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Comment by nkozyra | Hacker News Reader

I think there's a big difference. In the tech world, there's this expectation that sometimes you're going to pull all-nighters or work 14 hour days or do sprints or whatever.

If you're working at the mall selling clothing that's pretty unlikely. In my former life in publishing, that was pretty unusual.

It's a cultural thing and it's not strictly relegated to tech, but it's not universal. Plenty of people have reliable 9-5 jobs, Monday-Friday. That's a lot easier to reconcile with parenthood than when there's a huge release sprint and they expect you to work from 9 a.m. Friday to 9 a.m. Sunday or whatever.

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That's the expectation in a lot of industries (finance, consulting, law--heck my dad works in public health and he's worked 60-70+ hours most of his career). I worked at a big law firm in New York, and most of the partners had kids. Indeed, my daughter was born a month after I started at the firm. I immediately got put on an internal investigation, where the client was under threat of getting their stock delisted unless we made its auditor happy. It was a "if you're awake, you have to be in the office" situation. Somehow we all managed, despite several people on the team, including the partner, having small kids.

I think the attitude towards kids in the tech industry has more to do with its general youth worship. There's a big attitude shift towards kids from early 20's as you go into early 30's.

I agree, it is a lot of industries. It's not all of them, though, which seemed to be the point to which I responded.

There is always a tradeoff between reliability and availability when it comes to the 20 year old dev and the 35 year old dev.

It's not all of them, but it's a lot of them. In a way, having a professional job gives you a lot of flexibility. You show up 5 minutes late to your retail a few times, and you're fired.

It can be like that in tech or any industry too though, you can get fired after being late, if you have a schedule.

It's really not comparable, at least not in the places I've worked (both in tech and in law). Retail jobs and the like are very strict with schedules. As in counting minutes. Professional jobs give you a lot more flexibility as long as you get the work done. When you're a professional, employers give you a certain amount of slack because it's expensive to fire and replace you. When you're a low-skill worker, it's all zero-tolerance.

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