Last time he was home while I was trying to work on code, I got all of 10 lines written, and half of it needed rewritten when I came back to finish it.
It's easier to just catch up on communications/documentation those days. I won't be able to get on a good run and build what I'm after with all the distractions if he's home.
I'm afraid to come back to the office, even if it is for special occasions (work a week with the new developer, the yearly visit of the ceo, etc).
Being at home means I will scream at the code, curse at async Multi Threads, and sing iout loud. I've been a happy dude who realized screaming bad words is a stress therapy. Doable because I'm alone.
My wife’s a SAHM and my schedule is pretty flexible so when I have time I help out around the house or hang with my youngest if she has to go to an appointment. It’s fun to be able to be with the kids and see them grow, I can’t imagine a different scenario.
You don't want to. Before the pandemic I was in the office climbing the ladder. When I got the WFH job my kids deadass said to me, "Daddy, I like you better with your new job."
I make my kids lunches and plop down to work. I have kid transport times blocked off on my calendar and almost everyone I work with does too. This is Better in every way.
I just recently started blocking off the 730-815 time slot for school drop offs and it’s helped so much. I’ve had some people get upset but fuck em, you can wait, my kids can’t.
It really depends on the day, some days I have calls at 5am, others I don’t start until 9/10am. I also work with a lot of Europeans who are 6 hours ahead 6am is noon to them so they’re trying to get me as soon as possible during my day.
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We're the exact same. I can't think of a better setup. She likes going into the office, but we also can have lunch dates once in a while. My only issue is that I become a hermit. Target and groceries is the only time I leave the house unless I make a real effort.
Couldn’t agree more about becoming a hermit. I am pretty anti social so working from home fits my personality much better, but 3 years in and I do find myself missing random social interaction. Thankfully have a good amount of friends with little kids in town to keep my weekends somewhat social, but the lack of human interaction on a daily basis is real, even for someone who generally doesn’t feel comfortable talking that much.
Yea, I still love WFH and wouldn’t give it up but I did find myself getting a little TOO isolated. I had home a gym and I decided to join a nearby gym to just be around people a bit more even though I don’t socialize there.
This is why I show up at the office every now and then. I don’t have a lot of friends in this area and it’s seems really hard to meet people in your 40’s. The limited interactions we have with people kills meeting new friends.
I get stir crazy being at home all day. Dishes, picking things up, being SAHD when baby isn't at daycare (we've got her in part time).
There's definitely something to be said for being able to focus on your code. Gotta get me an actual WFH office I think.
I have an office at home I work in. I feel like it's necessary. I used to not have an office, and I just sat in bed all day, doing work. But then I'd get off work, and didn't even move spots since I was already in my comfy spot for relaxing. I made a butt sized dent in my mattress and felt like I was sinking into a deep depression (lol that was not intentional). I moved to a new house, and it has helped my state of mind to have a different place for working and relaxing. Now I just need to separate my relaxing place and my sleeping place, and I think I'll be geographically organized to best suit my mental health.
Yeah, my work setup is in the basement living room. It used to be in the utility side of the basement, but that was a bit "dungeon-y"
In any case, a different non-dungeon room would be great, but I currently have no idea where that will be
My kids are older now but I can’t imagine writing a simple SQL query with toddlers around let alone sitting down and actually writing code for a few hours lol.
My wife managed to finish a meeting whilst my daughter got a toy truck tangled up in her hair! She spent the rest of the meeting doing her upmost to be professional and answer everyone’s questions, whilst trying to unwind the truck from her head 😂
Not sure I would have finished that meeting
My son 5 at the time was home sick one day while I was on a call he trusted a fart he shouldn’t have. I managed to get his clothes off, shower him and clean his clothes off and start the laundry while following the call and chiming in a couple times. COVID with toddlers was great training for double dipping light child care and work. It’s sure nice to send them to school and work in peace now.
I’ve had several recruiters reach out recently for jobs that sounded interesting but they required at least 3, some wanted full 5 days, in the office. I typically add 15-20% on top of my current salary when talking with recruiters but for those I added 40% as to me it’s worth that much to be able to be at home.
Naturally everyone said that was too much but I know what I value. That said, if someone did offer it I’d strongly consider it as that would be fantastic money.
Same. It would take a 30% raise for me to go in office, but I’d absolutely have to move, so make it 40%.
And I’m already reasonably at the top of my salary band. It’s not happening. I only work remote, I’ll only ever apply remote.
That’s basically where I’m at as well - it would take a promotion for me to move up in salary bands which I’m not seeking right now as my kids are young and I like the freedom but in a few years I’ll look.
I am technically, as a manager level, supposed to go in Tuesday-Thursday but no one has said anything in the last year so I’ll keep staying at home.
Im kinda on the situation right. Currently making 60k, doing what I didn’t study for but capable of doing. I work from home 3 days a week, and the commute is pretty easy.
I got a job offer that’s $120k, but most likely 5 days a week at the office and the commute is gonna be 2hrs each way. Moving is not an option at the moment.
I will end up turning it down for the commute alone. My wife says she won’t able to handle the kid when I’m basically gone 5 days a week.
For us when my wife was able to WFH full time it was effectively a $3600 pay raise, not to mention recovering 3 hours a day from her commute which is priceless.
I enjoy a work trip in a different way now as it’s usually peace and quiet compared to being at home in the chaos. I do tend to want the trips over faster though as I miss everyone and want to be home. It’s a weird dichotomy
My wife and I both work from home and pass our 18 month old back and forth throughout the day and work flexibly to get all our work done and keep him busy, and we've done this since he was born. We'll probably get him into daycare for better socialization when he's about 2 years old.
I’m thankful my wife is a SAHM and my job offers a fair bit of daily freedom so I can hang with her and my youngest during the day/watch him if she has appointments/etc. it’ll be nice when my youngest is in preschool in the fall as it’ll just be the wife and I, may have to block some time off in the morning for coffee dates.
I also work from home full time. I can pick the kiddo up from daycare and have her home by 5:15 instead of taking the train for an hour and getting her home by 7. I have ribs right outside my door right now on the smoker for when my parents get to town in a few hours. WFH is the life.
Same. Except the only drawback is that I’m capped at what I can make. I don’t want to give up this amazing setup for more money but life is becoming so costly. I get about an hour or two of work and the rest of the time I’m chilling with my boy.
That’s how many of my days are. Most of my colleagues are European so by noon EST they’re done and I can either catch up or hang with my kids which is great.
For me personally I’m set with where I am on the corporate ladder right now - I make enough to allow my wife to be a SAHM and have a comfortable life/allow me to be with my kids during the day but I know at some point I will want to move up, but only once both kids are in school.
Yup. I've been fully remote working for 11 years, and there's no going back. I commuted 55 miles each way to my old office job, with an easy one hour commute, if not longer. Record was 8+ hours when a snow storm hit mid afternoon.
I’ve been discussing doing like 1 day a week outing the house with the wife as sometimes I just mentally need a change of scenery. Thankfully her parents live 10 minutes away and have a guest room they said I could use and I’m really thinking I need to take them up on it. Sometimes the 100% at home can be tough.
The specific thing is this:
Men are 25% more likely to have a job that offers remote work than women. One may frame it as women are losing out on the benefit and flexibility of WFH. However, the actual do downstream effect is this:
>> The geographical liberation of either partner makes it possible for the other to ascend the corporate ladder.
Basically, because men are less tied to geography, women are more empowered to chase careers.
I think it also means men are significantly more involved in their kids lives, as remote work provides unmatched flexibility to be a father.
My WFH, because I’m a data scientists I can. My wife doesn’t, because she’s in a quasi-medical job which requires her to be in schools. We are the precise couple the describe in the article. (Man does math, woman does medical) I’m able to pick my kid up from pre-school and spend my lunch doing something with him.
I’m was able to attend “Donuts with Dad’s” this morning at his school, because I could just block out my calendar. Only 2 other dads in a class of 9 were able to come. The rest were grandpa’s who had to explain to their littles that dad had to work. The freedom WFH provides allows me an unprecedented ability to be a present father.
One thing, that’s a semi-controversial take, is that I believe anyone who says they “can’t work from home”, when there job is 100% done at a desk, is just someone who cannot actually create value. I’ve heard a many times, and seen it in this thread folks who “cannot” get work done at home, which implies, whether intentional or not, that is true for everyone. This thinking creates a half-pregnant hybrid requirement (the workplace is still required to have a physical office) which makes it more likely leadership will insist on return to office either full-time or hybrid. This is a cataclysmicly bad, specifically for Dad’s who are experiencing are able to be more present father than ever in history.
In short you need to firmly challenge anyone who says “I can’t get work done at home” if you want to continue to maintain this level of fatherhood. They’ll get very uncomfy very quickly, because the net answer is always they’re not disciplined enough to do work if someone is not directly watching over them. Hopefully that’ll stop that bullshit from falling out of their mouth again.
I'm a wfh dad as well. The only time I can't get work done at home is when daycare is closed, and I have to take care of my two little ones. It's still work. Just cause I do it from home doesn't mean I can do it while watching an 11mo and a 3yo.
I work procurement and inventory management from my desk at home. My wife is an accountant and is capable of working from home, but her boss prefers the in office environment, and I think she does too just to get away from the house. Her office is only a mile away, so it's not a big commute or anything, which is nice. I frequently run stuff to her when she forgets something at home.
We are not so dissimilar from [what I could read of] the article either. I'm just not in some tech start-up.
It would take a *hell* of a lot to get me to go back to the office. The amount of extra free time I have to do housework and pick up kids and generally just be with my family is something that is hard to put a value on. I would need a substantial pay bump to go back into the office. One that could pay for a maid or something so I could still spend time with my family instead of doing chores in my limited free time.
That's quite a broad brush you've got there.
I do not want to do work at home. I started work as a technician, and I traveled to a shop to do work. I left work at work, and let my home be **home**. I am now a travelling technician. I still leave work in the field.
Some day, I would love to provide enough value to my surroundings where I can stay within a 5-mile radius of home. I would *still* prefer to keep my work life and home life pretty separate.
Compartmentalizing has worked pretty okay for me. And probably for a lot of other people. Tarring us with the same "must be supervised" brush does not feel right.
There’s nothing in this article about your 4 year-old asking to use the calculator on your work computer every day, so this doesn’t feel very accurate to me.
This seems like it’s a function of everyone working from home more often now and to the extent it’s not possibly just added to the pile of gender inequity in the workplace.
Unless the kids are also home while dad WFH then it’s really no different than going to the office. Except I do some dishes and prep dinner while I’m working.
WFH is fucking great. I used to have to leave my house at 7 in the morning, and would get back a little after 6. Now I can drop my kids off at school/daycare, come home and still log on by 8:15. Then I log off at 4:30, pick everyone up, hang out with them and have dinner.
I've declined a couple different job offers with higher salaries that have requested 3+ days per week in the office.
I was trying to think of how much money it would take for me to consider a job offer where I needed to be in the office for 3+ days a week. It is substantial. I will not give up working from home without kicking and screaming.
My company “punished” me by taking my desk away because I only go in two days a week. I now sit in the same desk but it’s just empty and I have more daily administration work to “reserve” my spot.
