When I interview someone, I always include time for the candidate to ask me questions. Whether about the position, the company, the industry, or me, it's up to them. Many candidates will ask me about work-life balance. I usually attempt to depict the big overall picture for them, but sometimes will tailor the picture to the particular role they've applied for. It's hard, because you want to be truthful with your candidates but you also don't want a few outlier stories to scare them off.
When it comes to work-life balance, I think candidates are asking the wrong question.
When looking at work-life balance, by all means evaluate a company's policies and outlook toward benefits, but also habits of the company's employees. There's usually some degree of disconnect between the policy and the culture. For example, unlimited paid leave doesn't matter if employees aren't comfortable taking it. The lavish perks like free lunches, massage chairs, and gaming tables look great in the hiring brochure but are merely aesthetic if employees feel so overwhelmed with emails and meetings that they don't get to enjoy them. Nor is the ability to work from home a benefit if employees feel pressured either by management or culture to be "always on" long after the work day is over.
Candidates would be better served by asking to speak with one or two people who have the job they are applying for and asking them about their role, work expectations as they see them, and daily habits and routine.
My thoughts on work-life balance feel anecdotal at best, without a solid unifying theme. As I was considering stringing a few of my thoughts together, I found myself chatting with a colleague (and new father):
Alex: next topic: work-life balance
Colleague: What is that
He was being sarcastic, having likely been up all night with his newborn, but it inspired me to conduct a horrendously unscientific poll. Well after midnight I polled everyone still active on Google Hangouts, asking "if I say work-life balance, what's the first thing that comes to mind?"
The responses were varied, no doubt biased by the hour and the type of company I keep.
"I'm probably a bad example because it's been an issue for me lately, but my first thought is having sufficient time outside of work to pursue personal interests and recharge."
Pretty close to the textbook definition.
"honestly the first thing that always bother me is that work comes first in the phrase. then it goes to expectations. not having willy-nilly calling at all hours, having a schedule if on-call has to be a thing. not expecting someone to answer email past end of business, etc."
Specifics that I can related to.
"Amazon"
I've read about the issues at Amazon, heard some stories second-hand, but can't say for sure.
"I lack one right now. My time card for this week is already clocking in at 46.5, and it's only Thursday."
Been there before.
"presently, the fact that i'm writing unit tests"
So true and a fabulously stereotypical image of a software engineer writing unit tests well after midnight on a weeknight.
We're our own worst enemy when it comes to balancing work and life. We find ourselves glued to our phones after we leave the office, returning calls whenever we're in the car, and answering work emails at all hours. We stupidly buy into the hype that we've got to be busy/swamped in order to be productive or at least appear that way.
It's our fault, though. The prevalence of mobile devices and high degree of connectivity that we enjoy are merely catalysts.
No one forced us to set up our business email on our personally-owned devices. The same goes for HipChat, Slack, and Salesforce. We did it. For our convenience, so we didn't have to lug the laptop around, so we could check messages on the go. We tell ourselves and others that we like it. And yet we don't stop. We don't usually call it a day.
We have this false sense that everything is going to fall to pieces if we don't respond immediately and it paralyzes us. We don't want to be the blocker for that open JIRA or the person who everyone else is waiting to hear from. So while we've physically left the office we never really stop working, so much of our identity is wrapped up in work.
We write off the time spent checking on things after hours, usually. A minute here to skim a dozen emails and mark them as read. A few minutes there texting with a colleague about a meeting earlier in the day. It's not a lot of time, we rationalize, but those minutes add up. That's time we ought to be context-shifted away from work, recharging, minds on anything but.
There's a difference between being invested, the occasional "taking the one for the team," and not being able to set boundaries. While in theory better for a company to have a content workforce, these are all individual responsibilities, and aside from combating burnout, slightly higher insurance premiums, and silent discontentment that may eventually led to someone quitting, there are few tangible incentives for employers to encourage employees to set stricter work-life boundaries for themselves.
The technology choices a company makes influence its employees work-life balance greatly. Company-issued laptops are common these days and typically are taken home by the employee. While the original intent may have been to save costs or promote flexibility, it's far more likely an employee will continue to work at home when they bring home their computer at the end of the day. The same argument can be made for hosted email and calendar services that are allowed by policy to be used on personally-owned mobile devices.
The lack of timecards, often touted as a benefit, is usually not in the best interest of the employee.
More and more people are working more than a 40 hour workweek, but at what cost to productivity and health? I'd rather work fewer more productive hours and retain the balance for restorative exercise, socializing, and play.
I confess, it's nice not having to complete a timecard but I miss the structure it provided. A time card is a concrete indicator of how much time we're spending at work, if not an indicator of how many hours are going into the work (distractions and all). I find that I need to recreate structure in other ways to keep myself productive and minimize distractions, such as carving out blocks of time on my calendar.
We routinely call out employees who put in the most billable hours or rack up the most frequent flyer miles, recognizing them for their contributions. Always with a sympathetic tone of damn, that's a lot of time away but rewarding them all the same. This isn't right. Working long hours is usually the sign of bad project management or a miscommunication of expectations, not dedication. Management is hard and the management of technical employees is fundamentally different, but let's not paint over a negative and call it a positive. We ought to be offering our condolences to the employee and trying to figure out why we think it's so imperative that they're so busy all the time (hint: it probably isn't).
