrong” choice. So in my view enforcing gender equality is just as bad, if not worse, as enforcing gender inequality.
I also think your statement that more individual freedom for women is a loss for everyone needs some clarification. That's a wild thing to say. I hope I interpreted this wrong?
Breastfeeding in the early year(s) is a defensible reason I think.
The specialization argument makes no sense. Why does it make sense for the mother to specialize for the family than the man? You made a large unexplained logical leap in that one that I don’t think is defensible.
The reason is economic and tradition at this point. Due to unfair compensation practice that rewards women less for the same work it makes more sense for her to not work. Tradition also compels a lot of couples in this direction. Both of these forces work to take women out of the work force.
The return to work force friction is very sad, and I honestly don’t understand it.
This is not true. Just google "woman gives birth at work" for many examples. https://www.newsweek.com/colorado-woman-gives-birth-car-deal...
Also, in general, American workers tend to get fewer days off work than European workers, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Let's say a woman works 45 years during her life. That's well over 10,000 working days. And let's say she has 2 kids. How many days off do you think she needs, medically speaking, for childbirth? The percentage is very very low.
This is a systemic and structural tragedy.
That said as a hiring manager I love hiring women returning to work. They have a very clear reason to be there and their productivity is very high, and more than offsets any reduction in hours they might face due to lingering responsibilities.
First, the choice is not binary (i.e. mother or father stays at home). There's alternatives like working reduced hours (32 hours) and using day care. This is common practice in a lot of developed countries.
Second, the cost of the wage gap resulting from suspending your career for a few years, accumulated over your entire career length is really high. My income doubled in the last 5 years. Using day care then suddenly isn't that expensive at all, at least not in my country. But you have to make the right calculations, and look at the cost of reduced future wages as well.
There are definitely couples that both work and leverage child care of some form. That’s a reasonable choice. But it’s also comes with a large trade off from a parenting point of view.
In my family I would have loved to stay home. But I made considerably more than my wife did. When she reentered the work force she faced a lot of obstacles and essentially started over again. Fortunately I work from 6am-3pm since I’m in seattle and the org I manage is based in the UK and NYC. So my wife can work a normal job and I can pick up my daughter at school without requiring child care expenses. But it’s a little depressing for my wife to have left a high powered career and now is bouncing around the bottom of the ladder. But it got us time to parent and let us earn the most money by letting my career keep growing. It just came at the cost of her pride and self worth as a professional.
First, let's say both parents are working 32 hours, and a child goes to daycare for 3 days. That's 24 out of 168 hours a week, in which the child also gets to play with other children. I can understand the hesitancy against outsourcing parenting, but for me this is a perfectly acceptable scenario.
Second, you explain it's depressing for your wife to leave a high powered career and now to be bouncing at the bottom of the career ladder. It's difficult to put a number on this, but I think this should be an important factor in the equation used for optimizing economic outcome. Also, I strongly believe it's better for children as well to have parents who live their ambitions and chase their dreams. Happier parents = happier children?
Finally, you state that earning the most money came at the expensive of her pride and self worth as a professional. Would you have made any other decisions in retrospect?
I don’t know that it was depressing per se for my wife or me, it was what we wanted. And we would make the same choices again given the same options and outcomes. The negative side effects of the choices are mostly societal consequences and I think we would prefer society not make parenting a career damaging choice. There’s no benefit to anyone in the current model. But also it’s important to note in my case I make nearly 10x what my wife would. Most couples will have a tighter decision to make - but will usually pick the man even with a smaller differential due to tradition.
My wife stayed home for a few years for traditional reasons, and then got an offer that was too good to refuse. So I left my position to support and my family when she returned to work, as well as because I was looking for a career change.
So we've taken turns.
I haven't really stopped working in some ways. I still serve on many professional committees and positions and do consulting, but don't have a salary per se, and wouldn't survive financially on my own.
I've found myself asking the same question you have. The linked essay really resonates with me as do many of the posts here.
Society really makes so many assumptions about peoples' lives. There's a lot of lost opportunities because of impulsive, angry, or prejudiced decisions. I'd say in the last 10 years of my life a dominant theme has been a feeling of being walled in by others' prejudices and presumptions, of being typecast in a lot of ways. Not just with regard to gender (that might be the least of it really), but with regard to what I can offer, what my skillset is, what I'm interested in doing, and all sorts of other things.
It's not limited to men. I've heard other women throw shade at pregnant and nursing mothers who need special accommodations. Sometimes even other mothers...
If she were a software engineer, I'd have all sorts of advice on how to develop the skills to re-enter the job market.
> I have degrees in Computer Science (BSc), and Neuroscience (MSc) with two years of being a researcher at the University at the Machine learning + Neuroscience department (hybrid). [...]
but take a look at the whole comment. I'm not sure she is looking for a SWE position.
Out of curiosity what kind of work do you do?
I do not have specific requirements. I am flexible in terms of hours/week etc.