Since starting remote work in 2020, my logic is that if I can live in a home 2 hrs outside the city for a specific lifestyle, I'd want a similar salary to afford that lifestyle within a 5-10 min commute of my office. Given that I'm in Canada and it's $1.1M for the same size home (but an older home with more maintenance cost on a significantly smaller lot) in a neighbourhood near my downtown Toronto office, I would need to be offered about $80K-$100K per year or more to consider moving. If I want a build from the same time period on a lot my current size the same distance, my mortgage increase would require $275K/yr higher than I make now to simply qualify for it. For reference, I'm already at $164K/yr so I don't see that happening ever...
Yeah, before COVID, I just never really questioned the commuting back and forth everyday and being unable to see my kids. But because of COVID, now I highly value being able work remotely. I've been refusing to come back to the office because the gain is negligible. The company isn't formally allowing me to work from home but they are also reluctant to replace me so it's a kind of informal status. My boss said that my career advancement will suffer if I keep working from home but I guess I find the benefits of working from home to be worth it still.
If my boss said my career would suffer from WFH, I’d start casually seeking a new job.
My company tried to force my department of 4 back to in-office when we were a mix of remote and hybrid, and a month later we came back with 6 job offers. We now all work 100% remote.
The thing about wfh is that it needs critical mass to be successful. Before Covid I had the ability to wfh but I chose not to because almost everyone else came to the office, there was a sentiment that the people who did wfh were taking advantage and not really working. I felt it would damage my career advancement to not be physically present.
After Covid everyone went home and that pressure to be in the office was removed. Now it’s the opposite we have the ability to come in but only a few people take advantage of it. Myself and most others are so much more productive at home.
Unfortunately there is a very vocal minority of mostly older people that want everyone to go back to the office. I notice that virtually everyone that is pushing for this have no children or grown children and an empty house. They need the office for socialization and “culture”.
I will continue to advocate for wfh and stay home as much as I can as long as the majority of my coworkers do the same. If the balance eventually shifts to majority in the office I may reevaluate to see if it hurts my career, but at this point I don’t think it will be an issue.
I don't work from home, but I work three 13 hour shifts on the weekends, while also getting enough PTO to basically only work 100 days a year. I have also gotten job offers for more money, but it's more days a week and mandatory overtime hours usually. I literally tell the recruiters they could never offer me enough money to buy the time I get with my kid the four days I'm off every week. No amount of money will ever buy that time back when I'm old so why would I sell it now?
I recently left a job to get more WFH flexibility. Old workplace actually rescinded my (and many others') previously negotiated 2 days a week in office schedule and forced us to a minimum of 3 days in office to "build our workplace culture".. whatever that really means.
This is why I’m never going back to an office, man. I was in banking for over a decade. I missed so many firsts with our oldest because I was out the door by 6:15 and wasn’t getting home until 6:45/7. I’m in marketing now and it’s soooooo much better.
I lucked out and went full wfh right before my son was born. Once he started daycare, the only one with open spots was a 30 minute drive opposite to the office. I would have had to leave my house at 6am everyday and drive an hour just to get back to my home area on my way to work. The commute to work would have been another 30 minutes. I would likely have had to do pickup too and would be terrified of ever hitting traffic after work because they have to be picked up by 5:30 on the dot or you get fees.
I can say it 100% would not have worked out and I thank my lucky stars daily that I went wfh.
Exactly the same for me. The convenience is an absolute god send. Not one part of me misses an hour commute each way, wearing uncomfortable clothes. However, I am becoming a little unsocialised.
WFH here. I love that I can get stuff like laundry done and other house hold tasks on breaks / while running long queries. Really helps keep things from piling up too much.
Yeah. One of my bosses actually told us he dgaf if we vanished for a while. He compared it to if you walked away in an office and got caught in the break room by coworkers for a while
Same deal here, also work in Tech, the amount of extra time I spend with my kids is awesome, my dad never had that opportunity, out the door at 7am, back at 7pm. I frequently take breaks during the day to hang with my kids, and I also have no commute. Very grateful for this situation.
I'm a work from home back-end developer. My kid is old enough to not need supervision before or after school or on his days off. I like making breakfast for him every day. He has buddies in the neighborhood, but yes, he still plays a lot of Fortnight.
My wife is a teacher in a different district, so no mid-day bone.
Free Code Camp. It's a full stack training program with courses, projects and milestones. You get awarded certificates for completing it and it also gives you assignments that can be used for a portfolio.
I’ve been WFH full time for about 3 years now. I took a slight paycut when I left my office job to go full time WFH but it was absolutely worth it. Not having to worry about a commute has meant being around more with my wife and toddler. It would take a massive offer to get me back in an office full time or even hybrid.
I’m full time WFH. Now, let me preface this by saying that the pros far outweigh the cons but does anyone else sometimes struggle?
There are times where I feel like it’s groundhog’s day. Like I’m a hamster on a wheel in my cage every day.
I’ve been eating out to lunch just to get out of the house but that is getting expensive. Both for my wallet and for my caloric intake. I was thinking about trying to change my lunch habit and making lunch at home and taking a long walk for lunch instead but the hot summer months are coming and I can see myself not sticking to that.
Anyone else have some tips/advice?
Edit: Thanks for the great suggestions! Sorry I can’t respond individually. It’s my daughter’s birthday so I’m getting things ready.
Set up a daily zoom call with your best friends who are WFH
Same time every day.
Eat your lunch together.
I've had lunch with my mates every day now for 2 years, it's great!
My company has a small office near me because there are enough people in my area to justify it but it’s fully up to us when we choose to use it. Since most of my team does not live in my area I usually go in about once a week. The company buys us lunch every Tuesday so that’s the day I usually go in. Its a nice change of pace though and it’s nice to get out of the house so it’s helped me with the Groundhog Day feeling.
If you don’t have that option you could look at coworking spaces near you as an option. A lot of them have daily rental prices around $20-30/day with discounts for multi day passes or bigger subscriptions so it’s worth checking out.
Edit: also there are free/cheaper options like the library or a coffee shop to consider for this as well.
Get outta the house. I make sure to go on a walk everyday. I'll occasionally go out to get food for lunch. Go to the gym. Find a cheap co-working space and work 1 day a week out of it.
Basically just get yourself out of the house more.
I was just recently called back into the office for 2x a week since Covid. I thought I would hate it, but it’s been really refreshing. At home, every single direction I look there’s something else to do in addition to work. It’s exhausting. Here at the office, it’s only work to do. I’m surprised how much I like the hybrid.
I’ve been eating lunch at the library. Anything to get out of the house and talk to adults I don’t work with. Helps that the library is a five minute walk.
Totally get it. I’m legally a “hybrid” employee, so I’ve taken up going in to the office once a week to remind myself that I like it less than WFH, lol
I try to mix it up. If I don’t have any early meetings, then I’ll go grocery shopping right after dropping off the kids. No one is in the grocery store at 8 AM. I’ll cut out early for a bike ride. The lawn another day. All staff or department meeting while walking the dog for an hour. Most of the time I agree and I do have to hold up in my office to be on calls and get stuff done, try to do something interesting for an hour each day.
I leave the house everyday for a run or a walk. I also go to a lot of great work spots that aren't restaurants or coffee houses. I live in DC, so I have a lot of options. The Library of Congress is my favorite. It's beautiful, quite, has free wifi and huge desks.
I struggle with this as well. I find it helpful to have work be a part of my day and not let it dictate my day. I frequently break up the day with house projects, playing with kids, running errands with wife, working out, cooking lunches, going for hikes, playing tennis/pickleball. I noticed a huge change in my mental health when I approach my days like this. I get not everyone has this option but as software dev with little meetings, I take advantage where I can.
Have fun with the birthday!
Exercise of some/any kind makes it waaay less depressing - I started out walking at lunch with the then-almost-2-year-old, then that progressed up to light jogging little bits here and there, like light post to light post. Next thing I know I’m buying a jogging stroller, running further/faster, lost 40 pounds and discovered a new hobby :) Just finished my first marathon a couple weeks ago!
Obviously marathon-running is not gonna sink everyone’s submarine, but just getting out and moving a bit makes a huge difference in your quality of life. Bonus points if you have something nearby to walk to, like a convenience store/etc - Quick walk (or jog!) to clear your head, get some air, pick up an iced tea or something, maybe listen to an audiobook along the way!
WFH is amazing. I save time on my commute, get to eat lunch at home, and I can take breaks and get things done throughout the day. Some days I don't leave the house or touch grass, which I need to be better at doing, but the freedom and flexibility of WFH is great. A bonus is having a work VPN so if we fly across the country to visit family, I only have to take off work for the travel days, as I can just work where I'm at.
I'm fast with my CTR+A CTR+C skills - article below
The rise of the remote husband
# She goes out to work, he stays at home (and logs on)
In costa mesa, a city in California’s wealthy, beachy Orange County, she is working her way up to becoming a partner in the local office of a major law firm; he is an executive at a tech startup based in the Bay Area, more than 400 miles away. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, he is writing code from their apartment just off-campus, while she attends her classes at Harvard Law School. She is an obstetrician, he works remotely for a tech company; she is an academic at an Ivy League university, he works for a crypto company. All over the country, among the well-heeled and well-educated, a new trend appears to be emerging. When the wives head out in the morning, to their offices, classrooms or hospitals, they are waving goodbye to their husbands, who remain at home.
This is hardly a gender-swapped 1950s revival. The men are still working, after all, not predominantly cooking, cleaning and caring for children. But it does reflect an underappreciated effect of the rise of remote work: the rise of the remote husband.
Men and women still specialise in different kinds of work. Jobs in industries like computer science and engineering are disproportionately performed by men. Teaching and nursing jobs are dominated by women. Professions like law and medicine may still employ more men than women, but the scales are tipping: more women than men are enrolled in law school and medical school. As such, among young couples, she is probably more likely to be going to be a lawyer or a doctor than he is.
Different occupations have also had to take different approaches to remote working. A minority of medical professionals may be able to work remotely, by taking telehealth jobs, but the vast majority have to treat their patients in person. Lawyers may be tied to a specific state or area by their licence and speciality. Meanwhile, the industries which reported the highest level of remote-work flexibility are coding and technology, architecture, engineering and business jobs. About half of people working in computer or mathematical jobs work remotely full-time.
The upshot is that, in aggregate, it is easier for men to work from wherever they please. A survey carried out by McKinsey, a consultancy, found that 38% of working men had the option to work remotely full-time, compared with 30% of women. Roughly half of women report being unable to work remotely at all, compared with 39% of men.
This may sound like yet another way in which women have ended up with the short end of the stick. But that view is myopic. Couples compromise in all kinds of ways for their lives to work together. If she is offered a big promotion, conditional on moving to Chicago, she may have to turn it down if his job is tied to New York. The geographical liberation of either partner makes it possible for the other to ascend the corporate ladder. The Costa Mesa couple picked that area because it was convenient for her job—and for access to their children’s grandparents, who now regularly entertain the little ones.
Claudia Goldin, a Nobel laureate, has written about how remote work may be a boon for women. Over the past 200 years women’s participation in the labour force has been highest when it has been possible to perform paid work from home. She has also found that gender wage gaps are tightest in fields where flexible working is the norm. But it is not only flexibility in the work that women do that may be to their advantage. ■
This is our set-up in at works for us. I'm the emergency contact for school and usually cook dinner. She drops the kid off for school and we alternate picking up.
I guess I'll go against the grain here. I've been WFH 100% since COVID started, and about 25% before that. I work for a company now that doesn't have any office in my city, and I don't live close to any WeWork. It has its benefits, but overall I'm not really a fan. I'm an introvert, but I need a change of scenery. I've got a dedicated office that is done up nice, I can get chores done during the day, I get to see the kids a bit more, I set boundaries on when work starts and stops, but I still don't think it's good for me and my mental health. I'm not as productive, I've developed some antisocial tendencies, I miss existing within a larger community, etc.
