Need advice from moms who work long hours at very demanding jobs

[Anonymous]

I know families like this. The kids love their nannies and sometimes call them "mom".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to a private school with kids from families like yours (I was a scholarship kid) and I was really surprised by the kinds of relationships they had (or didn't have) with their parents. I told myself I'd never go that route with my kids.

I ended up at an Ivy League school and a prestigious career track, and before I knew it, I was one of those parents with the money and the career, and not a great relationship with my kids. I loved my work, and it's not like I was a deadbeat parent - the activities happened, I went to important events, etc. But everything was so rushed and structured, and they were becoming little people with their own lives I wasn't part of. I couldn't outsource the main thing - just spending time hanging out with the people I love the most (which also includes my husband, btw, we were like business partners).

So, I cut back, and yes, I miss it sometimes but it was absolutely the right choice. I am running my own org now, so still challenging/interesting, but lots of flexibility, I have a great team that runs most of the day to day stuff. I am planning to lean back in when the kids are older.

This is me to T. Similar background and all. I feel I'm now living my best life and am in a good place to ramp up when I want to.

I'll slightly echo a PP though and say...I didn't have 3. Enough moms of 3 warned me it was a bad idea if career was important. I went for 1 (ideal) and had 2 (twins).

Not ideal.
An alone kid with absent parents doesn't thrive.

[Anonymous]

Fake news. Director level jobs are known to be the most cushy jobs out there. Doubly true if you work at a tech company.

- You sit in meetings all day with limited outputs. Sometimes you have to send or reply to a few emails at the end of the day. Hard.
- You are not on the hook to personally work on deliverables. You pass these on to people under you to handle and review at most. Hard.
- You are not truly responsible for vision and organizational strategy, which your VPs or C-Suite own. You are mostly implementing what is handed to you. Hard.

These are just the top three reasons this is a false dilemma. I could go on and on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The most successful couple I know fixed this by sending their kid to a boarding school, even though the school was 30 minutes from their home. The kid ended up with an addiction to drugs by age 16. Honestly, either you or your husband needs to sacrifice career for family. There are no good shortcuts here.

Yup. You have three kids. And a nanny and cleaner.

Are you usually disorganized? Does husband pitch in? If you are regularly dropping the ball, you need to make changes and be more organized. If you’re more concerned with quality time with kids, you can’t outsource that.

[Anonymous]

You are missing precious moments that are literally gone forever.

Hire a meal service. Make sure you eat as a family every night. Put your kids to bed yourself every night.

Have the nanny make sure homework is done and good. You may need to hire a more expensive nanny who will handle things like school supplies.

Set aside 2 hours a week to organize your kids activities and schedules.

Don’t miss games, concerts, recitals, etc for anything or anyone.

You control your job. It does not control you. If they don’t cut you slack to be able to do these things, look for a new job.

[Anonymous]

OP, you’re in good company. Many of us work very long hours. Be grateful if you have the resources for household help. Many of us work these hours at lower salaries, so nannies and housekeepers aren’t an option.

If it helps, I manage it by compartmentalizing my hours. I work from 4am-6am or 9pm-midnight, times my children aren’t awake. It isn’t ideal, but I’m able to be the parent I want to be in the evenings and I can get my work done.

[Anonymous]

Been there, done that - I quit. My kids had to come first. Time means more than money.

[Anonymous]

You are in a Sr. management position so you should have the opportunity to take a look at the role and shape it and if you can't you need to find a different role.

It sounds like you are in a lot of meetings, I would start training your team to take on some of your responsibilities and delegate attendance for certain meetings to take things off your plate. If your team doesn't have the skill set needed to take on these tasks put together a plan to make it happen. Set the expectation that you will be home for dinner 3 times a week and follow through.

I know that personally my productivity goes way down after 50-55+ hrs a week, it isn't that I am a slacker it just becomes hard to focus and I make mistakes. I accept that there are times when we have a deadline and need to power through but that is the expectation not the rule. I hate that setting realistic expectations on your time is being mommy tracked, most people aren't productive after a certain threshold of time, it isn't a characteristic of females.

If you can't make changes and set the expectations for your group I would leave because you then are Sr. Management in name only. You are in a position where you should be setting the tone for the organization. I would argue that making some changes along these lines will help the organization attract and retain talent.

[Anonymous]

Second the person who said you cannot have it all. I’m C-suite but have flexibility. I would not stay in a job like yours. It’s not good for your mental or physical health or for your family. Sounds like income is not an issue for you. You’re going to blink and kids will be grown.

In your shoes, I might stick it out for a year and then either look for something new or negotiate with your company for something less intense. They’ll be time to ramp up later.

[Anonymous]

I'm thankful my mom chose the busy working mom route. It was way better for her mental health and we needed space from each other. Life was surprisingly smoother when she was always on call at all hours versus steady part time. She loved her work until the last day. The income provided my siblings and I with everything we could need and my parents are enjoying a comfortable retirement. It's not a direct correlation and nobody's experience is exactly what your family will go through so do what will make your personal family thrive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fake news. Director level jobs are known to be the most cushy jobs out there. Doubly true if you work at a tech company.

- You sit in meetings all day with limited outputs. Sometimes you have to send or reply to a few emails at the end of the day. Hard.
- You are not on the hook to personally work on deliverables. You pass these on to people under you to handle and review at most. Hard.
- You are not truly responsible for vision and organizational strategy, which your VPs or C-Suite own. You are mostly implementing what is handed to you. Hard.

These are just the top three reasons this is a false dilemma. I could go on and on.

