BDD: Baby Driven Development
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Ruby Conference 201851 / 66
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MultiplicationField (computer science)Multiplication signGoodness of fitCodeBit rateSoftware developerAmsterdam Ordnance DatumMappingMeeting/Interview
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:21
Stickers up here, so feel free to come and grab some at the end. So I never expected having a child to change my identity in so many different ways. I love working. I've always loved working. I've always had a job. I'm not very good
00:41
at staying at home and relaxing. I've always worn a lot of hats. I work at GitHub as the engineering manager for Adam. If you want to chat more about Adam, please come find me. I'm also on the board of Ruby Together and I run a podcast called Parent Driven Development about being a parent in tech. I've also been a
01:03
community organizer, a mentor, a mentee, a developer, an entrepreneur, a COO, an amateur, a baker, a sister, a daughter, and then all of a sudden I was a mom. Just for some insight into this, I know that I'm a mom because as I was writing
01:21
this slide in particular, I could hear my toddler screaming at my husband in the room next to me about what he would and would not eat for dinner. This is him three years ago. He's adorable. He still is adorable. He just has more opinions. So this is Devin. He was born in early April 2015. He is now a
01:41
full-blown toddler and this is Layla, his little sister. She's eight months old. You can tell that she's my second from these pictures. There's a lot of blanket in that one picture which is like sort of a scary move when you have your first. And in the second one, this was my I am packing for RubyConf so I will
02:02
just unplug the cords because I know that you will get into them. But that face, she's like, even I'm sure that I'm not supposed to be allowed to be doing this. So today I want to talk about the challenges that people who are parents and developers face as well as what some solutions are and how
02:20
these solutions can actually help your entire company and a whole team. When Devin was about five months old, I felt like I was losing my mind. He was actually a pretty good sleeper which I didn't know at the time compared to my second. But being a parent of young children is often extended sleep
02:41
deprivation. If you're a parent, you know that it sort of ebbs and flows. And I had some really challenging work weeks. I really just wasn't sure how to do it. There's so much societal pressure. There's a lot less support structures for parents these days. And there's a desire to be great at all of the things. And all of these things and all of these pressures really
03:03
crush parents and the amount of pressure that they feel and what they face. How do I keep doing all of the learning that I should be doing while being a great mom, a great employee, and I don't know, an adequate wife?
03:22
Not to mention the things that pop up. So for example, when my son was around this age, we had his childcare fall through. And so for six weeks, I was taking care of him full-time and also working full-time. Now some folks have those babies that like to sleep during the day, right? They take naps and they're like these multi-hour naps and they take multiple
03:43
of them during the day. Those are not my babies. Devin slept for about 26 minutes at a time. Leila's at about 28 minutes. So you know, two-minute improvement. But they are not like the multi-hour sleepers.
04:01
And so I was just, you know, how do other people do it? Was I being unrealistic? Was I being lazy? Could I even be a good mom and a good developer? Should I just leave the field? And to be really honest, there have been a lot of times in the last four years where I thought that even though I love tech and I love code, I really wasn't sure if I could actually
04:22
remain in the field full-time and be a successful mom and developer. I thought about leaving tech more than once and just going back to some of the jobs that I know that I can just sort of do on autopilot. You see the cute pictures of parent life or kids on Facebook or Instagram,
04:40
but it's really not always like that. And in the early days, especially for me, it definitely was not like that. It was hard, it was tiring, it was frustrating, it was also amazing and all-encompassing, but it's really, really lonely. Based on what I was experiencing,
05:01
I created a survey to ask parents a few questions about this issue. I've surveyed a few hundred parents so far. It's actually my favorite part. I've given this talk once or twice before, but every time I give it, I can like recompile all the data, which is really interesting. And what I found out from reading surveys from moms and dads is that there are real trends and common issues. This March 2016 Stack Overflow
05:24
Developer Survey results, there's one piece of information that really stood out to me, and that was the age distribution of women programmers. If you look at the distribution here, you see that the number dips dramatically when a woman is in her 30s. These days, women are waiting longer to have children, most are having children in their 30s.