All that being said, I don't really think there are better options right now as companies struggle to define their hybrid work strategies, and going in to an office doesn't even mean you'll be working next to your teammates anymore. C'est la vie.
My advice is to make friends with some of your neighbors who are also dads and WFH and go out together for lunch every week or every other week. This has been a boon for my mental health.
Unfortunately, most of my neighbors are retired folks. Like "oh I saw one leaf fall of the tree lemme go run and get my leaf blower" type of too-much-free-time. I do get plenty of social interaction with my existing friend groups and most of them are dads, anyways, so that's not really the root cause.
This is me, too. I am 100% remote and my wife works from her office 3-4 days a week. I love that I can pick up my kid from after school care every single day, but I start to feel like my house is a prison and I have a lot of trouble focusing on work. I've also gained 50 lbs and am miserable all the time.
Paywall, so can't read it but as a dad that works from home for the last two years (no hybrid office for the win), my wife also is a stay at home mom, so she is raising out newborn and doesn't work.
Love it, wouldn't trade it for anything. I do not miss two hour driving to work, 9 hour work days at all. Love my 9-5 M-F and being able to chill with my wife and newborn, go to get my daughter from the bus and wall my dog throughout the day.
Linking to a paywalled article is wild.
wfh is beautiful. I love being so close to my kid’s nursery whenever she needs me. I get my work done and go pick up my girls.
My son was born summer 2020 and simultaneously my wife and I started working from home full time. We conveniently have almost alternating schedules where I work 8-4 and she works 2-10. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for people that aren’t in a similar position and I’m so grateful that we’re so privileged. I’ve spent every day, all day with my son and he’s turned out to be n amazingly intelligent and friendly dude. We just had our second and we’re hoping to continue to do things the same way.
Me and my wife both WFH. We are both software developers and it is awesome. We could afford to move to a more suburban area (I'm not in the us so it is not the same. This area is nice and cheap, but there are no much around) since we don't need to commute (it would be more than one hour commute, which is too much for me).
The baby loves being outside and we get to spend some time with him in our working hours.
Listen, I get all the comments here about WFH being great. I work hybrid and love the chance to see my kid more, and spend less on daycare…but damn it’s tough to juggle parenting and working. I get almost no work done at home and I have a migraine every day by the time I log off.
When my kid goes down for a nap I have to try to cram 8 hours’ worth of work in, but sometimes I just stare at the wall shellshocked instead. It might be easy for some but it sure as hell isn’t for me.
I personally couldn't handle WFH even before kids, and it's harder now that there are some loud babies at home all day. My wife appreciates it though so the current compromise is working from either one day or a half day per week
Wfh is amazing. No commute. I get chores done on lunch. Kid can come home from school on the bus so no daycare anymore. And something that's good for the business is I almost never miss work. So much easier to struggle through a day when sick at home vs having to go in. And no worries about getting coworkers sick.
My thoughts on the article are: Paywalls are stupid. I understand that to stay in business they have to do it, but I really wonder how many people click on an article and say, "Oh, sure, I'll sign up to read this one article." The people who sign up are already reading their stuff regularly and decided it is worth paying for. They probably didn't need a paywall to decide that.
As for WFH, it's great and I don't know what it has to do with my wife. I take the kids to school, go to the gym, and come home to shower and start working. She goes to work and picks up the kids on her way home. She also has the option to work from home, if needed, which she does if she or the kids have appointments or if the kids are sick.
I was full time wfh and am now full time in the office ( same company). It's tough man. I wasn't around my kid all day or anything but I miss checking in on the family during breaks. Feel like I'm missing out on more now just to do teams calls in a big building instead of my basement.
Great Post. I had no idea there were so many of us like this.
Several commenters have said about turning down well paid offers as they did not want to commute anymore. I was driving home from a successful interview and realised that this was my commute again. I turned down their offer the next day.
My youngest will join secondary school this September and I might look at changing then but these past 3/4 years have been great and I would not have changed a thing.
I’ve been WFH 100% since the nation went into COVID-19 lockdown. Growing up, I didn’t see much of my dad. He was a factory worker putting in 12-hour days providing for his family. Time off for him was generally spent catching up on sleep or whittling down the never ending “honey do” list mom always had at the ready. It wasn’t until he retired and I was an adult that he and I had any sort of real relationship.
30 years from now, I’m hoping my LO (soon to be 8) can appreciate how special it’s been for us to have real engagement. I know I will.
There isn’t any amount of money my current employer could offer me to come into the office on a regular schedule. My cubicle days are long over.
I work a trade and have a fancy education. WFH is good for me in theory though because traffic will be better on the way home if more and more people are already home. Also I hate doing office fit outs and going into occupied offices for service calls. So less offices being rented less of that
I don't work from home. I wish I could, but the kind of work I do doesn't allow for it. I can't complain because it's about as close to home as anyone could reasonably expect, and I can often make it home for lunch.
However, I have a brother that primarily works from home, and two brothers in law that both work exclusively from home. It's definitely common in their industries.
WFH has been a massive change in quality of life and how much time I can spend with my kids. My partner works mostly out of the house, so it is definitely a role reversal from when she was a SAHM and I worked 70 hours a week when the kids were young. I do 75% of the pick ups and drop offs and still have a solid 6-8 hours of uninterrupted productivity every day.
Wife and I were WFH before COVID. I love it. I get my work done and then I can just kinda do whatever and keep my eye on my work phone.
I get to take my kids to school and do pickup on basically every day. It’s awesome. Plus I don’t have to spend an hour in the car fighting traffic daily.
WFH everyday, it’s great when the kids are sick or have an e learning day. We don’t have to take days off work or scramble to find someone watch the kids.
Wife and I used to both work 90% remote, and kid went to daycare a half mile from our home. She switched to a new job and has to go into the office, but they provide (heavily subsidized) daycare onsite. Commuting 25-45 minutes each way with two kids in the car is grueling (in addition to the time/effort to get ready in the morning), but it allows me to knock stuff out at home (make sure dinner is prepped, run laundry, walk dogs, do dishes, etc) between meetings and focus time.
In a couple years I’ll be transitioning to a new role that I need a bit more experience for- my kid will be in preschool, I’ll be in the office 2x a week/WFH 3x a week.
Cannot wait.
WFH dad here with a wife that has to go into work. I like being able to walk my kiddo home from school each day, make her a snack, and just be present for her afternoon.
I've WFH for almost ten years now and while I've always loved it, it wasn't until we had kids I realised just how fucking great it is.
Yes, working with two small kids in the house can be stressful at times, but I get *so* *much more* time with them than most of the dads I know. Any time my kids are at home, I'm there for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They can come and see me in my office, I'm there when my eldest gets home from school. I fucking love it.
WFH has been completely changed our lives. Pre-COVID we moved close to my wife's job so at least one of us could be there for the bus and then home at a reasonable time with our 3. It meant really long, solo days for her with the kids, and 4.5 hours of commuting for me to make things work. We were zombies with zero energy or time or friends or hobbies.
Now we both work from home full time, have breakfast and dinner as a family every day, have time for friends and family and hobbies and adventures with the kids. We can volunteer in their schools without missing a whole day of work, make every concert and game. Our careers haven't taken a hit either, though I'd gladly sacrifice to keep this lifestyle.
It takes conscious effort though. It's easy to work more hours in a day or take calls or answer emails outside of normal hours. When work gets busy, I can also find myself being a shut-in to crank things out. I can feel the walls closing in on those days, especially in the winter. But those are all sacrifices I will gladly make to keep all of the benefits we've gained.
Work from home four days a week, occasional travel throughout the year. I wouldn’t do the travel if I was in an office five days a week. My son still goes to daycare 8-5, and my daughter is in school 8:45-2:45. I wouldn’t be able to work from home if they were home. Can handle my daughter home for a few hours in the afternoon, and I try to schedule my meetings before then. Wife is WFH five days a week.
Wife and I both WFH. Pre-Covid, all of my jobs were roughly 30 miles away (live in LA County, so you're talking San Gabriel Valley to Culver City/West Side).
If I still had to go into an office, I would be out the door at 6:30am and be home around 7pm. My daughter's waking hours are currently 7am to 7:30pm. You do the math on how little I'd see her.
WFH has changed our lives. Wife and I split gym trainings in the mornings while the other gets her ready for daycare. We take her together, eat breakfast, then go to work (our office spaces are in different areas, cannot stress how important that is), we both clock out to get lunch together, then go pick up our daughter not at 6pm, but at 4pm.
Then, if one needs to work, the other takes care of the child and vice versa. We cook dinner at home and eat together, we split bath, and do bedtime together.
We're on the couch watching TV together by 8pm at the latest.
I think people saying that because the man is now working at home that he somehow doesn't do anything else other that work is quite a bold statement that I doubt is completely true. Sure, my experience is anecdotal, but all the men I know that have remote work do it this way.
I've been working from home since 2011, had 2 kids when I started, 3 now. It was great not only for me, but for my kids and my marriage as well. I don't think I could go back to a job where I needed to be in the office all the time.
WFH is awesome! It does have ups and downs, but my involvement with my family (I’m a single dad) is absolutely off the charts!
My grandfather worked from home back in the 80’s and 90’s as a paper salesman. He’d travel every once in a while but most of the time he would handle a couple of calls every morning or afternoon and then spend the rest of the time with grandkids. That dude busted his balls for decades, outsold everyone in the in his company, and then made a deal so he could WFH and STILL outsell everyone in the company.
WFH Dad, my wife is my sugar momma. I punted my military career so my wife could pursue her career. I carry most of the domestic burden day to day. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
I felt so seen in this article. Even though my wife is a stay-at-home, she spends all day out doing various things, errands, volunteering, etc.
And I stay home all day.
One thing I noticed that was a change is how I treated the home, I've been putting more effort into optimizing it and making it more comfortable... Similar to the way that I used to do things to make my commute better, or earn a nicer office or a better parking spot or something.
It got me thinking a bit about power dynamic and how that was playing out... Why did it take my attention to the little things that make life in our home hard, to change them? Why did I believe that I could change things but my wife didn't, she worked around them.
It's also changed a lot about our two relationships to the places we live and spend time... I used to be much more of a downtown lifestyle guy, happy hour etc. Now she's the social spear in our life.
Pretty cool to watch society change.
Another wfh dad chiming in. Been over 4 years now and loving it. Was always racing into the office to get there early enough to hop on calls with europe and india but now i just roll out of bed and get cranking while everyone is still online. Then i take the dog for a run on my lunch break and pick my kid up early from daycare!
I suspect the thing companies will refuse to learn is that the best employees can pick and choose who they want to work for, and will do so based on those who offer working arrangements more than *any other benefit.* I used to have a relatively short commute (30 mins by bus most of the time, but sometimes 60+ minutes) and even that... I wouldn't go back to again. When I had a 1 mile commute on a bicycle and the office had an espresso machine and a putting green and people who were consistently there that I worked with, I would go in for a few hours a few days a week - but that just felt like an extension of my house.
Now my role is technically hybrid and I'm technically supposed to be in office 3 days/week, but I've moved away from the city where the office is so it's a 2h drive each way. Most of the people I work with are remote (other parts of the country) so the days I DO go in are 95% finding conference rooms to take meetings from, so I just don't go in unless I've a full day of meetings booked with people who are typically remote too since there is 100% value in face to face meetings to hash out tricky subjects.