I am looking on entering a career that utilizes my strong Computer Science + Analytical skills and a career that allows me to develop/ use my content creation skills/ passion, networking, events, communication, digital marketing etc. I am not sure what is the right role for me.
So far, I look into content creator jobs, digital marketing/sales, business advocacy, and more!
I am eager to learn and grow, so I would be incredibly happy with trainee/ internships/ apprenticeships/ return to work programs!!!
Again thank you so much for asking me, it's so supportitive!
Software dev seems an easy choice from a computer science background.
That's all? I am in the middle of a job search, I am gainfully employed, I just got a raise and a new bonus structure, and yes I have been "rejected" by well over 100 positions, I have been a finalist in at least 3 or 4 (maybe 5) and 1 offer was rescinded at the last moment for reason unrelated to me/my qualifications.
There was a time in my life when I was in a similar situation returning to my professional career after a 5-year sabbatical in a different field and as an entrepreneur, so I know the pain of convincing prospective employers to hire me.
We don't like it, but it's a numbers game. Period. 20 is not a meaningful number. 4,000 is.
She's really just started applying to jobs.
Also on upwork you need to get in some experience before you can apply for decent paying jobs which means wetting for peanuts on a few small jobs.
edit: see https://www.springboard.com/blog/career-advice/amazon-facebo...
If anyone is aware of additional companies, mind adding them to the thread?
Here's what you do: you lie by omission. By this I mean you imply you went to college during or after any experience you have. Do not specify when you graduated. Don't specify what years you went to college. They can't really ask because that risks age discrimination.
Put work experience first then college afterwards. This gives the impression of chronological order without saying that's the case.
You can even leave off work experience you don't think is relevant or will help you, particularly for entry-level positions. If you're concerned you're competing with new grads then come across as a new grad with some experience.
> However, being a stay-at-home mum came at the cost of my career.
To generalize, doing anything for 5-6 years will come at the cost of your career. This isn't specific to raising children.
All those parents who are forced to work but always wanted to stay back and provide best care for their kids but couldn't do so.. feeling a gut punch.
Parents who chose career path and gets the slap in the face moments every time they realized that they could have spent more time with the kids instead of the work.
Is it possible to eat the cake and have it too?
I've seen reflections of OP in a lot of parents in my life. They fall into two categories:
Type As that direct this sort of extreme level of effort to anything they do.
Anxiety/OCD that just can't let that little bit of benefit go combined with satisfying their complusion of controlling everything.
A long time ago, when I had only one child I made a joke to one of my coworkers that had twins. It was something like that child care was O(N), so she had the double of problems.
Now I have two small children (and a big one), and now I'm convinced that it's at least O(N^2). [In my case O(5) not O(9), because the old one is old enough.]
For the people in my life that sound similar to the OP they do the reverse. They add parenting work until their capacity is full. If you gave them and extra 3 hours in the day they'd still be just as busy.
I lost a position over a year ago and found myself scrambling for a new role as an older person in tech. I thought of a few things that might help.
In my case I was trying to move into medical tech software infra role in NYC. I needed to find ways of talking to people in the target field in a low pressure way - I got an invite to https://lunchclub.com/ and started having chats with people who worked in tech with a medical focus. I met someone who worked for the CDC and another person who was a nurse who developed a new kind of injection needle, etc
I could ask them lots of questions about their work and get comfort in talking about related topics. It helped in my case as it helped me relax - I am not extroverted and I needed to develop fluidity in this way. I am not recommending lunchclub over any other such service - it is the one I used. I would guess there are more option in this space... In my case I found a job in a nonmedical field but the company is a pretty amazing fit and I feel lucky. I feel like the ability to relax in the interview process really helped.
Another thing I thought about with your post is - consider not applying for junior positions - the ugly language in the response letter you got is telling you that I think. It requires bravery and squelching the 'impostor syndrome' feelings but you are not a junior employee. You have life experience. Look for employers that seem to signal that they will hire based upon your aptitude rather than "x years in such a position".
Another question - are you contacting companies directly? YMMV but I get much better interactions with internal recruiters than head hunters. Try targetting companies even if they don't list exactly the job you are looking for.
Very best of luck
Preference for all public-sector jobs (not just federal, but I think all fifty states give some forms of veterans preference, and a handful give “absolute preference” where a minimally-qualified veteran must be hired over a non-veteran regardless of qualifications.) But even where its not absolute preference, it often is a very strong preference (e.g., California on open civil service exams typically limits hiring to the top 3 ranks on the resulting hiring list, with each rank being 5 points of exam score on a 100-point, before preference points, scale. Veterans get 10 extra points, or 15 if they have a qualifying degree of disability.)
If you are only getting rejections, you may try either lowering your expectations or getting some relevant skills to beef up your offering on the market.
> grit, n: firmness of mind or spirit, unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger
What hardship or danger are employees subjected to, in your company? If this an excuse to blame burnout on employees' lack of fortitude? What systems are missing from your organization that make goals reliant on individuals' courage?
Hardship could include not being able complete a project due to reasons in or out of your control, but grit makes you not give up. Many sales jobs are like this. Many engineering and science jobs are like this.