05:43
And while I can't do more than extrapolate, and this data actually didn't appear in the 2018 survey results, I can hypothesize from these findings that one of the reasons why women leave tech in their 30s is because they're having children, and the industry's demands aren't supportive of them.
06:01
Another survey that came out around the same time in 2016 asked specifically about folks that had completed boot camps. There were 16,000 results, and of those, 11 were mothers and 48 were fathers. I think that this is getting better, but if boot camps are a primary way that folks enter the
06:23
industry post-university, we're already counting a lot of people out by not offering programs that parents can participate in. So back to the survey that I was conducting, I found the same issues mentioned over and over again. In an industry that values open source contributions, GitHub as your
06:43
resume, and keeping up to date with the most recent programming developments, parents are struggling to keep up. So I'm going to take a second to describe my typical day. So Devin wakes up at around 7, and Leila at around 7.30, which is amazing. A lot of parents' days
07:01
start closer to like 5.30. I see a lot of like jealous looks in the audience. Most parents' days start closer to 5.30 or 6, especially after the dreaded daylight savings. I nurse Leila while Devin sort of drinks his morning glass of milk. By 8, we're getting moving. I get everyone dressed, brush teeth,
07:22
make car breakfast. You all can judge as much as you want. I'm not a morning person. And yes, my son very often eats breakfast in the car. We get everyone and everything in the car. By 8.25, 8.35, we're in the car. We drop off Leila at baby school, which involves getting
07:42
Devin out of the car and back into the car. By 9, I drop Devin off at preschool. By 9.25, I'm home. I pump breast milk, usually while making coffee, eating breakfast, and checking email. And then I jump into the workday and do that punctuated by a few more breast milk pumping breaks until 5.10. At 5.10, I race out the door. I pick up Leila from baby school. I get to
08:03
preschool to get Devin, which involves Leila getting in and out of the car. We try to get home by 6.15. 6.15 to 7.15, my husband and I do dinner for both of the kids. Sometimes we get a chance to cook our dinner or whatever we're trying to prepare for upcoming days. We clean up dinner and toys, bath time, bed time. I'll say bath time in varied quotation marks,
08:23
because with two, it happens a lot less frequently. From 7.45 until 9, we're usually finishing dinner, finishing cooking, clean up, preparing food and bottles for the next day, jotting down any notes for our child care providers, discussing any print and household business, making sure that we're on the same page for the next day,
08:43
and then we have a chance to relax, usually while sort of checking some email or doing final work or things for about 30 minutes, and then we head to bed. It's a very exciting life. We have it pretty good, even with two. Now, fortunately, I will start getting some more of my
09:06
daytime back as I pump less and weed my daughter. Dropping the number of times, if you're a woman, dropping the number of times that you have to pump during the day feels so amazing. You have more time to concentrate, and you don't have to go through this huge context
09:22
switch every two hours. And I mention this tangent because pumping breast milk was mentioned in over half of surveys for mothers and their answers about company provisions and the issues that they faced. Now, the only time that whole day that I could do any code for myself would be those 30 minutes that I have to
09:41
relax, and even if I gave up that self-care time, my brain is so tired by then that I really wouldn't be very productive. And if you think about it, if you don't have a great GitHub profile and you don't have side projects and you can't show potential employers code from work that you've worked on, when you go to look for a new job, you have very little
10:01
to show. All of this means that when you're looking for that new position, you're depending on your code challenge, which demands additional hours of focused time outside of your workday in order to complete. This often means that anyone looking for a new position has to spend a whole weekend working on just a couple of code challenges, which means
10:21
depending on a partner or spouse to do all of the child care, and also not getting to spend any time with your kids. This might not seem like a big deal, but when you're already working full-time, it really is. And this, of course, is even more challenging if you're a single parent. If you're a single parent, then you're probably paying for weekend child care in order to complete these tasks. I imagine that most parents have
10:44
schedules like this, if not worse, and the schedules only get busier as the number of kids increases. Last time I did this talk, I only had one, and I was refreshing this talk, and I was reading over that daily schedule that I had when I just had Devon, and I was like, huh, that was so relaxing! The other issue that I saw really
11:04
frequently was related to the community. We value our community, especially in the Ruby community. It's vital for networking, for finding jobs, to attend community events, and I love going to meetups, but it's really hard for me to do this. If I go to a meetup, it means that my