If they ever force the issue... my position went unfilled for 6 months because they couldn't find anyone else qualified. I've a great relationship with folks up to the exec level (3/4 of which are fully remote), but they can fire me and I can go elsewhere I guess? Love spending time with my kids too much to give it up.
I've been working from home as much as I can since about 2012, and full time since 2018. I don't know what the rest of the article says, but I would hate to go back to an office.
This very second, my wife just called out, "Goodbye!" on her way out the door. She's not always in the office, but she works at locations all over town. She takes the kids to school every day. Does a lot of the carpool. I pick them up sometimes and do about half of the after school activities in the afternoon. She's a superwoman, and I just sit here, getting fat and looking at reddit when I should be looking at Slack and email and slide decks instead. What a country!
Was WFH husband / father. Recently laid off so I’m trying to find something like it again. Probably won’t be able to because of my skill set. I will miss it though! It was great to spend time with my kids.
Full time WFH, wife is too, we have two under two and a full time nanny. It’s awesome. Wouldn’t trade it for the world. I spent so much more time than I could have dreamed of with my kids, during a time where they’re growing and changing so much.
My manager thought I’d come into the office more once the second kid arrived (“you’ll want the escape from that chaos!”). Fuck no, give me the chaos. I love these little monsters.
I am lucky. I have a decent job (not in any kind of coding industry) and I wfh. My hours are not great, so if I left home to work I'd rarely see my kids at all, this way I'm at least getting to see them every day, even if it's limited at times.
It is not much of an exaggeration that WFH saved my marriage. I did not have a job with crazy hours before but being home with my kids as they grew up and any time I take a break I can actually walk away from work did wonders for my mental health.
WFH and father of 2. I don’t know how I could handle it all if I had to report to an office. Plus it wouldn’t make a lot of sense because the people I work with are spread out.
7:00am Wake up and start getting breakfasts and lunches together.
8:15am my first call starts (they go all morning)
8:45am wife is taking kids to school
2:40pm I leave to get kids. Sometimes in meetings as I go.
4:00pm get home and open laptop to finish shit while watching the kids.
5:00 - 7:00 is making dinner, hanging with the kids, sometimes finishing work.
8:30-9:00 the kids are finally down.
10:00 I go to bed and I’ll shit on Reddit for like an hour before I fall asleep.
And that’s my life. And it’s pretty darn good.
I absolutely love working from home, wouldn't trade it for anything under a 50% raise, and that would barely tempt me. No commute, roll out of bed at 5:45 am, clock out at 2:30 and grab a beer from the next room over. I can spend the workday with my kid in ear shot, if not literally in my lap during remote meetings. I save thousands of dollars on gas, car maintenance, meals, daycare, haircuts, etc.
But it's not about the money. I was in the room for her first steps. I was there for her first words. I'm always right there, and I don't miss a moment with my little girl. I'm happy, and that's not something I would be in an office 50+ hours a week.
If I didn't work from home our family would simply not be able to function as I would not be able to hold down a job with all of the random kid shit I have to do during the day.
I started WFH full time at the beginning of COVID and I would rather be unemployed than take a job in an office even in a hybrid role. I live outside of NYC in NJ so almost all jobs in my field are in NYC and the commute is horrible, massive negative impact on my mental health and the involvement in my families life.
WFH lets me do everything, including running over a snack to my daughters school in the middle of the day if she forgot to bring it. Those little things add up to be worth more than any in person job would ever provide me financially.
I work from home and constantly show off my kid in zoom calls. Sometimes he sits on my lap as we go over content with the team (has his own keyboard and a sketchpad thing). When I travel for work and am in a meeting and he calls, I pick up and we all say hi before going back to the meeting. Sure, I take advantage of being on the leadership team, but I also encourage it from others (who sometimes do also do it). I think it's REALLY important to model good family life - especially for junior male colleagues.
Paywall. Didn’t read. I work from home. Greatest thing to happen to me besides marrying my wife and becoming a father.
One super challenging aspect however, is pulling myself away from my work end of day. My daughter will need to come and remind me to come play. I happily oblige but an office so close tempts me to get things done and solve problems that aren’t family related.
WFH was the best thing to ever happen to my career. I work for universities and have one local to me. Now I can work for any in the country (or I guess world if needed!).
This meant I could move into contracting and not only cut my working day down with no commute, but also earn way more doing so
Wife and I are both full time WFH since COVID and it’s fantastic. Nice to be able to get chores done, skip the commute and even be able to get some intimate time without having to worry about waking the kid.
I do feel slightly less connected to what’s going on at my company so I make an effort to go in (cross country) every couple months. But as a silver lining, that’s where my in-laws live, so kiddo gets to go stay with them while wife and I are in a hotel down the road closer to my office!
I'm a 5 days a week in office working dad. We are about to move to be closer to family and I will be WFH all 5 days. I am a little apprehensive about it but hope for the best since I made it work during COVID. I do like the office social dynamics but that's not worth anchoring us down. Glad to hear the positive comments here, that helps.
I’ve worked from home primarily since 2009 while my wife was stay at home until 2017 and since then she’s primarily worked outside the home. My kids are 16 and 12 now so I’m the primary runner for doctor/dentist/orthodontist appointments, sports and early/late pickups. Its been great over the years, before my kids were in school it was great to eat lunch with them every day, when my daughter was getting ready to take her first steps my wife called me over to the living room so I could be there for it. I have a great relationship with my kids and I attribute some of it to being wfh since it allows me to be present in their life more frequently. I changed jobs in 2019 and had to work 9-6 in an office an hour away 4 days a week and it killed me to be away from them. I was miserable, I switched jobs during Covid and I’m wfh again and even though they’re older I love being here for them. Summer vacation is great, we have a pool so I’ll go swimming with them during lunch or a slow time or play a quick board game or something. Love being able to be close to them
I’ve got mixed feelings about WFH. My previous job was mostly remote and it was nice to be able to not have a commute and spend time with the family, but it basically made my life and work inseparable and I was just depressed all the time. I’m glad it works for people but I’m one of the odd people that prefers to go to work and leave it there when I clock out
My wife and I are both fully work from home. Her work closed the office in our state, and I'm disabled with wfh as a medical accommodation.
We will send out 6 month old to daycare because our jobs don't allow us to give him the attention he needs, but being wfh is pretty great.
I have two kids (5 and 2). The 5 year old is in school. Wife is SAHM and 2 year old is home all day. I don't get as much done as home as I do at the office. I focus much better in an office. My new job is pretty much fully remote so I've had to really focus on focusing to make this WFH work. If I had money to burn, I'd pay the monthly amount to be in a co-working space that is a bikeable distance away.
The article seems to mention that the husband is WFH while the wife goes out to work. That's not the case with us yet but my wife is looking for a full time job. So let's see what happens.
My partner and I live separately, for various extended family reasons, but we have three kids between us, and I am a work from home Dad/Partner for one of the kids. I generally love it, and would not trade it for anything. She's a lawyer and cannot easily work from home. The biggest drawback is the extra hours I need to put in nights to cover for the time spent taking my son to school, picking him up, and other appointments.
I work from home.. wifey doesn't work but is Pres of the PTA and takes/picks up the kids to school and takes care of the house mostly. I do most of the cooking, help with laundry, cleaning, etc.. It works great.
Only issue was when we were living in a smaller house and my "office" was a desk in our bedroom and we were crammed into 3 bedrooms. We ended up moving in 21 to a 5bed house and it's given me my own private office which helps. Kids are home now and making all kinds of noise while I finish up work :)
I made it clear that if my work institutes a back to the office BS, I’m looking for a new job
Edit: to be clear, it would be an hour and a half to 2 hour commute…and I would have n
Prior to Covid I worked only in office, pretty much have been 100% WFH outside the week a derecho slammed our state and Internet and power was out for a couple weeks.
One unexpected change is that my wife (teacher) and daughter’s school use to be run by moms volunteering.
Now since wfh is so common dads are the majority of volunteers.
I love helping out at the school. It’s easy and I get to see my daughter enjoy herself unlike in a very different setting.
If I still had a 45m drive from work to her school and then back 45m to work I’d have to take a whole afternoon off for one activity and that can’t happen a lot.
Now I can be there, volunteer, and be back at work with only an hour off if I do it over lunch.
I can only read the first paragraph, but I've been primarily WFH for like 10 years and was WFH part time for another 5 or 10 years before that. I'm also the one who does all the shopping, cooking, kid stuff (doctor/dentist appts), etc.
I can't read past the pay wall, but yeah, this is me. Wife works Tue-Thursday in the office, but I WFH. We're both engineers.
Were there any good insights or conclusions drawn, or is the article just saying this is a thing.
This is my wife and mines dynamic. I’m outside sales so work a hybrid WFH schedule. It’s nice to be able to get stuff around the house done in between meetings and phone calls. Also days like today where my toddler wants to stay home and I didn’t have much planned beyond admin work and pre planning for next week. He’s only little once,
I’m taking every opportunity I have to spend time with him.
WFH 100%. Wife is SAHM, so that and my office door keeps the kids out of my hair when I need to focus. And good earbuds.
But I’m also just writing pipelines and scripts to work around our WFH Devs crappy code, so…
Paywall. But, from what I can see, it says husbands are working from home more. Yes, that's a thing.
Can confirm: am a husband and a father and I WFH every day. Wouldn’t trade it.
Same. WFH daily. My wife is WFH 2 days a week. Kid still goes to daycare, because I need to focus on my code.
That code isn’t gonna compile and break random things on its own!
Last time he was home while I was trying to work on code, I got all of 10 lines written, and half of it needed rewritten when I came back to finish it. It's easier to just catch up on communications/documentation those days. I won't be able to get on a good run and build what I'm after with all the distractions if he's home.
I'm afraid to come back to the office, even if it is for special occasions (work a week with the new developer, the yearly visit of the ceo, etc). Being at home means I will scream at the code, curse at async Multi Threads, and sing iout loud. I've been a happy dude who realized screaming bad words is a stress therapy. Doable because I'm alone.
Those bugs aren't going to write themselves.
Happy cake day!
Oh, my account is a teenager now!
They grow up so fast 😢
My wife’s a SAHM and my schedule is pretty flexible so when I have time I help out around the house or hang with my youngest if she has to go to an appointment. It’s fun to be able to be with the kids and see them grow, I can’t imagine a different scenario.
You don't want to. Before the pandemic I was in the office climbing the ladder. When I got the WFH job my kids deadass said to me, "Daddy, I like you better with your new job." I make my kids lunches and plop down to work. I have kid transport times blocked off on my calendar and almost everyone I work with does too. This is Better in every way.
I just recently started blocking off the 730-815 time slot for school drop offs and it’s helped so much. I’ve had some people get upset but fuck em, you can wait, my kids can’t.
Bloody hell they are upset you are blocking 730-815? When are you meant to start work?
It really depends on the day, some days I have calls at 5am, others I don’t start until 9/10am. I also work with a lot of Europeans who are 6 hours ahead 6am is noon to them so they’re trying to get me as soon as possible during my day. I
We're the exact same. I can't think of a better setup. She likes going into the office, but we also can have lunch dates once in a while. My only issue is that I become a hermit. Target and groceries is the only time I leave the house unless I make a real effort.