Otherwise, grit could be doing a tough thankless job day after day without quitting. Such as cleaning up sewage. People without grit could quit even if they get paid a 500k to do that job.
You seem to have the idea that all jobs should be cushy and predictable. But some jobs are harder than others, and you personally benefit from people doing these hard jobs.
A good company would compensate employees for taking calculated risks and don't demand excessive exposure to danger or other bad conditions
The main question, then, would be whether the people doing those jobs are properly compensated for it. Personally I don't think that's generally the case, because companies tend to pay too much to white collar workers like you who demand everything to be easy and say simply asking for "grit" is a red flag. Soldiers must be exposed to danger, and grit is a requirement for being a good soldier, and personally I think they're not treated well enough.
I wish anyone in this position nothing but the best, but this should come as no surprise.
It reminds me of a comedy bit where a guy asks "so when you were in school, you studied, hung out with friends, got a girlfriend, and so on -- yeah? -- if you'd been on the computer every waking hour like i was then you wouldn't be standing here today like an idiot".
It's a joke, but the truth is that there are only 24h in the day, and nobody can "have it all". There's always a road less traveled, even if you traveled the best road for you.
YMMV, of course!
I don't think the author is looking for life advice from you. "Being a stay-at-home mum was my choice." She doesn't appear to be kicking herself for becoming a mother. Whether she "expected" this or not, whether it was a "surprise", is not particularly relevant. That's not the issue, it's a red herring. She made her choice, willingly, and now she's looking to restart her career. It feels like some commenters are looking more to be judgmental than helpful.
The survival of humanity itself depends on people having and raising children. But then we turn around and act like it's some kind of personal mistake, a poor choice for which someone deserves social punishment, as opposed to a natural part of life. Why is a gap in someone's résumé viewed as abnormal rather than expected? If anyone deserves to be lectured, it's the employers who are "surprised" that résumé gaps occur and "expect" candidates to have no gaps.
She's just looking for a job in her field. So you're arguing against a straw man. Or straw woman.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-shippi-03321323a/
Thank you all for your feedback, thoughts, help and comments!
you are not at fault of course, but many companies think of you as their resource and won’t allow that (ever wondered why the department is called “Human Resources”?)
I’ve often been told that as a man, I’d have to provide for my wife while she takes care of the kids. I’ve often resisted this because I think it’s patriarchal bullshit. People argue logistical points but there are solutions thanks to capitalism. Who is gonna carry the kid? Well, the woman can but that doesn’t mean you’re entitled to years off of work post-preg. I’d give you no longer than the standard time off at FAANG plus a month as compensation for your work of getting to eat whatever and destroy your body (I’m not a fan - neither would you if you saw me permanently gain 40lbs of fat). Alternatively - we pay for a surrogate. I’ll pay the cost if it means you have to play corporate war games. $100k for a few years off and you don’t lose your great body and have postpartum who the fuck knows? Sounds extremely cheap and advantageous to me! Yes, please! What about breast milk?! Women donate that and I can buy it. Again - cheap in the scheme of things.
At this point - it devolves. It’s clear it’s about want and not need. It’s just annoying people rarely take this stance because it’s shown to be a selfish choice and shown as one that is actually more enjoyable than corporate war games. Yes, it turns out $500k+/yr jobs are often very stressful, competitive, and full of hell. No wonder you want to escape - but so do I.
And that's perfectly OK. BUT if you think it is a reversible choice, then you are the cause any trouble that results.
Instead think outside the box instead because you must.
I'm guy who's rarely taken the "safe path" of a career. For example, my father worked for the same company for 40 years; I've never worked in the same job for more than 5 years. And the range of jobs I've had covers a wide range of industries despite always being technical.
I've had to do the above "contextual reset" over and over again. It's both a pain in the ass and a joy at the same time. The latter mostly because it means everything must be "new" again; the former because you are forced out of your comfort zone as your prior job defined it.
Each time I changed jobs, the change was big enough that I destroyed my chanceso to ever "follow the original career continuity path".
I could never "recover" status quo ante by simply going back to any one of those jobs expecting nothing had changed nor expecting I should be caught up with anyone else who didn't take a diversion. You can't go back. But you can find a new direction with new strengths and weaknesses that never would have been possible if you'd never left. It's time to get creative.
Honestly it's a WONDERFUL opportunity that this kind of career diversion creates. You need to reset your context in planning next moves. But you've made an irreversible decisions. Having children is one of those. Doing what I have done is much the same.
BTW I learned early in my career that resumes/CVs are low effort and low effectiveness.
I stopped using them as my primary job search tool except to "seal the deal with HR bureaucracy" after I'm already "hired" back in my 20s (I turn 60 this year). I NEVER "lead" a job search with a resume; I lead with network building and one-on-one campaigns to find the job I WANT at the company I'VE DECIDED TO WORK AT.
My current employer was CHOSEN to be an M&A target for my most recent startup. The person to "closed" our acquisition is someone I networked with 15 years before.