11:20
husband has to do everything solo, which with two children who go to bed at the same time is really tricky. And yeah, it's just challenging. My husband and I have decided that we each get one evening a week to do whatever we'd like, and the other person will just handle bedtime and prep and all of that stuff, but it
11:41
takes a toll. It takes twice as long to do everything when you're doing it by yourself, and we spend a lot more time the previous evening to make sure that whoever is doing the following evening is really set up for success. And that's just for an evening away. That doesn't even include conferences, which are much more challenging. A mother mentioned on a survey that
12:01
she was not able to go to conferences and events without it being a huge cost of family time or material cost if babysitters are required. The second biggest issue is being able to stay sharp. Developers live off of coffee. We talk a lot about coffee. If you're a nursing mom, you're probably getting significantly less sleep, and you just can't have
12:22
as much coffee during the day. A recent study from Owlet Baby Care found that over 40 percent of parents with babies aged zero to six months only get one to three uninterrupted hours of sleep per night. That's a lot of time to get one to three uninterrupted hours of sleep per night. Regardless
12:42
of whether you're a mother or father, you need to stay sharp through lack of sleep and have a clear mind to solve problems. At the beginning, on a really good night, maybe you'll get like six uninterrupted hours of sleep every once in a while, which actually feels amazing when you're used to getting much less than that. But, you know, you're
13:00
often getting five hours a night of interrupted sleep for a week or longer as sleep regressions and things just sort of ebb and flow, and you don't get the weekend to catch up and recharge and sleep in. A parent wrote, sometimes the last thing I want to do or even have time to do when I get home is code or learn new code. Gone
13:23
are the days of no responsibility and doing whatever I like when I get home. Finding a couple of hours to work on a personal project or pick up something new is hard, especially when trying to help out my other half, who's also tired. The last issue is related to schedules and flexibility. This is a really interesting one
13:41
because it was stated in two completely different ways for mothers and fathers. Fathers mentioned that schedules and flexibility were really difficult because they felt like as soon as they got used to something, the schedule would change and everything would change. Mothers spoke a lot more about work hours. They talked about how having flexible work hours
14:00
during the day was really great, but an issue that frequently came up was regardless of work hour flexibility, they still had hard start and stop times to their day based around childcare or school hours. One parent said, think of your brain as a snow globe. After your X years on earth, you've figured out
14:21
how you work best, what's important to you, et cetera, and this little person is just going to come along and give it a shake. And things are going to land in different spots, not better or worse, just different. Another parent said pre-baby, if my work day was interrupted, I'd get a solid amount of work done post three or four p.m. and then I'd
14:41
head home late. Post-baby, I no longer have that option and I have to work with extra traffic. Another said having to go home at five thirty no matter what, even if I'm super in the zone, that can be so frustrating. When I asked if having children
15:00
helped or hurt their career, only a small portion of fathers said it had hurt their career. They felt it either helped or had a neutral impact. One dad said it's helped me a ton with empathy and patience, which has positive impacts on my clients, coworkers, and other people that I interact with daily. About 60% of women said that having children hurt their career, but even more
15:23
said that it didn't hurt their career, but they felt like they changed it. So when they dove into how they changed it, they said that it slowed their career, affecting the overall trajectory and growth potential, which I think is actually hurting women's careers. So this is the
15:41
total breakdown of parents based on if they felt having a child helped, hurt, have no impact, or both helped and hurt their careers. Here are those same choices when you break it down for moms and dads. So as you can see, in this slide, right where you see the total picture of moms and dads, it's
16:00
pretty even with the pieces, except for that little boat sliver, but when you break it down for mothers and fathers, it tells a much different story. This data is backed up by additional research. This 2018 study on children and gender equality in Denmark shows these results based on gender and earnings. In Denmark, which we consider
16:23
so much closer to that gold standard of supporting parents and having that really awesome support structure in place, both men and women said that having children definitely helped them stay more focused at work because they're aware of the finite amount of time they have to accomplish
16:41
tasks and want to make the most of their work day. A parent said knowing that taking your work home really isn't an option motivates you to be more productive during the work day. I find that I'm able to be more focused during the parts of my life that I've dedicated to work, both professional and creative. Personally, I don't feel like I