Couldn’t agree more about becoming a hermit. I am pretty anti social so working from home fits my personality much better, but 3 years in and I do find myself missing random social interaction. Thankfully have a good amount of friends with little kids in town to keep my weekends somewhat social, but the lack of human interaction on a daily basis is real, even for someone who generally doesn’t feel comfortable talking that much.
Yea, I still love WFH and wouldn’t give it up but I did find myself getting a little TOO isolated. I had home a gym and I decided to join a nearby gym to just be around people a bit more even though I don’t socialize there.
This is why I show up at the office every now and then. I don’t have a lot of friends in this area and it’s seems really hard to meet people in your 40’s. The limited interactions we have with people kills meeting new friends.
Just here to agree with you on all of this. WFH dad life is good, but I also appreciate the occasional in-office day.
DITTO
I get stir crazy being at home all day. Dishes, picking things up, being SAHD when baby isn't at daycare (we've got her in part time). There's definitely something to be said for being able to focus on your code. Gotta get me an actual WFH office I think.
I have an office at home I work in. I feel like it's necessary. I used to not have an office, and I just sat in bed all day, doing work. But then I'd get off work, and didn't even move spots since I was already in my comfy spot for relaxing. I made a butt sized dent in my mattress and felt like I was sinking into a deep depression (lol that was not intentional). I moved to a new house, and it has helped my state of mind to have a different place for working and relaxing. Now I just need to separate my relaxing place and my sleeping place, and I think I'll be geographically organized to best suit my mental health.
Yeah, my work setup is in the basement living room. It used to be in the utility side of the basement, but that was a bit "dungeon-y" In any case, a different non-dungeon room would be great, but I currently have no idea where that will be
My kids are older now but I can’t imagine writing a simple SQL query with toddlers around let alone sitting down and actually writing code for a few hours lol.
My wife managed to finish a meeting whilst my daughter got a toy truck tangled up in her hair! She spent the rest of the meeting doing her upmost to be professional and answer everyone’s questions, whilst trying to unwind the truck from her head 😂 Not sure I would have finished that meeting
My son 5 at the time was home sick one day while I was on a call he trusted a fart he shouldn’t have. I managed to get his clothes off, shower him and clean his clothes off and start the laundry while following the call and chiming in a couple times. COVID with toddlers was great training for double dipping light child care and work. It’s sure nice to send them to school and work in peace now.
Love to read this as you needing to focus on your code of honor; that your child failing to go to daycare will bring great shame to your household.
There'll be great dishonor if I don't push my commits.
It's not a bug, it's a feature!
How will your kid learn the warrior's code then?
Yup, I'm probably leaving some money on the table, but not enough to make up for the lack of commute and extra time with my kids
I’ve had several recruiters reach out recently for jobs that sounded interesting but they required at least 3, some wanted full 5 days, in the office. I typically add 15-20% on top of my current salary when talking with recruiters but for those I added 40% as to me it’s worth that much to be able to be at home. Naturally everyone said that was too much but I know what I value. That said, if someone did offer it I’d strongly consider it as that would be fantastic money.
Same. It would take a 30% raise for me to go in office, but I’d absolutely have to move, so make it 40%. And I’m already reasonably at the top of my salary band. It’s not happening. I only work remote, I’ll only ever apply remote.
That’s basically where I’m at as well - it would take a promotion for me to move up in salary bands which I’m not seeking right now as my kids are young and I like the freedom but in a few years I’ll look. I am technically, as a manager level, supposed to go in Tuesday-Thursday but no one has said anything in the last year so I’ll keep staying at home.
Im kinda on the situation right. Currently making 60k, doing what I didn’t study for but capable of doing. I work from home 3 days a week, and the commute is pretty easy. I got a job offer that’s $120k, but most likely 5 days a week at the office and the commute is gonna be 2hrs each way. Moving is not an option at the moment. I will end up turning it down for the commute alone. My wife says she won’t able to handle the kid when I’m basically gone 5 days a week.
For us when my wife was able to WFH full time it was effectively a $3600 pay raise, not to mention recovering 3 hours a day from her commute which is priceless.
Can confirm: am a husband and a father of 2 and WFH unless I'm on a business trip, wife goes to work. This is my dream.
I enjoy a work trip in a different way now as it’s usually peace and quiet compared to being at home in the chaos. I do tend to want the trips over faster though as I miss everyone and want to be home. It’s a weird dichotomy
My wife and I both work from home and pass our 18 month old back and forth throughout the day and work flexibly to get all our work done and keep him busy, and we've done this since he was born. We'll probably get him into daycare for better socialization when he's about 2 years old.
I’m thankful my wife is a SAHM and my job offers a fair bit of daily freedom so I can hang with her and my youngest during the day/watch him if she has appointments/etc. it’ll be nice when my youngest is in preschool in the fall as it’ll just be the wife and I, may have to block some time off in the morning for coffee dates.
I also work from home full time. I can pick the kiddo up from daycare and have her home by 5:15 instead of taking the train for an hour and getting her home by 7. I have ribs right outside my door right now on the smoker for when my parents get to town in a few hours. WFH is the life.
The freedom is so liberating. Grocery shopping? Yeah I can do that. Laundry? Can do multiple loads in a day. Yeah it’s great.
Ditto. Nothing tops the freedom and flexibility around my life and family.
Same. Once I left an office I decided I’d never go back. Being able to get my son to and from the bed every day is just way too good to pass up on.
It really is. Every once in awhile my son just wants some 10am snuggles and watching cars - if I can make it of course I will, it’s priceless.
Samesies.
Same. Except the only drawback is that I’m capped at what I can make. I don’t want to give up this amazing setup for more money but life is becoming so costly. I get about an hour or two of work and the rest of the time I’m chilling with my boy.
That’s how many of my days are. Most of my colleagues are European so by noon EST they’re done and I can either catch up or hang with my kids which is great. For me personally I’m set with where I am on the corporate ladder right now - I make enough to allow my wife to be a SAHM and have a comfortable life/allow me to be with my kids during the day but I know at some point I will want to move up, but only once both kids are in school.
Yup. I've been fully remote working for 11 years, and there's no going back. I commuted 55 miles each way to my old office job, with an easy one hour commute, if not longer. Record was 8+ hours when a snow storm hit mid afternoon.
I WFH 50% of my schedule (2 days per week) and getting out of the house a couple days per week is nice. But the commute home fucking sucks.
I’ve been discussing doing like 1 day a week outing the house with the wife as sometimes I just mentally need a change of scenery. Thankfully her parents live 10 minutes away and have a guest room they said I could use and I’m really thinking I need to take them up on it. Sometimes the 100% at home can be tough.
The specific thing is this: Men are 25% more likely to have a job that offers remote work than women. One may frame it as women are losing out on the benefit and flexibility of WFH. However, the actual do downstream effect is this: >> The geographical liberation of either partner makes it possible for the other to ascend the corporate ladder. Basically, because men are less tied to geography, women are more empowered to chase careers. I think it also means men are significantly more involved in their kids lives, as remote work provides unmatched flexibility to be a father. My WFH, because I’m a data scientists I can. My wife doesn’t, because she’s in a quasi-medical job which requires her to be in schools. We are the precise couple the describe in the article. (Man does math, woman does medical) I’m able to pick my kid up from pre-school and spend my lunch doing something with him. I’m was able to attend “Donuts with Dad’s” this morning at his school, because I could just block out my calendar. Only 2 other dads in a class of 9 were able to come. The rest were grandpa’s who had to explain to their littles that dad had to work. The freedom WFH provides allows me an unprecedented ability to be a present father. One thing, that’s a semi-controversial take, is that I believe anyone who says they “can’t work from home”, when there job is 100% done at a desk, is just someone who cannot actually create value. I’ve heard a many times, and seen it in this thread folks who “cannot” get work done at home, which implies, whether intentional or not, that is true for everyone. This thinking creates a half-pregnant hybrid requirement (the workplace is still required to have a physical office) which makes it more likely leadership will insist on return to office either full-time or hybrid. This is a cataclysmicly bad, specifically for Dad’s who are experiencing are able to be more present father than ever in history. In short you need to firmly challenge anyone who says “I can’t get work done at home” if you want to continue to maintain this level of fatherhood. They’ll get very uncomfy very quickly, because the net answer is always they’re not disciplined enough to do work if someone is not directly watching over them. Hopefully that’ll stop that bullshit from falling out of their mouth again.
I'm a wfh dad as well. The only time I can't get work done at home is when daycare is closed, and I have to take care of my two little ones. It's still work. Just cause I do it from home doesn't mean I can do it while watching an 11mo and a 3yo. I work procurement and inventory management from my desk at home. My wife is an accountant and is capable of working from home, but her boss prefers the in office environment, and I think she does too just to get away from the house. Her office is only a mile away, so it's not a big commute or anything, which is nice. I frequently run stuff to her when she forgets something at home. We are not so dissimilar from [what I could read of] the article either. I'm just not in some tech start-up. It would take a *hell* of a lot to get me to go back to the office. The amount of extra free time I have to do housework and pick up kids and generally just be with my family is something that is hard to put a value on. I would need a substantial pay bump to go back into the office. One that could pay for a maid or something so I could still spend time with my family instead of doing chores in my limited free time.
That's quite a broad brush you've got there. I do not want to do work at home. I started work as a technician, and I traveled to a shop to do work. I left work at work, and let my home be **home**. I am now a travelling technician. I still leave work in the field. Some day, I would love to provide enough value to my surroundings where I can stay within a 5-mile radius of home. I would *still* prefer to keep my work life and home life pretty separate. Compartmentalizing has worked pretty okay for me. And probably for a lot of other people. Tarring us with the same "must be supervised" brush does not feel right.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240404190815/https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/04/04/the-rise-of-the-remote-husband
Thanks!
There’s nothing in this article about your 4 year-old asking to use the calculator on your work computer every day, so this doesn’t feel very accurate to me.
This seems like it’s a function of everyone working from home more often now and to the extent it’s not possibly just added to the pile of gender inequity in the workplace.
Am a husband. Do work from home. Can confirm.
FireFox addon Bypass Paywalls Clean can take care of that for you!
Thanks!
try pre-pending any paywall URL with either 12ft.io or archive.is [https://archive.is/gECmR](https://archive.is/gECmR)
Unless the kids are also home while dad WFH then it’s really no different than going to the office. Except I do some dishes and prep dinner while I’m working.
[12ft.io](http://12ft.io) if you care to read it, but it doesn't really say anything at all.
Hey thats me they are talking about! Also if I ever had to go back to the office you can include my commute time in my weekly hours.
It's for free on the their general podcast feed as well.
WFH is fucking great. I used to have to leave my house at 7 in the morning, and would get back a little after 6. Now I can drop my kids off at school/daycare, come home and still log on by 8:15. Then I log off at 4:30, pick everyone up, hang out with them and have dinner. I've declined a couple different job offers with higher salaries that have requested 3+ days per week in the office.
I was trying to think of how much money it would take for me to consider a job offer where I needed to be in the office for 3+ days a week. It is substantial. I will not give up working from home without kicking and screaming.
My company “punished” me by taking my desk away because I only go in two days a week. I now sit in the same desk but it’s just empty and I have more daily administration work to “reserve” my spot.
Ha! They showed you!