I actually agree with this but I've also observed that some people get how to make these jobs work for them and some people don't. What I see a lot are directors who don't know how to delegate and micromanage those under them (making them miserable and ultimately driving away competent people who want to be trusted to do the jobs they know how to do). These people also often tend to struggle with decision-making even of things that aren't that important which greatly increases stress not only for them but for everyone around them as decisions bottle neck and they wait for someone else to figure it out or for the problem to go away.

If you are a decisive person who knows how to delegate and hold people accountable (and ideally have good hiring instincts and also a willingness to make tough choices when people under you are not delivering) then this can be a GREAT lifestyle job. It's a lot of meetings and there can be high expectations that you be present for a lot of stuff but most companies are fine with remote work and in tech in particular there is no stigma to doing things like working from a vacation home while working a flexible schedule that enables you to spend a lot of time with your kids. There are also annual rhythms to these jobs so you know when it's going to be busy and when it will be less so and once you figure this out you can structure family life around it to ensure plenty of time with kids AND that you aren't super stressed all the time.

But it seems many people who wind up in these roles lack the leadership skills (delegation and decisiveness in particular) that make it work. I've known so many miserable directors in the last 20 years. For some it's the worst job they'll ever have. They don't have the fundamental skills to do it.

[Anonymous]

The way to make it work is to cut out all the bs at work. No more 8 am meetings. No more meetings that could be emails. Delegate. Find good staff and trust them to handle things. Refuse/push back against unnecessary work and ridiculous timelines. Do high quality essential work.

If you do all of this seriously you can make it work. While the idea of doing this sounds scary because it goes against American expectations, it can be done and you might find that people are more appreciative than you imagine.

[Anonymous]

I could never work that much. I just don’t have the capacity. I barely would have before kids. So it’s not like I’m just “prioritizing family,” I just know my limits. My brain is useless late at night and when I’m spread thin, I’m not as good at anything. I don’t really understand why companies set themselves up to require this much of people. I think it’s because the people at the top are usually really high capacity people, and they just don’t get that we’re not all like that.

But among the highest capacity women I know who had power jobs and kids at the same time and the dad had any kind of job, every single one had another woman or more in their house all the time making it work. They either were family (a grandmother) or they are now (longtime nanny/housekeepers who are like a third parent and will be with the family as long as they want to be).

[Anonymous]

If you can delegate, hire more staff at work, limit hours for meetings so that you can do your work when you are fresh. I was unable to hire in a timely manner so am retiring due to the time burden and desire to be available for my kids and to finally have time to do activities I enjoy after almost 5 years.

[Anonymous]

I have a bigg-ish job - division director at a very large hospital with about 50 direct and indirect reports (both physicians and non-physician staff). I make ~500K.

It was BAD the first year. I thought it would get better, but there have been nonstop staffing shortages since Covid. There are also physician shortages, so I see a full load of patients in clinic, with no dedicated admin time. No WFH for me, either, because we have to see patients in person and I have be in-house to deal with admin issues.

Our kids are older (tweens) but we have dealt by 1) having a great nanny - she does everything. We employ her full time, so when the kids are at school she does grocery shopping and the laundry (she also watches a lot of TV, but I’m fine with that - she’s worth her weight in gold). She is listed as a parent with their (pubic) school so she gets their emails, and would’ve signed the kids up for activities (I probably wouldn’t have even know I was supposed to do that). We pay her very very well, and she’s been with us since the kids were born. I don’t care at all if they love her as much as they love me - she loves them too, it’s not a contest, and I think they are lucky to have someone else in their life like that! 2) I can’t always be flexible (patients) but if I can leave work for a school thing then I do. And I make a lot of noise about it because I want to normalize within our division that it’s OK to have a life outside of work 3) my husband does a lot of kid-stuff and house-stuff - A LOT! He has a good but not great job, and he doesn’t love it. He kind of “leaned out”, which was his choice. He doesn’t want to move into management, so he’s in a holding pattern. He WFH most of the time and has a flexible schedule, which is hugely helpful 4) my kids seem very respectful of my career, which makes me feel better. They know that the patients our team takes care of are sometimes very very sick and will die without our care. They think it’s cool that I get flown around the world to give talks (although I personally don’t love that part….) and both have expressed an interest in being doctors - so it can’t be that bad to have me as a parent if they want to follow in my footsteps (I have tried to discourage them, but that’s a whole other story) and 5) when I am home I just kind of sit around for at least 1 day a week - I mean, I check my phone and answer emails, but I am not a whirlwind of activity for at least one day a week (today is one such day, but they are both still asleep… and I’m still in bed scrolling DCUM) - so at least never a week we watch stupid TV together (so much Bluey! It shocks me how much tweens love that show!), go to museums, go out to dinner, take walks, etc. I am also a maniac about vacation - I take my whole 4 weeks, and I will only work an hour or 2 a day when we are on vacation. I have made an effort to normalize with our team that we must cover for each other during our vacation weeks.

With regard to my husband, that can get challenging. However, he grew up with more money than me and likes nicer things. He doesn’t want to work crazy-long hours, so he just kind of sucks it up because he likes the lifestyle. He gets grumpy sometimes, but a lot of times it’s not about me, and my friends say the same about their husbands. It just seems like 45-50 year old guys are grumpy…?

So, I have no great advice. But so far it’s been challenging but do-able. I do think it helps that they all clearly respect my work and/or my paycheck. Also, I have friends from med school and college whose moms have “big jobs”, and they all love and respect their parents (and their former nanny!). It doesn’t seem to have hurt their relationship at all.

My mother, on the other hand, was a very involved parent but does not approve AT ALL of my intense job, and gives me a hard time about it incessantly. She thinks that women should not work like this and that it is “emasculating” for my husband. I just kind of ignore her rants and I only call her once a week while I am commuting and most just say “uh huh” and “mmmm” when we “talk”.