17:00
have less time for the stuff that matters. I just literally have no time to waste. There were some other interesting findings, just sort of more broadly about the survey. Three quarters of fathers said it was fine to use their name, but over half of mothers wished to remain anonymous. There were a lot of survey respondents that
17:21
mentioned that either they or their spouse took significant time off of work, which I define as six months or more, after the birth of each child. For those who took time off, often as senior level technologists, there was little concern about difficulty reentering the workforce. I think that this is definitely a luxury and a privilege to not be
17:41
worried about reentering the workforce after taking that much time off, and that isn't afforded to everyone. Also, from the surveys I've received, over 50% are single income families, meaning that one parent is stay at home. But for those who did become the sole provider, they did mention extra stress and pressure about that fact. While there are lots
18:01
of challenges that parents face, there are also lots of solutions. Looking at these surveys, there were really identifiable solutions that companies can put in place, solutions that colleagues with or without children can employ, and things that parents can do to also work on. These solutions benefit an entire team. Let's start with some of the company ones. First, parental leave. Let's
18:24
talk about parental leave in America. Let's talk about maternity leave first. Our country has an atrocious maternity leave policy, which is basically nothing. We are one of the only countries in the world to not offer any sort of paid maternity leave, and paid maternity leave is incredibly
18:41
important. Not only does a woman need time to heal, but giving birth takes a tremendous toll on your mental and emotional well-being. The prospect of going back to work before a mother is ready can lead to postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, and have numerous negative health consequences for both mom and baby. Most
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companies think that four weeks of paid leave is standard and fair, but most women are barely back on their feet after four weeks. That's only if you have a completely uncomplicated normal birth. Not to mention the fact that babies aren't and shouldn't really be sleeping through the night at that point, and even really vital things like breastfeeding aren't established. I think a lot of
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times you think that breastfeeding, based on what you see in the movies or whatever, is just this natural thing that happens. Good, I like the laughs. Most folks that have had babies, it is not that, and it is sort of like this secret that it's not that, and you only discover that it's not that, and then everybody
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else knows that it's not that when you're a mom sort of going through this tremendous struggle. For mothers that want to nurse, it's recommended to not introduce a bottle to your baby until four weeks of age, but if you're expected back at work at four weeks, what are your options? Paternity leave. Most men only get two weeks
20:00
of paternity leave, and that's if they're lucky. I couldn't even imagine how terrified I would have been if my husband had to go back to work after two weeks. I really hadn't even changed a diaper at that point with my first, because I couldn't get up and down the stairs fast enough. A parent commenting on this said, when it comes to parenting, think about the 10-year scale. We
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expect people to take eight weeks of leave, but if they wanted 12, yes, 16, that's fine. Ten years from now, is it going to make a difference whether they took eight or 12 weeks? No. But if we pull them back sooner than they're ready, and then they quit a few months down the road, that has huge consequences. Most workplaces don't have any sort of additional support
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for parents, men or women, who are transitioning back to work. Companies do their employees a disservice and often create resentful employees by having insufficient parental leave policies. Think critically about your company's policy, and if you can, help them think through the consequences of having an employee back at work who doesn't want to be there and
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really isn't mentally ready to contribute to the team, versus providing a few extra weeks off, and really having an employee who's ready and excited to return to work. Talk to parents, especially moms on staff, about how much time they could have used and what resources or process they would have found helpful upon returning. Second,
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allowing work from home, remote or unconventional work options. Even once a parent is ready to come back, offering different working options can make a huge difference in their happiness level. For women who are pumping, being able to work from home makes an enormous difference. When I'm home, I can pump in 22 minutes. I've got everything set up, ready to go. I know where
