Anonymous wrote:For me: an individual contributor position in my field was so much less stressful and demanding than management. I’m in tech and my previous role was sort of directorial — responsible for getting stuff done as well as managing reports and clients. My new role is pure coding and I love it. I haven’t done serious overtime in years (either role) but do have a very flexible schedule (eg I’m often on late at night to finish stuff up but it’s because I ran errands during normal work hours or picked my kid up early from aftercare).
I think it helps to figure out which parts of your job are incompatible with parenting for you. In my case it was that managing clients was the same skillset as managing toddlers and I wanted to save that energy for home life.
This. I switched from managing 25 back to IC. I also strategically cut the number of required meetings down. My sanity is much improved.