Being entrusted with ownership of a system, software component, or team is an important part of every knowledge worker's career. Taking ownership not only implies that you're up to the task of handling things yourself, but that you'll speak up if there's something you can't handle or aren't comfortable with. Also, that you'll have the guts to call bullshit when something's not right. The adage I use is that you don't yell fire, but you ought to speak up if you see something that's smoldering.
Learning to adjust to new responsibilities is perfectly natural. Embracing responsibility can be challenging, especially when you're in charge of something and have to stand your ground to colleagues who might be experts in their own area. It's normal to have disagreements and bump heads during this process, and it's normal to want to prove that you're capable of handling things. Thinking that everything will fall apart without your continual presence, however, can detrimental to you, your team, and to the effort at hand.
When I consulted for the government, one of the systems I wrote code for was considered important enough to warrant 24/7 coverage and support. Someone on our engineering team was on the hook each week for carrying the pager and responding should a problem arise, no matter the hour. Some might see this as a negative aspect of the job, but for me and my team it was a matter of pride. If it was our code that was causing an issue, I wanted to help make our team be effective and responsive. If it was my code that was causing an issue, I wanted to get in there and fix it.
We had the following informal policy when it came to deploying new code: is it likely that this update will result in someone being paged in overnight? If the person wanting to deploy had the pager and wanted to run the risk, OK… otherwise, nope.
As time went on and our code got better, problems with our system become less common. Eventually most of the late night calls were the result of upstream or downstream issues. And when it was our fault, I had no problem taking ownership and going in to fix it. You want your code to work properly, to do what it was designed to.
Until we go and get/find/make a life outside of work, we tend to define ourselves by what we do professionally, seemingly more so than previous generations.
I feel like I've read a dozen pieces about this in the past few years. Citations wanted.
One author argues that millennials don't mind mixing their work life with their personal life, that they don't want a balance so much as a healthy blend of the two. Another says millennials do indeed seek a balance but their bosses don't quite understand why. Finding balance is not limited to millennials nor is lumping all bosses together a sound idea.
We ought to have outlets and interests outside of work. Strike that, we need to have outlets and interests outside of work. Activities and relationships that fulfill us that we don't depend upon for income. Some place whether physical or mental where we can go to unplug, to disconnect from the tasks that we do for a living. Even if you love your job, time spent away is restorative and can even lead to breakthroughs.
For those passionate about their field, the type of people who love to tinker on the same kind of things on and off the clock, or those involved in instrinsicly meaningful work, that balance may be easier to find. Disconnecting is still important so that our passions don't fade as the line between work and personal interest blurs.
Only you can adjust your work-life balance. No one will do it for you. Even if your supervisor and company is supportive and forces you to take a vacation, they can't force you to go. Even if they disable your account accesses and confiscate your office badge, they can't make you stop thinking about work.
You have to get over yourself, dismiss your sense of self-importance, and realize that things will continue to function if you step away. And then you step away.
Here's how I do it.
Setting and publishing work hours can help, but are only as effective as you are at observing them. Declining meetings outside your work hours is vital; if you continually accept calendar appointments outside your work hours, why wouldn't your colleagues continue to send them?
Making colleagues, customers, and business partners aware of your home time zone will cut down on a lot of after-hours requests. Open calendars can be a boon, allowing colleagues to see where you might happen to be on a given day.
Turn off mobile notifications for work emails, both audible and visual. The same goes for work chat, Slack, and other apps. During the work day, I primarily use my laptop for email and chat. My phone is set to synchronize email in the background, but isn't logged into chat. This allows me to step away from my desk when I need a break and actually have it be uninterrupted. If I'm traveling and need chat, I can always enable it.
If a matter is truly important and worth interrupting my evening, my phone numbers are readily available to my colleagues. My colleagues are fairly considerate and not really phone people, so it's a rare occurrence that I get a call after-hours.
It gets easier. The feelings of guilt fade. Gradually others start to see your stepping back as a life choice and less of slacking or abandonment.
Will I ever win one of those "hardest working" awards? Probably not. And that's just fine with me.
When we talk about work-life balance, especially within an industry that tends to be highly valued and where skilled workers are well compensated as a result, we're already doing alright. It makes us feel guilty to complain when we:
can pay our rent or mortgage, put food on the table, and afford excellent health care, all with money to spare
have jobs so flexible that we complain about lack of structure
have perks so vast and varied that we start to complain about things like the quality of the complimentary meals or the lack of beverage variety in the office kitchen, things that most people don't ever get
We have the luxury to complain about the balance between work and life and talk about how we can take steps to improve, where most consider themselves lucky to have a job. Many of us have worked hard to get here, think that we've paid our dues, put our time in at far crappier jobs, but it's easy to lose perspective.
And one last response to my late night inquiry about work-life balance:
"Sorry, was not awake when you messaged me because I was actually in search of just that, I'll be reviewing your essay periodically throughout the day as part of my said balance. :)"
Good for you, sir. Good for you.
Last Modified: 2020-08-09
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