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everything is. I can do the like. There are a couple of like little shortcuts and hacks that really are pretty much only available to you when you work from home. When I go into an office, it takes me 32 to 34 minutes. So that's three times a day where it's an additional 10 minutes, which ends up being additional 30 to 45 minutes a day that I'm not working because I have to get to a room and set everything up and break
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everything down, etc. I want to mention again that over half of surveys from women suggested issues or difficulties around pumping. If you have women at your company that are pumping in the bathroom, your company needs to seriously consider how they prioritize mothers in the workforce. Working
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from home also takes the stress out of a commute, which allows parents, regardless of how old their kids are, a little more flexibility and a little more time with those who matter most. Also, the idea of getting everyone out of the house on time with everything they need for the day is really stressful. I literally
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have a checklist on the door that says it's the leave the house list. If you have to worry about one less person, then it's just a little less stressful. Another option is to offer a part-time transition back to work. This is a really common suggestion and one that I think a lot of parents really appreciate. Folks do this in different ways.
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Working less hours, some working less days, but a gradual transition back to work for pretty much as long as your company can support it makes an enormous difference in a parent's lifestyle. Third, I touched on this a little bit in parental leave, but taking a more proactive role in creating support systems can be really helpful. A really
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simple example might just be including a parenting Slack channel where parents can share experiences, issues, or pictures of their kids. A more involved option might be to connect parents returning to work with those who have taken parental leaves in the past and allow it to be a really safe space for both parties to discuss successes,
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issues, and challenges. Finally, train managers on what to expect when someone who has been on parental leave comes back to work. This is important for moms and dads, but for moms in particular. Oftentimes managers in tech may have never had a mother go on maternity leave on their team. They might have no idea
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what challenges that woman is facing, what questions might help or hurt their return to work transition, and how to best support them as an employee and as a colleague. Over and over again, I saw quotes like, my boss was a big part in my success as a new parent. Fourth, create realistic expectations
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for parents that are returning to work. If your company operates off of KPIs or goal settings, recognize that these goals should be revisited when parents come back to work, and set new goals. These goals probably won't be as ambitious as they were in the past. If you're a manager, encourage realistic goal setting, and if you're
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an employee, recognize that your whole life has changed. Give yourself a couple of quarters to adjust to the new normal. You'll get a better sense of what effective goal setting and realistic expectations looks like for you. One mom mentioned, parents need different things at different times in their kids' lives. Now I need the holidays, but before my kids were in school, that didn't matter as much.
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Companies can also do symbolic things to show that they welcome parents, like pre-tax child care savings accounts, having a mother's room with a comfy chair, power, and a mini-fridge. Fifth, if you don't have children, or if a majority of your team is childless, don't make parent stuff weird. Talk about nursing, or pumping, or
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kid stuff in whatever way feels comfortable. One of the first things I did when I was back in the office after my first was create an emoji for when I was away from my computer pumping. This helped me feel open and honest about what was going on, and it did show in a way that didn't make my co-workers and my team feel sort of awkward or weird about it. After my
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second, I just put my pumping times right on my calendar so folks don't schedule meetings over that time. At a previous company, we did periodic gatherings of the engineering team, which included lightning talks. I did two while I was pregnant about what it was like to be pregnant, and then one afterwards about the science of breast milk and pumping, which is
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fascinating if you ever want to read about some really interesting stuff. My team asked great questions and definitely had much more empathy and understanding for me afterwards. I also hope that by exposing them to some of this terminology and experiences, they'll be more understanding and empathetic to any parents they might work with in the future.
