Episode 043: Pressure and Considerations Around Leaving a Job for Ethical Reasons.

Welcome, Nick Means!
Nickolas Means loves nothing more than a story of engineering triumph (except maybe a story of engineering disaster). When he's not stuck in a Wikipedia loop reading about plane crashes, he spends his days as a Senior Engineering Manager at GitHub working on Security and Compliance tooling for our users. He's also a co-host of the Managing Up podcast, a show about leading and managing in the world of technology. He works remotely from Austin, TX, and spends most of his spare time hanging out with his wife and kids, going for runs, or trying to brew the perfect cup of coffee.

01:54 How do you approach management with parents on your team?

• Treating your team as you would want to be treated as a parent
• Setting examples to your team as a manager
• Evaluate the job performance on the work actually done, and not clock a few hours taken off for kid responsibilities
• Flexibility and trust in team members and manager

07:12 Work life balance and work life integration

• Work sometimes becomes an escape from parenting life
• Self care for parents! No kids included, you need you

11:35 How do you encourage your team members to take time for themselves

• Ask the right questions to figure out what will fill their cup?
• As a manager, you’re more aware of the state of your team members and can identify things quicker
• Applaud team members when you see them take the effort for PTO

17:18 When you’re the only parent on the team.. How to make others understand

• Speak with kindness, set boundaries, have trust
• Time zone issues
• Setting boundaries with your team members
• How to structure workflow with team members in different zones

26:20 Managers making it explicit that it is OK to be done when you leave your workstation

28:02 Managing for non-remote teams

• Inflexibility when have to go into office
• Complexity for parents when they are totally out of the convo when working in an office

31:40 Moms vs. Dads double standard

• Putting family time on calendar
• Single parenting, the lack of help

33:40 How can managers support parental leave

• Encouraging more time for first time parents
• The job to support parents starts when they decide to have kids, not just during the leave
• Twins

37:50 Genius // fail

• Chris Sexton, how do you spell drop? #fail
• Josh had the sex talk…. but bombed on the timing with his daughter #geniusfail
• Allison has a nice turkey day with kids and neighbors, building her more positive memories! #genius
• Chris Arcand makes his nanny wait on her scheduled time off #fail
• Mandy gets a puppy… and it's a beautiful new experiences to share with her daughter
• Nick and his wife forget about homework… his son gets it done, but they all struggle the next day #fail

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Panel

Allison McMillan
Chris Arcand
Josh Puetz
Mandy Moore
Chris Sexton

Special Guest: Nick Means.