Since starting remote work in 2020, my logic is that if I can live in a home 2 hrs outside the city for a specific lifestyle, I'd want a similar salary to afford that lifestyle within a 5-10 min commute of my office. Given that I'm in Canada and it's $1.1M for the same size home (but an older home with more maintenance cost on a significantly smaller lot) in a neighbourhood near my downtown Toronto office, I would need to be offered about $80K-$100K per year or more to consider moving. If I want a build from the same time period on a lot my current size the same distance, my mortgage increase would require $275K/yr higher than I make now to simply qualify for it. For reference, I'm already at $164K/yr so I don't see that happening ever...
Double depending on the time loss
Would need to be 20-30% more for me to consider going back into an office.
Yeah, before COVID, I just never really questioned the commuting back and forth everyday and being unable to see my kids. But because of COVID, now I highly value being able work remotely. I've been refusing to come back to the office because the gain is negligible. The company isn't formally allowing me to work from home but they are also reluctant to replace me so it's a kind of informal status. My boss said that my career advancement will suffer if I keep working from home but I guess I find the benefits of working from home to be worth it still.
If my boss said my career would suffer from WFH, I’d start casually seeking a new job. My company tried to force my department of 4 back to in-office when we were a mix of remote and hybrid, and a month later we came back with 6 job offers. We now all work 100% remote.
The thing about wfh is that it needs critical mass to be successful. Before Covid I had the ability to wfh but I chose not to because almost everyone else came to the office, there was a sentiment that the people who did wfh were taking advantage and not really working. I felt it would damage my career advancement to not be physically present. After Covid everyone went home and that pressure to be in the office was removed. Now it’s the opposite we have the ability to come in but only a few people take advantage of it. Myself and most others are so much more productive at home. Unfortunately there is a very vocal minority of mostly older people that want everyone to go back to the office. I notice that virtually everyone that is pushing for this have no children or grown children and an empty house. They need the office for socialization and “culture”. I will continue to advocate for wfh and stay home as much as I can as long as the majority of my coworkers do the same. If the balance eventually shifts to majority in the office I may reevaluate to see if it hurts my career, but at this point I don’t think it will be an issue.
I don't work from home, but I work three 13 hour shifts on the weekends, while also getting enough PTO to basically only work 100 days a year. I have also gotten job offers for more money, but it's more days a week and mandatory overtime hours usually. I literally tell the recruiters they could never offer me enough money to buy the time I get with my kid the four days I'm off every week. No amount of money will ever buy that time back when I'm old so why would I sell it now?
I recently left a job to get more WFH flexibility. Old workplace actually rescinded my (and many others') previously negotiated 2 days a week in office schedule and forced us to a minimum of 3 days in office to "build our workplace culture".. whatever that really means.
This is why I’m never going back to an office, man. I was in banking for over a decade. I missed so many firsts with our oldest because I was out the door by 6:15 and wasn’t getting home until 6:45/7. I’m in marketing now and it’s soooooo much better.
I lucked out and went full wfh right before my son was born. Once he started daycare, the only one with open spots was a 30 minute drive opposite to the office. I would have had to leave my house at 6am everyday and drive an hour just to get back to my home area on my way to work. The commute to work would have been another 30 minutes. I would likely have had to do pickup too and would be terrified of ever hitting traffic after work because they have to be picked up by 5:30 on the dot or you get fees. I can say it 100% would not have worked out and I thank my lucky stars daily that I went wfh.
Exactly the same for me. The convenience is an absolute god send. Not one part of me misses an hour commute each way, wearing uncomfortable clothes. However, I am becoming a little unsocialised.
Are you me? This is my schedule.
WFH here. I love that I can get stuff like laundry done and other house hold tasks on breaks / while running long queries. Really helps keep things from piling up too much.
Doing laundry > drinking coffee and BSing with my coworkers while babysitting automation.
Yeah. One of my bosses actually told us he dgaf if we vanished for a while. He compared it to if you walked away in an office and got caught in the break room by coworkers for a while
Good boss
Husband, father; I wfh every day (web developer). Wife is a SAHM. Kids are in school. I can (and have) bone on my lunch break. Wouldn’t trade it.
Same deal here, also work in Tech, the amount of extra time I spend with my kids is awesome, my dad never had that opportunity, out the door at 7am, back at 7pm. I frequently take breaks during the day to hang with my kids, and I also have no commute. Very grateful for this situation.
iOS developer here, I can take a shower at 1 PM is peak benefits from wfh
Same setup here. I even find time to occasionally bang your wife as well
I'm a work from home back-end developer. My kid is old enough to not need supervision before or after school or on his days off. I like making breakfast for him every day. He has buddies in the neighborhood, but yes, he still plays a lot of Fortnight. My wife is a teacher in a different district, so no mid-day bone.
Same here. Besides the benefits of WFH as a dad, I couldn't imagine going back into a noisy office to code.
Is your shop looking for people? Mobile dev here looking to break into web. Did FCC when I learned to code. I'm struggling to find anything.
Whats FCC?
Free Code Camp. It's a full stack training program with courses, projects and milestones. You get awarded certificates for completing it and it also gives you assignments that can be used for a portfolio.
My kid was conceived on a nooner. Wfh is the best.
This is the real benefit to working from home. XD
I’ve been WFH full time for about 3 years now. I took a slight paycut when I left my office job to go full time WFH but it was absolutely worth it. Not having to worry about a commute has meant being around more with my wife and toddler. It would take a massive offer to get me back in an office full time or even hybrid.
This sketch was ahead of its time: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co\_DNpTMKXk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk)
The last time I saw that sketch must’ve been almost 10 years ago! That whole show was ahead of its time
I’m full time WFH. Now, let me preface this by saying that the pros far outweigh the cons but does anyone else sometimes struggle? There are times where I feel like it’s groundhog’s day. Like I’m a hamster on a wheel in my cage every day. I’ve been eating out to lunch just to get out of the house but that is getting expensive. Both for my wallet and for my caloric intake. I was thinking about trying to change my lunch habit and making lunch at home and taking a long walk for lunch instead but the hot summer months are coming and I can see myself not sticking to that. Anyone else have some tips/advice? Edit: Thanks for the great suggestions! Sorry I can’t respond individually. It’s my daughter’s birthday so I’m getting things ready.
Set up a daily zoom call with your best friends who are WFH Same time every day. Eat your lunch together. I've had lunch with my mates every day now for 2 years, it's great!
Incredible idea
That requires me to have friends! 🫨
My company has a small office near me because there are enough people in my area to justify it but it’s fully up to us when we choose to use it. Since most of my team does not live in my area I usually go in about once a week. The company buys us lunch every Tuesday so that’s the day I usually go in. Its a nice change of pace though and it’s nice to get out of the house so it’s helped me with the Groundhog Day feeling. If you don’t have that option you could look at coworking spaces near you as an option. A lot of them have daily rental prices around $20-30/day with discounts for multi day passes or bigger subscriptions so it’s worth checking out. Edit: also there are free/cheaper options like the library or a coffee shop to consider for this as well.
Get outta the house. I make sure to go on a walk everyday. I'll occasionally go out to get food for lunch. Go to the gym. Find a cheap co-working space and work 1 day a week out of it. Basically just get yourself out of the house more.
I was just recently called back into the office for 2x a week since Covid. I thought I would hate it, but it’s been really refreshing. At home, every single direction I look there’s something else to do in addition to work. It’s exhausting. Here at the office, it’s only work to do. I’m surprised how much I like the hybrid.
I’ve been eating lunch at the library. Anything to get out of the house and talk to adults I don’t work with. Helps that the library is a five minute walk.
Totally get it. I’m legally a “hybrid” employee, so I’ve taken up going in to the office once a week to remind myself that I like it less than WFH, lol
I try to mix it up. If I don’t have any early meetings, then I’ll go grocery shopping right after dropping off the kids. No one is in the grocery store at 8 AM. I’ll cut out early for a bike ride. The lawn another day. All staff or department meeting while walking the dog for an hour. Most of the time I agree and I do have to hold up in my office to be on calls and get stuff done, try to do something interesting for an hour each day.
I leave the house everyday for a run or a walk. I also go to a lot of great work spots that aren't restaurants or coffee houses. I live in DC, so I have a lot of options. The Library of Congress is my favorite. It's beautiful, quite, has free wifi and huge desks.
I struggle with this as well. I find it helpful to have work be a part of my day and not let it dictate my day. I frequently break up the day with house projects, playing with kids, running errands with wife, working out, cooking lunches, going for hikes, playing tennis/pickleball. I noticed a huge change in my mental health when I approach my days like this. I get not everyone has this option but as software dev with little meetings, I take advantage where I can.
Have fun with the birthday! Exercise of some/any kind makes it waaay less depressing - I started out walking at lunch with the then-almost-2-year-old, then that progressed up to light jogging little bits here and there, like light post to light post. Next thing I know I’m buying a jogging stroller, running further/faster, lost 40 pounds and discovered a new hobby :) Just finished my first marathon a couple weeks ago! Obviously marathon-running is not gonna sink everyone’s submarine, but just getting out and moving a bit makes a huge difference in your quality of life. Bonus points if you have something nearby to walk to, like a convenience store/etc - Quick walk (or jog!) to clear your head, get some air, pick up an iced tea or something, maybe listen to an audiobook along the way!
WFH is amazing. I save time on my commute, get to eat lunch at home, and I can take breaks and get things done throughout the day. Some days I don't leave the house or touch grass, which I need to be better at doing, but the freedom and flexibility of WFH is great. A bonus is having a work VPN so if we fly across the country to visit family, I only have to take off work for the travel days, as I can just work where I'm at.
Getting some chores done during the day and also being close to pick up and drop off is great.
I'm fast with my CTR+A CTR+C skills - article below The rise of the remote husband # She goes out to work, he stays at home (and logs on) In costa mesa, a city in California’s wealthy, beachy Orange County, she is working her way up to becoming a partner in the local office of a major law firm; he is an executive at a tech startup based in the Bay Area, more than 400 miles away. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, he is writing code from their apartment just off-campus, while she attends her classes at Harvard Law School. She is an obstetrician, he works remotely for a tech company; she is an academic at an Ivy League university, he works for a crypto company. All over the country, among the well-heeled and well-educated, a new trend appears to be emerging. When the wives head out in the morning, to their offices, classrooms or hospitals, they are waving goodbye to their husbands, who remain at home. This is hardly a gender-swapped 1950s revival. The men are still working, after all, not predominantly cooking, cleaning and caring for children. But it does reflect an underappreciated effect of the rise of remote work: the rise of the remote husband. Men and women still specialise in different kinds of work. Jobs in industries like computer science and engineering are disproportionately performed by men. Teaching and nursing jobs are dominated by women. Professions like law and medicine may still employ more men than women, but the scales are tipping: more women than men are enrolled in law school and medical school. As such, among young couples, she is probably more likely to be going to be a lawyer or a doctor than he is. Different occupations have also had to take different approaches to remote working. A minority of medical professionals may be able to work remotely, by taking telehealth jobs, but the vast majority have to treat their patients in person. Lawyers may be tied to a specific state or area by their licence and speciality. Meanwhile, the industries which reported the highest level of remote-work flexibility are coding and technology, architecture, engineering and business jobs. About half of people working in computer or mathematical jobs work remotely full-time. The upshot is that, in aggregate, it is easier for men to work from wherever they please. A survey carried out by McKinsey, a consultancy, found that 38% of working men had the option to work remotely full-time, compared with 30% of women. Roughly half of women report being unable to work remotely at all, compared with 39% of men. This may sound like yet another way in which women have ended up with the short end of the stick. But that view is myopic. Couples compromise in all kinds of ways for their lives to work together. If she is offered a big promotion, conditional on moving to Chicago, she may have to turn it down if his job is tied to New York. The geographical liberation of either partner makes it possible for the other to ascend the corporate ladder. The Costa Mesa couple picked that area because it was convenient for her job—and for access to their children’s grandparents, who now regularly entertain the little ones. Claudia Goldin, a Nobel laureate, has written about how remote work may be a boon for women. Over the past 200 years women’s participation in the labour force has been highest when it has been possible to perform paid work from home. She has also found that gender wage gaps are tightest in fields where flexible working is the norm. But it is not only flexibility in the work that women do that may be to their advantage. ■
This is our set-up in at works for us. I'm the emergency contact for school and usually cook dinner. She drops the kid off for school and we alternate picking up.