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You can also have a real talk conversation with colleagues. This is a much scarier option. I generally don't recommend it unless you've been on a team for a long time. I was happy with this conversation. I was happy about
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the conversation. I was happy what we could all do to improve as a team, not just what I was feeling based on being a mom. Okay, so those are parental leave, creative working options, support systems, realistic expectations, and normalize it. Well, things like creative working options, support
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systems, realistic expectations, normalization of someone's life choices in a to a team or company's culture. When you talk about that stuff and when you put those things in place, it has benefits to an entire company. The open acceptance of diversity and intentional support around the uniqueness of a teammate's
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life creates that atmosphere in a team. As managers and company employees are trained to establish and assist the As a person with build
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needs Who wants an a Always coach to people to this tool making more likely that somebody who is burning will recognize it and speak up earlier. Realistic expectations encourage teams to craft better guidelines around work and promotions,
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which often help underrepresented minorities succeed. And creative working options help companies attract the best talent regardless of where they reside. There are also things we can do as parents, for those that are parents in the room. First, get rid of your parent guilt, which is a lot easier said than done.
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So on one side, you see two Halloween costumes that I made for Devin when he was six months. There have been lots of homemade costumes since then. On the right, these are the costumes that I frantically finished sewing about eight hours before I flew to Malaysia to speak at RubyConf Malaysia a couple weeks ago. And I did this, I do this because to me,
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it's some symbol to my kids that they'll look back at these pictures and they'll know that they were so important to me. This is how they'll say, yes, Mom worked, but she cared so much, and they're my top priority. And that's insane, that's a ridiculous statement.
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But a lot of working parents feel that way. We feel bad when we order a takeout one too many times when we feel like we should. We feel bad when we miss those special activities. But we also need to recognize that working and doing something that we love is just as important for us as it is for our children to see. A mom said, I thought I was being a bad mother
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and a bad developer because I didn't make everything perfect. Second, get organized. Balancing a career, children, a relationship, and any time for yourself is incredibly difficult. I've always been a list maker, but having kids just took it to a new level. And don't feel bad about what you choose to prioritize.
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It might be your career one week, your family the next. It's all a balancing act. A parent said, getting everything organized, like taking the kids to daycare, shopping, household, family time, relationship time, social life, all will suffer, but none should be starved. Third, schedule self-care days.
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It was, I think Devon was a little over a year when I took my first random day off, like a day where Devon was in childcare, my husband was at work, and I didn't fill my entire day with catch-up work or household things that needed to be done. At the end of it, I felt really refreshed. We don't get weekends to recharge.
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Vacations aren't really vacations after you've had children. So it's really important to not put these days off, to make sure that you're taking at least one every couple of months just to recharge. I always find that I'm a better mom, wife, and teammate after I do so. One mom mentioned something she heard at a conference about balance.
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You know those other women that you think are so successful at balancing motherhood with their career? I guarantee they feel like they're failing 90% of the time. None of us have it figured out. It's not easy. Fourth, optimize the time that you do have available. As I mentioned before, lots of surveys talked about being aware of the finite amount of time
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that they had to work, so make sure that you're making the most of these work hours. Set goals, focus, figure out how to hack your day as much as possible to advance whatever goals you're putting forth for yourself. Fifth, we can only make this better if we're united. It wasn't until I felt like I was caving
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under the stress and pressure of it all that I reached out to other mom developers. It wasn't until I reached out that I learned that lots of people felt the same way that I did. I found some new, some really excellent communities of parents in tech, and it's made a huge difference.
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It's one of the reasons why I started Parent Driven Development. Being able to speak with one another and share challenges, solutions, and suggestions is invaluable. Just like having a support group when you have a newborn, supporting one another as parents in tech makes us stronger and better and gives us a more united voice. Sixth, share that mental load.
