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Restarting my career after motherhood

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Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#81
post #8

The software industry is like an abusive partner. Always desperate to hire STEM talent, but not you. Knowing a large number of people with similar experiences my recommendation is to start up something. Some very limited and targeted application or service is usually possible. If nothing else it is great practice that will improve skills. The amount of work required to get a job in the software industry is often far…

That's my take on it as well - it feels like on every hiring-related thread people aren't actually looking to hire, they're looking for reasons not to hire, which they will obviously find (or make up) given how subjective the process is.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#82
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The majority of humans are going to be parents. Only because of the subsidies. It's hardly "natural" for all humans to reproduce. All living humans come from a long unbroken chain of natural selection and rejection of bad genes and reproduction of only the fittest to enable adaption to a changing environment. If you create subsidies so that every human can reproduce, you are going to reverse natural selection and c…

Huh? It has to work out that or the human race dies out. I guess you could have a few couples who have a lot of kids instead, but developed societies are really adverse to that. It is “natural” in the sense that we wouldn’t be here to talk about it if it wasn’t the case.

> Huh? It has to work out that or the human race dies out. I guess you could have a few couples who have a lot of kids instead, but developed societies are really adverse to that.

Obviously the human race somehow made it until we created developed societies. I think you are confusing survival of the human race with survival of our current pension system.

Who knows if it's really better or worse to suddenly allow everyone to reproduce?

For sure it's not "natural", and as far as I can see it would actually reverse evolution to regression instead.

And it seems like we can't really stop it anyway with how many men today are becoming outsiders in society because they get rejected to reproduce.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of capitalism’s exploited externalities (no economic value placed on the labor of raising children)

I know. Why should anyone have kids! The ROI of children is vastly lower than most other endeavors in life. Start a company, not a family.

Some are replying that this sarcasm. I think not entirely. I think rather it is sarcasms cousin “satire.”

It states in a blunt shocking way a truth that exists manifestly in many of our actions, but is never said in that way.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#84
post #69
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parenthood must be an entirely personal choice. Otherwise the implication is that "society" or government have the right to regulate bodily autonomy, force people to have children, outlaw abortion or homosexuality as "threats to society," engage in eugenics, etc. Most would consider the implications of that to be highly immoral.

> Most would consider the implications of that to be highly immoral. I think it's already immoral how society punishes people for being childless when it's a natural thing and can be 100% caused by characteristics that you are born with and have no control over.

Yes, both can be immoral.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#85
post #80

I am thinking about, All those parents who are forced to work but always wanted to stay back and provide best care for their kids but couldn't do so.. feeling a gut punch. Parents who chose career path and gets the slap in the face moments every time they realized that they could have spent more time with the kids instead of the work. Is it possible to eat the cake and have it too?

Possibly with part time work but it can be hard to find, and it's still a compromise.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#86

If you take N years off from a career, you should expect ahead of time to become a less compelling candidate to hire for highly skilled work. 1) your skills are assumed rustier and 2) you have fewer years left in your career so you have less room for promotion to executive levels (big companies need to be thinking about hiring their CEO 20 years from now). If you don’t want this to happen to your career, 1) get bette…

3) make your career about something more than climbing up an imaginary ladder that largely exists to motivate you into giving more while getting less and less in return.

YMMV, of course!

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#87
post #69
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parenthood must be an entirely personal choice. Otherwise the implication is that "society" or government have the right to regulate bodily autonomy, force people to have children, outlaw abortion or homosexuality as "threats to society," engage in eugenics, etc. Most would consider the implications of that to be highly immoral.

> Most would consider the implications of that to be highly immoral. I think it's already immoral how society punishes people for being childless when it's a natural thing and can be 100% caused by characteristics that you are born with and have no control over.

How does society punish you for being childless?

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#89
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parenthood is by far the most subsidized personal choice in the universe. Let's not pretend it's not. Some countries give more than a year paid parental leave, in what can only be described as vote purchasing. Parenthood is compensated.

Parenthood is vital to society and it's very much in the interest of countries with declining birthrates to promote it. It is currently subsidized but not nearly enough to make it a rational choice for individuals from a purely economic perspective. If we want to stabilize declining birthrates, we will need to increase subsidies by a lot.

Totally depends on the state of society and what the needs are, China had the opposite policy for over 30 years to achieve a declining birth rate. It's not true that more children = better. It's only an issue somehow for pyramid schemes of the welfare system.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#90
post #54

> So far, I got rejected from over twenty job opportunities. That's nothing. I've been continuously employed for over 20 years. I just got a job a few weeks ago after two months of unemployment. I kept a record of every application and in the end there were more than 130 of them. I ended up with several offers and got a great job but I had far more than 20 rejections for every offer I received and I consider that a v…

Yeah, agree here. Even with a stream of continuous employment, nobody gets a job by submitting CV's to websites. You have to have a network. Best advice I would give to anyone taking a break from work is to stay in touch with your old coworkers-take them out to lunch occasionally, stop by the office and bring cookies, etc.

It's possible. I've done it twice. But it takes hundreds of applications for every "yes"
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