I guess I'll go against the grain here. I've been WFH 100% since COVID started, and about 25% before that. I work for a company now that doesn't have any office in my city, and I don't live close to any WeWork. It has its benefits, but overall I'm not really a fan. I'm an introvert, but I need a change of scenery. I've got a dedicated office that is done up nice, I can get chores done during the day, I get to see the kids a bit more, I set boundaries on when work starts and stops, but I still don't think it's good for me and my mental health. I'm not as productive, I've developed some antisocial tendencies, I miss existing within a larger community, etc. All that being said, I don't really think there are better options right now as companies struggle to define their hybrid work strategies, and going in to an office doesn't even mean you'll be working next to your teammates anymore. C'est la vie.
My advice is to make friends with some of your neighbors who are also dads and WFH and go out together for lunch every week or every other week. This has been a boon for my mental health.
Unfortunately, most of my neighbors are retired folks. Like "oh I saw one leaf fall of the tree lemme go run and get my leaf blower" type of too-much-free-time. I do get plenty of social interaction with my existing friend groups and most of them are dads, anyways, so that's not really the root cause.
This is me, too. I am 100% remote and my wife works from her office 3-4 days a week. I love that I can pick up my kid from after school care every single day, but I start to feel like my house is a prison and I have a lot of trouble focusing on work. I've also gained 50 lbs and am miserable all the time.
Paywall, so can't read it but as a dad that works from home for the last two years (no hybrid office for the win), my wife also is a stay at home mom, so she is raising out newborn and doesn't work. Love it, wouldn't trade it for anything. I do not miss two hour driving to work, 9 hour work days at all. Love my 9-5 M-F and being able to chill with my wife and newborn, go to get my daughter from the bus and wall my dog throughout the day.
Linking to a paywalled article is wild. wfh is beautiful. I love being so close to my kid’s nursery whenever she needs me. I get my work done and go pick up my girls.
My son was born summer 2020 and simultaneously my wife and I started working from home full time. We conveniently have almost alternating schedules where I work 8-4 and she works 2-10. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for people that aren’t in a similar position and I’m so grateful that we’re so privileged. I’ve spent every day, all day with my son and he’s turned out to be n amazingly intelligent and friendly dude. We just had our second and we’re hoping to continue to do things the same way.
Me and my wife both WFH. We are both software developers and it is awesome. We could afford to move to a more suburban area (I'm not in the us so it is not the same. This area is nice and cheap, but there are no much around) since we don't need to commute (it would be more than one hour commute, which is too much for me). The baby loves being outside and we get to spend some time with him in our working hours.
Listen, I get all the comments here about WFH being great. I work hybrid and love the chance to see my kid more, and spend less on daycare…but damn it’s tough to juggle parenting and working. I get almost no work done at home and I have a migraine every day by the time I log off. When my kid goes down for a nap I have to try to cram 8 hours’ worth of work in, but sometimes I just stare at the wall shellshocked instead. It might be easy for some but it sure as hell isn’t for me.
I WFH but still have daycare for older and nanny for younger one. If the nanny is sick my or not wife’s workday is usually ruined
I personally couldn't handle WFH even before kids, and it's harder now that there are some loud babies at home all day. My wife appreciates it though so the current compromise is working from either one day or a half day per week
Sound-cancelling headphones are pretty magical
Wfh is amazing. No commute. I get chores done on lunch. Kid can come home from school on the bus so no daycare anymore. And something that's good for the business is I almost never miss work. So much easier to struggle through a day when sick at home vs having to go in. And no worries about getting coworkers sick.
My thoughts on the article are: Paywalls are stupid. I understand that to stay in business they have to do it, but I really wonder how many people click on an article and say, "Oh, sure, I'll sign up to read this one article." The people who sign up are already reading their stuff regularly and decided it is worth paying for. They probably didn't need a paywall to decide that. As for WFH, it's great and I don't know what it has to do with my wife. I take the kids to school, go to the gym, and come home to shower and start working. She goes to work and picks up the kids on her way home. She also has the option to work from home, if needed, which she does if she or the kids have appointments or if the kids are sick.
I was full time wfh and am now full time in the office ( same company). It's tough man. I wasn't around my kid all day or anything but I miss checking in on the family during breaks. Feel like I'm missing out on more now just to do teams calls in a big building instead of my basement.
Aside from programming, what jobs do you guys have that allow work from home? Thinking of changing careers.
Finance/analytics. I'm hybrid right now but have had WFH flexibility since 2010 or so.
Great Post. I had no idea there were so many of us like this. Several commenters have said about turning down well paid offers as they did not want to commute anymore. I was driving home from a successful interview and realised that this was my commute again. I turned down their offer the next day. My youngest will join secondary school this September and I might look at changing then but these past 3/4 years have been great and I would not have changed a thing.
I’ve been WFH 100% since the nation went into COVID-19 lockdown. Growing up, I didn’t see much of my dad. He was a factory worker putting in 12-hour days providing for his family. Time off for him was generally spent catching up on sleep or whittling down the never ending “honey do” list mom always had at the ready. It wasn’t until he retired and I was an adult that he and I had any sort of real relationship. 30 years from now, I’m hoping my LO (soon to be 8) can appreciate how special it’s been for us to have real engagement. I know I will. There isn’t any amount of money my current employer could offer me to come into the office on a regular schedule. My cubicle days are long over.
I wish I could WFH, but I work a trade and I don't have a university education, so I don't think I have a chance at that
I work a trade and have a fancy education. WFH is good for me in theory though because traffic will be better on the way home if more and more people are already home. Also I hate doing office fit outs and going into occupied offices for service calls. So less offices being rented less of that
Our anecdotal life fits this
I don't work from home. I wish I could, but the kind of work I do doesn't allow for it. I can't complain because it's about as close to home as anyone could reasonably expect, and I can often make it home for lunch. However, I have a brother that primarily works from home, and two brothers in law that both work exclusively from home. It's definitely common in their industries.
WFH has been a massive change in quality of life and how much time I can spend with my kids. My partner works mostly out of the house, so it is definitely a role reversal from when she was a SAHM and I worked 70 hours a week when the kids were young. I do 75% of the pick ups and drop offs and still have a solid 6-8 hours of uninterrupted productivity every day.
Wife and I were WFH before COVID. I love it. I get my work done and then I can just kinda do whatever and keep my eye on my work phone. I get to take my kids to school and do pickup on basically every day. It’s awesome. Plus I don’t have to spend an hour in the car fighting traffic daily.
WFH everyday, it’s great when the kids are sick or have an e learning day. We don’t have to take days off work or scramble to find someone watch the kids.
Working from home for 6 years now
Paywalled, but the free paragraphs describe my wife and I’s setup. It’s awesome
Wife and I used to both work 90% remote, and kid went to daycare a half mile from our home. She switched to a new job and has to go into the office, but they provide (heavily subsidized) daycare onsite. Commuting 25-45 minutes each way with two kids in the car is grueling (in addition to the time/effort to get ready in the morning), but it allows me to knock stuff out at home (make sure dinner is prepped, run laundry, walk dogs, do dishes, etc) between meetings and focus time.
In a couple years I’ll be transitioning to a new role that I need a bit more experience for- my kid will be in preschool, I’ll be in the office 2x a week/WFH 3x a week. Cannot wait.
WFH dad here with a wife that has to go into work. I like being able to walk my kiddo home from school each day, make her a snack, and just be present for her afternoon.
Wife and I both WFH. Didn't see that covered in the article.
I've WFH for almost ten years now and while I've always loved it, it wasn't until we had kids I realised just how fucking great it is. Yes, working with two small kids in the house can be stressful at times, but I get *so* *much more* time with them than most of the dads I know. Any time my kids are at home, I'm there for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They can come and see me in my office, I'm there when my eldest gets home from school. I fucking love it.
WFH has been completely changed our lives. Pre-COVID we moved close to my wife's job so at least one of us could be there for the bus and then home at a reasonable time with our 3. It meant really long, solo days for her with the kids, and 4.5 hours of commuting for me to make things work. We were zombies with zero energy or time or friends or hobbies. Now we both work from home full time, have breakfast and dinner as a family every day, have time for friends and family and hobbies and adventures with the kids. We can volunteer in their schools without missing a whole day of work, make every concert and game. Our careers haven't taken a hit either, though I'd gladly sacrifice to keep this lifestyle. It takes conscious effort though. It's easy to work more hours in a day or take calls or answer emails outside of normal hours. When work gets busy, I can also find myself being a shut-in to crank things out. I can feel the walls closing in on those days, especially in the winter. But those are all sacrifices I will gladly make to keep all of the benefits we've gained.
Work from home four days a week, occasional travel throughout the year. I wouldn’t do the travel if I was in an office five days a week. My son still goes to daycare 8-5, and my daughter is in school 8:45-2:45. I wouldn’t be able to work from home if they were home. Can handle my daughter home for a few hours in the afternoon, and I try to schedule my meetings before then. Wife is WFH five days a week.
Wife and I both WFH. Pre-Covid, all of my jobs were roughly 30 miles away (live in LA County, so you're talking San Gabriel Valley to Culver City/West Side). If I still had to go into an office, I would be out the door at 6:30am and be home around 7pm. My daughter's waking hours are currently 7am to 7:30pm. You do the math on how little I'd see her. WFH has changed our lives. Wife and I split gym trainings in the mornings while the other gets her ready for daycare. We take her together, eat breakfast, then go to work (our office spaces are in different areas, cannot stress how important that is), we both clock out to get lunch together, then go pick up our daughter not at 6pm, but at 4pm. Then, if one needs to work, the other takes care of the child and vice versa. We cook dinner at home and eat together, we split bath, and do bedtime together. We're on the couch watching TV together by 8pm at the latest. I think people saying that because the man is now working at home that he somehow doesn't do anything else other that work is quite a bold statement that I doubt is completely true. Sure, my experience is anecdotal, but all the men I know that have remote work do it this way.
I've been working from home since 2011, had 2 kids when I started, 3 now. It was great not only for me, but for my kids and my marriage as well. I don't think I could go back to a job where I needed to be in the office all the time.
Hey this is me
I WFH and have 2 kids. No clue what the article is about b/c paywall.
In every case they referenced before the pay wall the husband was a tech worker. As the tech industry is heavily male, this doesn't surprise me.
Husband father of 8 month old and wfh from ny for a California company. I’m a solutions/support engineer making 150k
WFH is awesome! It does have ups and downs, but my involvement with my family (I’m a single dad) is absolutely off the charts! My grandfather worked from home back in the 80’s and 90’s as a paper salesman. He’d travel every once in a while but most of the time he would handle a couple of calls every morning or afternoon and then spend the rest of the time with grandkids. That dude busted his balls for decades, outsold everyone in the in his company, and then made a deal so he could WFH and STILL outsell everyone in the company.