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I'm gonna talk for moms about moms for a minute because mothers are disproportionately affected by the weight of mental load. In this 2015 Pew Research Center study, they surveyed about 1,800 parents in households where they both worked. They asked, who does the work
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of managing your children's schedules and activities? And then they also asked, who takes care of the kids when they're sick? So let's say you have a partner. And let's say this partner is great and very helpful, which I've actually already found to be a pretty big assumption, especially when talking to heterosexual couples.
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Let's say you feel like you've got a pretty okay split of work. You share pickups and drop-offs. You share who stays home with the kids on days off. You share the cooking, the cleaning, et cetera. What about all the other stuff? Who thinks about what the kids are gonna eat for lunch? Who schedules doctor's appointments? Who knows what day's schools are gonna be closed in advance?
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Who keeps track of what needs to happen developmentally next for your child or each of your children? Who buys birthday presents for upcoming birthday parties? Who reviews homework? Who plans and packs for family trips? If you're already splitting this load, I applaud you.
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But for many families, this isn't the case. There's a great website that I'll have a link to later that has some worksheets that can be a great way to jumpstart this conversation. One example of what I recently did is putting that checklist on our front door about what everyone needs to leave the house in the morning because I realized that I was taking on this mental burden
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of having to make sure that everyone was ready in the morning, even on the days that my husband was doing drop-off. Now that there's a list on the door, we can both make sure that everyone has everything they need without me needing to bear that burden. In my house, this is still very much a work in progress. When I travel to conferences, I've only recently stopped making sure
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that there was enough food to last for the entire time that I was away. And there are also specifically things that I've worked on completely abdicating responsibility for and I do not even think about those things. It's my husband's job. As you add more children into the mix, the mental load can be crushing, so share it because it can and should be shared.
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Finally, if you need to leave your company, leave your company. A parent wrote, your kids are more important than your career. Say it every day, write it down until it's so ingrained in your brain that you don't even have to think about it. No one lies in their deathbed wishing they'd spent more time with Rails.
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And companies should listen because if you treat your parents well, they won't leave. You'll have a much more dedicated workforce because nothing is more important to parents than a place that treats them well and values the fact that they have a family. Most survey respondents that felt like their companies cared about their family life said that they wouldn't be leaving anytime soon.
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And most folks that felt like they had issues or challenges at the company or with colleagues when they had children had already left where they were at when they had that child. Ultimately, if your company doesn't understand the lifestyle of you as a parent, doesn't allow you to be with your children, then if you can, try to leave. This advice came up over and over again, although again, admittedly,
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I think it's much easier for senior-level developers who have more flexibility in this area. Okay, so if you're a parent, disappear parent guilt, get organized, self-care days, optimize time, find a community, share that mental load, and leave if you have to. For your teams, remember that just existing as a parent on your team makes your team better.
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You're organized, you set boundaries, you must have some sort of work-life balance. Being this role model helps everyone even if they don't know that you're role modeling it. Recently, my team had an offsite that I brought my family to. In order for me to be where we were staying,
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to be available for dinner and bedtime each evening, our day ended at five, and we didn't meet up for dinner until about seven or 7.30. In our retrospective, my team brought this up as one of the things that they really loved about the schedule, not knowing that I created this break because I needed to balance running the offsite with being present for my family.
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When I told them the reason for why the break existed, they saw it not only as a benefit for me and my family, but also for them by giving them a chance to recharge before any evening activities. Finally, let's talk about what colleagues can do, because colleagues with or without children have lots of power and ability to be better teammates
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and make companies better for all parents. First, ask about leave policies. How many people here know what the maternity or paternity leave policy at their company is? Like half the room. Don't let it be a double-edged sword only for those with children or thinking about having children to ask. And if more people are asking, then it's a sign to companies
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that they know that having a progressive leave policy is really important in attracting talent. Second, ask about lactation rooms. I went to a conference once. This was my first, and I needed a place to pump. I asked the front desk person if there was a space other than the bathroom to do so.
