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Work Life balance slows careers

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Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#11

Post by SoftTalker »

jleyank wrote: post #5

Unless you have the magic ticket, a career is a 30-40 year journey. Better to take it with others than going it alone, as you’ll need other people when your cachet fades in the second half. Looking back, I recommend working to live over living to work. And remember, if you don’t separate yourself from your work you’ll have no “you” when you dial back or become unnecessary or undesirable. And it’s prudent to do “desir…

> if you don’t separate yourself from your work you’ll have no “you” when you dial back or become unnecessary or undesirable

I see this with a lot of people I know who retire and find they don't know what to do with their time. Work is all they ever really did.

I know another guy, well into his seventies, who is still working because there's nothing else he wants to do. He'll either die at his desk or in bed.

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#12

Post by david-gpu »

> I was Facebook’s first engineer promoted to E9 outside the US. All this, at the cost of my second-grade son making sure he had a reserved spot on my calendar prior to me heading off to work that morning. Was it worth it?

> If you want atypically fast career growth, you need to put in the hours. Only you can answer whether the sacrifices are worth it.

Ask the kid. Or the spouse.

My father had a significant career: medical doctor with a PhD, yadda yadda. I won't go into the details, but he left much to be desired both as a husband and as a father. At the age of 54, while he was working on a second PhD, he had a stroke that nearly killed him and left him severely disabled until his death at 70.

Was it worth it? His surviving family doesn't think so. I think we would have all been happier if he had made different choices. His mistakes were a big part of why I quit working to spend time with my own family. Ask my spouse and children whether I made the right call.

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#13

Post by tpm »

serjester wrote: post #9
pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

Well, at least he spared a moment for a reflection on how it's affecting his family.

> When I first started at Microsoft, I had a sleeping bag in my office. I coded until 11pm nightly and slept until 3am, at which point I’d code until ~6am, then sleep until my first meeting ~10am. It’s everyone’s pejorative on what they want to focus on in life, but this is pretty insane. Obviously it worked out for him (so we think), but this sounds like recipe for a couple divorces and kids that hate you (even if h…

Prerogative. Although pejorative will do in this case.

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#14

Post by tayo42 »

Insanity wrote: post #4

Slows careers, but I guess "what's the point" of rushing through your career? You'll likely earn more money, at increased levels of stress, and while giving up on other things life has to offer. I kind of resonated with the author when I was in my twenties, when I was really focused on work and gave up a lot of 'leasure' time to do so. Nowadays, I think a healthy balance is actually needed to live a full life. Today…

Your making like a half million a year then? You'll have financial freedom in a couple years...

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#17

Post by david-gpu »

serjester wrote: post #9
pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

Well, at least he spared a moment for a reflection on how it's affecting his family.

> When I first started at Microsoft, I had a sleeping bag in my office. I coded until 11pm nightly and slept until 3am, at which point I’d code until ~6am, then sleep until my first meeting ~10am. It’s everyone’s pejorative on what they want to focus on in life, but this is pretty insane. Obviously it worked out for him (so we think), but this sounds like recipe for a couple divorces and kids that hate you (even if h…

> pejorative [0]

I think you mean prerogative [1].

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pejorative

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prerogative

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#18

Post by Karawebnetwork »

At what cost?

A career is just one facet of a fulfilled life alongside relationships, health, personal development and joy. Putting everything aside aiming for promotions may look like a success on paper but it often leads to burnout, loneliness and unfulfilled goals in other areas.

You can climb the ladder but if you ignore the rest of your life you may reach the top, only to realize once alone at the summit that your entire kingdom is in disarray.

Perhaps slowing your career can even be wise if the other spheres of your life are suffering. A sabbatical year or even a deliberate downshift can offer the space to realign and rediscover purpose.

There is something to be said about survivorship bias too, many who work hard don't achieve similar outcomes. We often hear from those who worked relentlessly and succeeded but rarely from the many who worked just as hard and didn't see the same results. For example, some studies show that nearly half of the women in tech leave the industry by mid-career, often due to systemic barriers

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#19

Post by datadrivenangel »

serjester wrote: post #9
pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

Well, at least he spared a moment for a reflection on how it's affecting his family.

> When I first started at Microsoft, I had a sleeping bag in my office. I coded until 11pm nightly and slept until 3am, at which point I’d code until ~6am, then sleep until my first meeting ~10am. It’s everyone’s pejorative on what they want to focus on in life, but this is pretty insane. Obviously it worked out for him (so we think), but this sounds like recipe for a couple divorces and kids that hate you (even if h…

It's everyone's prerogative. But I certainly am a little pejorative towards the author, as whatever microsoft was building seems unlikely to be that deserving of an endeavor. The world has a place for enterprise b2b software, but I don't think it's a calling worthy of that type of sacrifice.

Re: Work Life balance slows careers

#20

Post by yladiz »

tayo42 wrote: post #14
Insanity wrote: post #4

Slows careers, but I guess "what's the point" of rushing through your career? You'll likely earn more money, at increased levels of stress, and while giving up on other things life has to offer. I kind of resonated with the author when I was in my twenties, when I was really focused on work and gave up a lot of 'leasure' time to do so. Nowadays, I think a healthy balance is actually needed to live a full life. Today…

Your making like a half million a year then? You'll have financial freedom in a couple years...

Let’s assume you can save half of that. In two years, you’ll have 500,000. Is that enough to never work again?
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