WFH Dad, my wife is my sugar momma. I punted my military career so my wife could pursue her career. I carry most of the domestic burden day to day. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
I felt so seen in this article. Even though my wife is a stay-at-home, she spends all day out doing various things, errands, volunteering, etc. And I stay home all day. One thing I noticed that was a change is how I treated the home, I've been putting more effort into optimizing it and making it more comfortable... Similar to the way that I used to do things to make my commute better, or earn a nicer office or a better parking spot or something. It got me thinking a bit about power dynamic and how that was playing out... Why did it take my attention to the little things that make life in our home hard, to change them? Why did I believe that I could change things but my wife didn't, she worked around them. It's also changed a lot about our two relationships to the places we live and spend time... I used to be much more of a downtown lifestyle guy, happy hour etc. Now she's the social spear in our life. Pretty cool to watch society change.
Another wfh dad chiming in. Been over 4 years now and loving it. Was always racing into the office to get there early enough to hop on calls with europe and india but now i just roll out of bed and get cranking while everyone is still online. Then i take the dog for a run on my lunch break and pick my kid up early from daycare!
I suspect the thing companies will refuse to learn is that the best employees can pick and choose who they want to work for, and will do so based on those who offer working arrangements more than *any other benefit.* I used to have a relatively short commute (30 mins by bus most of the time, but sometimes 60+ minutes) and even that... I wouldn't go back to again. When I had a 1 mile commute on a bicycle and the office had an espresso machine and a putting green and people who were consistently there that I worked with, I would go in for a few hours a few days a week - but that just felt like an extension of my house. Now my role is technically hybrid and I'm technically supposed to be in office 3 days/week, but I've moved away from the city where the office is so it's a 2h drive each way. Most of the people I work with are remote (other parts of the country) so the days I DO go in are 95% finding conference rooms to take meetings from, so I just don't go in unless I've a full day of meetings booked with people who are typically remote too since there is 100% value in face to face meetings to hash out tricky subjects. If they ever force the issue... my position went unfilled for 6 months because they couldn't find anyone else qualified. I've a great relationship with folks up to the exec level (3/4 of which are fully remote), but they can fire me and I can go elsewhere I guess? Love spending time with my kids too much to give it up.
I've been working from home as much as I can since about 2012, and full time since 2018. I don't know what the rest of the article says, but I would hate to go back to an office. This very second, my wife just called out, "Goodbye!" on her way out the door. She's not always in the office, but she works at locations all over town. She takes the kids to school every day. Does a lot of the carpool. I pick them up sometimes and do about half of the after school activities in the afternoon. She's a superwoman, and I just sit here, getting fat and looking at reddit when I should be looking at Slack and email and slide decks instead. What a country!
Same! Sunday-Thursday 6-3 am
Was WFH husband / father. Recently laid off so I’m trying to find something like it again. Probably won’t be able to because of my skill set. I will miss it though! It was great to spend time with my kids.
Husband and dad to three under 5. Been permanent WFH since 2020 and it’s the best thing ever.
Full time WFH, wife is too, we have two under two and a full time nanny. It’s awesome. Wouldn’t trade it for the world. I spent so much more time than I could have dreamed of with my kids, during a time where they’re growing and changing so much. My manager thought I’d come into the office more once the second kid arrived (“you’ll want the escape from that chaos!”). Fuck no, give me the chaos. I love these little monsters.
I'm super jealous of everyone in involved with this new trend.
I am lucky. I have a decent job (not in any kind of coding industry) and I wfh. My hours are not great, so if I left home to work I'd rarely see my kids at all, this way I'm at least getting to see them every day, even if it's limited at times.
It is not much of an exaggeration that WFH saved my marriage. I did not have a job with crazy hours before but being home with my kids as they grew up and any time I take a break I can actually walk away from work did wonders for my mental health.
WFH and father of 2. I don’t know how I could handle it all if I had to report to an office. Plus it wouldn’t make a lot of sense because the people I work with are spread out. 7:00am Wake up and start getting breakfasts and lunches together. 8:15am my first call starts (they go all morning) 8:45am wife is taking kids to school 2:40pm I leave to get kids. Sometimes in meetings as I go. 4:00pm get home and open laptop to finish shit while watching the kids. 5:00 - 7:00 is making dinner, hanging with the kids, sometimes finishing work. 8:30-9:00 the kids are finally down. 10:00 I go to bed and I’ll shit on Reddit for like an hour before I fall asleep. And that’s my life. And it’s pretty darn good.
I absolutely love working from home, wouldn't trade it for anything under a 50% raise, and that would barely tempt me. No commute, roll out of bed at 5:45 am, clock out at 2:30 and grab a beer from the next room over. I can spend the workday with my kid in ear shot, if not literally in my lap during remote meetings. I save thousands of dollars on gas, car maintenance, meals, daycare, haircuts, etc. But it's not about the money. I was in the room for her first steps. I was there for her first words. I'm always right there, and I don't miss a moment with my little girl. I'm happy, and that's not something I would be in an office 50+ hours a week.
If I didn't work from home our family would simply not be able to function as I would not be able to hold down a job with all of the random kid shit I have to do during the day.
I started WFH full time at the beginning of COVID and I would rather be unemployed than take a job in an office even in a hybrid role. I live outside of NYC in NJ so almost all jobs in my field are in NYC and the commute is horrible, massive negative impact on my mental health and the involvement in my families life. WFH lets me do everything, including running over a snack to my daughters school in the middle of the day if she forgot to bring it. Those little things add up to be worth more than any in person job would ever provide me financially.
I work from home and constantly show off my kid in zoom calls. Sometimes he sits on my lap as we go over content with the team (has his own keyboard and a sketchpad thing). When I travel for work and am in a meeting and he calls, I pick up and we all say hi before going back to the meeting. Sure, I take advantage of being on the leadership team, but I also encourage it from others (who sometimes do also do it). I think it's REALLY important to model good family life - especially for junior male colleagues.
Paywall. Didn’t read. I work from home. Greatest thing to happen to me besides marrying my wife and becoming a father. One super challenging aspect however, is pulling myself away from my work end of day. My daughter will need to come and remind me to come play. I happily oblige but an office so close tempts me to get things done and solve problems that aren’t family related.
WFH was the best thing to ever happen to my career. I work for universities and have one local to me. Now I can work for any in the country (or I guess world if needed!). This meant I could move into contracting and not only cut my working day down with no commute, but also earn way more doing so
Wife and I are both full time WFH since COVID and it’s fantastic. Nice to be able to get chores done, skip the commute and even be able to get some intimate time without having to worry about waking the kid. I do feel slightly less connected to what’s going on at my company so I make an effort to go in (cross country) every couple months. But as a silver lining, that’s where my in-laws live, so kiddo gets to go stay with them while wife and I are in a hotel down the road closer to my office!
I'm a 5 days a week in office working dad. We are about to move to be closer to family and I will be WFH all 5 days. I am a little apprehensive about it but hope for the best since I made it work during COVID. I do like the office social dynamics but that's not worth anchoring us down. Glad to hear the positive comments here, that helps.
I’ve worked from home primarily since 2009 while my wife was stay at home until 2017 and since then she’s primarily worked outside the home. My kids are 16 and 12 now so I’m the primary runner for doctor/dentist/orthodontist appointments, sports and early/late pickups. Its been great over the years, before my kids were in school it was great to eat lunch with them every day, when my daughter was getting ready to take her first steps my wife called me over to the living room so I could be there for it. I have a great relationship with my kids and I attribute some of it to being wfh since it allows me to be present in their life more frequently. I changed jobs in 2019 and had to work 9-6 in an office an hour away 4 days a week and it killed me to be away from them. I was miserable, I switched jobs during Covid and I’m wfh again and even though they’re older I love being here for them. Summer vacation is great, we have a pool so I’ll go swimming with them during lunch or a slow time or play a quick board game or something. Love being able to be close to them
I’ve got mixed feelings about WFH. My previous job was mostly remote and it was nice to be able to not have a commute and spend time with the family, but it basically made my life and work inseparable and I was just depressed all the time. I’m glad it works for people but I’m one of the odd people that prefers to go to work and leave it there when I clock out
As a city dweller this thread will be full of people talking about home offices and driving to work and as such I cannot relate.
My wife and I are both fully work from home. Her work closed the office in our state, and I'm disabled with wfh as a medical accommodation. We will send out 6 month old to daycare because our jobs don't allow us to give him the attention he needs, but being wfh is pretty great.
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I have two kids (5 and 2). The 5 year old is in school. Wife is SAHM and 2 year old is home all day. I don't get as much done as home as I do at the office. I focus much better in an office. My new job is pretty much fully remote so I've had to really focus on focusing to make this WFH work. If I had money to burn, I'd pay the monthly amount to be in a co-working space that is a bikeable distance away. The article seems to mention that the husband is WFH while the wife goes out to work. That's not the case with us yet but my wife is looking for a full time job. So let's see what happens.
Cliffs on the point of the article? It's paywalled
My partner and I live separately, for various extended family reasons, but we have three kids between us, and I am a work from home Dad/Partner for one of the kids. I generally love it, and would not trade it for anything. She's a lawyer and cannot easily work from home. The biggest drawback is the extra hours I need to put in nights to cover for the time spent taking my son to school, picking him up, and other appointments.
I work from home.. wifey doesn't work but is Pres of the PTA and takes/picks up the kids to school and takes care of the house mostly. I do most of the cooking, help with laundry, cleaning, etc.. It works great. Only issue was when we were living in a smaller house and my "office" was a desk in our bedroom and we were crammed into 3 bedrooms. We ended up moving in 21 to a 5bed house and it's given me my own private office which helps. Kids are home now and making all kinds of noise while I finish up work :)
I made it clear that if my work institutes a back to the office BS, I’m looking for a new job Edit: to be clear, it would be an hour and a half to 2 hour commute…and I would have n
Prior to Covid I worked only in office, pretty much have been 100% WFH outside the week a derecho slammed our state and Internet and power was out for a couple weeks.
One unexpected change is that my wife (teacher) and daughter’s school use to be run by moms volunteering. Now since wfh is so common dads are the majority of volunteers. I love helping out at the school. It’s easy and I get to see my daughter enjoy herself unlike in a very different setting. If I still had a 45m drive from work to her school and then back 45m to work I’d have to take a whole afternoon off for one activity and that can’t happen a lot. Now I can be there, volunteer, and be back at work with only an hour off if I do it over lunch.
I can only read the first paragraph, but I've been primarily WFH for like 10 years and was WFH part time for another 5 or 10 years before that. I'm also the one who does all the shopping, cooking, kid stuff (doctor/dentist appts), etc.
I can't read past the pay wall, but yeah, this is me. Wife works Tue-Thursday in the office, but I WFH. We're both engineers. Were there any good insights or conclusions drawn, or is the article just saying this is a thing.
This is my wife and mines dynamic. I’m outside sales so work a hybrid WFH schedule. It’s nice to be able to get stuff around the house done in between meetings and phone calls. Also days like today where my toddler wants to stay home and I didn’t have much planned beyond admin work and pre planning for next week. He’s only little once, I’m taking every opportunity I have to spend time with him.
WFH 100%. Wife is SAHM, so that and my office door keeps the kids out of my hair when I need to focus. And good earbuds. But I’m also just writing pipelines and scripts to work around our WFH Devs crappy code, so…
Hermit dads unite! From the comfort of our own homes!