4 ms·

I work as a senior-level programmer/analyst for a mid-sized private university. My workday normally starts around 7:45 AM. On a good day, I leave for home arou

I work as a senior-level programmer/analyst for a mid-sized private university. My workday normally starts around 7:45 AM. On a good day, I leave for home around 7 PM. Sometimes I get to leave "early" by 6 PM. I usually break for about 1 hour (or less) at lunch time. I do not wear T-shirts or tennis shoes to work. There is one other programmer who does; his contract has not been extended past the end of this December. I do work from home, but only because I don't get all of my work done between 7:45 AM - 7 PM when I'm at the office. I could not use an OLPC formatted with Breezy for my work. I use a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo w/ 4GB of RAM, and I still find my computer is too slow and doesn't have enough RAM to, for example, run more than a few VMs at once. I do often work from 2 AM - 4 AM at home when inspiration strikes and I cannot sleep. One reason for this is the lack of distractions at this time of night: my wife is in bed sleeping and there are no coworkers to stop by and try to chat. However, I could not work from home and satisfy my job duties. There are too many times when I need to work in person with, for example, a professor having trouble with one of the programs I've written, or go to a meeting with the deans of some of the schools at my university. I also don't have sufficient bandwidth at home to work satisfactorily. I often do tasks where I need a 100Mbit or 1000Mbit pipe to my workstation; a 10Mbit connection is not sufficient. (For this same reason, I don't sit outside on the commons and work on my laptop wirelessly.) Because of these reasons, I have chosen not to have children at this point in time, as I don't feel I could adequately give them the time and attention they deserve. It would be really nice to take off a few months of time to spend with my wife & my family, and have my job guaranteed when I choose to return, but that is simply not an option I have. (For the geeky amongst you, the thing I do that needs bandwidth is mostly using TNS for running PL/SQL; running TNS over a 10Mbit WAN is frustrating at best, and completely useless at worst. It is not suited towards dealing with terabyte-sized data sets.)

bugs 17y ago
I must say you are most definitely the normal programmer and if that truly is your workday it is insane.
- joshuarodd 17y ago
  The 10 1/2 hour workday is surprisingly common in several departments here; I'm not sure how the fact that an academic environment is bureaucratic, even for staff programmers, makes me a "normal programmer".
nzmsv 17y ago
Well, you don't need a 100Mbit pipe for a dumb terminal. There is nothing preventing a useful remote desktop session on wifi to your workstation back on campus. Except possibly for an overzealous IT department (the kind that blocks upgrading from IE6 because of "security risks"). Also, what you are describing is a job in a bureaucracy. This kind of environment isn't something do be proud of, it's something you work despite (though this is my personal preference, and there may be people who like this). The point of the article isn't that it's easy for any workplace to accomodate a mother working from home. It's that it is doable. This depends on someone higher up in management having the will to do this. But this is a management problem, not a problem of discrimination against women. Basically, this is not a problem if the people higher up in the food chain would start treating their subordinates as human beings. Which, sadly, might just be too much to ask of a lot of managers.
- joshuarodd 17y ago
  A dumb terminal session (or TightVNC, RDP, etc.) would suit for about half of what I do. The problem is that my productivity with the other half is compromised by being off-site. As far as the bureaucracy goes, that is one of the pitfalls of working as a staff programmer in academia. The point of my post, however, is that many staff IT or programmer jobs are simply not compatible with the kind of working environment lepid0ptera describes, and I think this extends outside of IT or ERP style teams at large instutitions: my friends in the game or design industry frequently pull long shifts when trying to meet hard deadlines. This kind of environment is what is hostile to parenthood in general (not just mothers trying to take maternity leave).

bugs 17y ago

I must say you are most definitely the normal programmer and if that truly is your workday it is insane.

joshuarodd 17y ago
The 10 1/2 hour workday is surprisingly common in several departments here; I'm not sure how the fact that an academic environment is bureaucratic, even for staff programmers, makes me a "normal programmer".

nzmsv 17y ago

Well, you don't need a 100Mbit pipe for a dumb terminal. There is nothing preventing a useful remote desktop session on wifi to your workstation back on campus. Except possibly for an overzealous IT department (the kind that blocks upgrading from IE6 because of "security risks"). Also, what you are describing is a job in a bureaucracy. This kind of environment isn't something do be proud of, it's something you work despite (though this is my personal preference, and there may be people who like this). The point of the article isn't that it's easy for any workplace to accomodate a mother working from home. It's that it is doable. This depends on someone higher up in management having the will to do this. But this is a management problem, not a problem of discrimination against women. Basically, this is not a problem if the people higher up in the food chain would start treating their subordinates as human beings. Which, sadly, might just be too much to ask of a lot of managers.

joshuarodd 17y ago
A dumb terminal session (or TightVNC, RDP, etc.) would suit for about half of what I do. The problem is that my productivity with the other half is compromised by being off-site. As far as the bureaucracy goes, that is one of the pitfalls of working as a staff programmer in academia. The point of my post, however, is that many staff IT or programmer jobs are simply not compatible with the kind of working environment lepid0ptera describes, and I think this extends outside of IT or ERP style teams at large instutitions: my friends in the game or design industry frequently pull long shifts when trying to meet hard deadlines. This kind of environment is what is hostile to parenthood in general (not just mothers trying to take maternity leave).