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And he said, I think we have a supply closet somewhere that you can use. Fortunately, there was a security guard standing nearby that walked over and said, my wife is going through the same thing. I'm sure that we can do better than a supply closet or a bathroom. Let me ask around for you real quick. And sure enough, they were able
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to find an empty office for me. Mothers shouldn't be alone in this fight. Your company is moving into a new space or spending money building something out. Suggest that they make appropriate accommodations for mothers returning to work. And if they don't know what those are, there are plenty of women who would be happy to talk to them about it.
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Third, be friendly. This one's really simple, but for folks that are coming back from parental leave, it can be really emotional. So just checking in with them and sort of showing that they're appreciated and supported at work and that you care is really important. Fourth, make your voice heard. Someone suggests everyone work late or schedule a late meeting.
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Notice that parent staring anxiously at their watch towards the end of the day, looking worried. See someone criticizing a parent for needing to take time because their child is sick or has a doctor's appointment. From surveys that I've received, parents feel really guilty about having to say, I have to run to pick up my child or I can't be there because I have a doctor's appointment for my kid.
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So having others speak up and say, I know this meeting is running over. We want to be respectful of everyone's schedules. Or, hey, I noticed this meeting was scheduled late. Is there a different time that works for everyone? Is really helpful. One parent said, find a company and team that respects you and your family.
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Asking these questions and being a supportive colleague helps make your company a place that gets it. Finally, if someone uses a word or concept that you don't know, Google it. Most of us are pretty good at Googling. We generally like learning things. So if you don't know what pumping is or understand childcare costs, if you've never heard of a sleep regression
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or anything new that a parent mentioned, you can Google it. There are lots of resources out there to learn more. So that's leave policies, lactation rooms, be nice, speak up, and use Google. Well, there are specific things that colleagues can do to help parents. These actions benefit everyone and make teams stronger. These suggestions boil down to increasing empathy,
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curiosity, and interest in your colleagues and their lives and a desire to understand one another. When these factors are incorporated into a team's DNA, it leads to stronger, more effective teams that can support and understand one another effectively. You may ask about lactation rooms or leave policies specifically to support parents on your team,
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but you're also learning to recognize situations where different accommodations are helpful. You're learning how to support your teammates by asking questions and figuring out how to be a better ally on your team. And teams that are strong in these areas help attract and retain more diverse talent.
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There are also some great new resources to check out. Ones I like are In Her Sight, Fairy God Boss. This is sort of an older GitHub repo that has a lot of parental leave policies, and I've thrown a bunch of additional resources on my blog as well. The number one piece of advice that I got on surveys is that you'll never get this time with your children back.
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So value it, prioritize it, and guard it as much as possible. There are some days that I still feel like I'm not sure I can be a successful mom and intact. There are some days that I can give 100% to both areas and others where I feel like I'm letting either my family or my job down.
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There are days when I wanna play with my kids just a little longer or keep my head down for a few more hours to really crack the problem I'm working on or fully understand the concept I'm grappling with. Often though, I find myself calling on developer strategies for effective parenting or vice versa. I think this makes me a better manager
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and gives me more experiences and strategies I can call upon in a variety of situations. What I also learned through speaking with people and through all the amazing parents that answered a few questions for me was that the struggles that I'm facing are not unique. It's important for all of us as a community, as developers, as colleagues, as peers,
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and as managers to talk about this. I thought that everything that I was feeling was just me, but it's not, it's everyone. Everyone has similar issues, so let's think about how we can make it better because they're solvable, right? As peers with or without children, as managers, CTOs, directors of engineering, we can make the lives of parents
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who are developers better. A few hundred surveys isn't a huge sample size, but it's enough to start the conversation and see some trends. This research is ongoing, it's my pinned tweet, so feel free to fill it out if you haven't filled it out yet. And parents, as one person wrote on their survey, just high fives, you're awesome, be confident.
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Thank you, I've totally run out of time for questions, but you can come chat with me now or at any point throughout the conference. Thank you.