Episode 019: Being Adults

00:25 Welcome, Jonan Scheffler!

Jonan is a free-range computer sciencer at Heroku and cheerleader for hire (all major hugs accepted). He is also a board member of RubyTogether and all-around swell human being!

We recorded this episode live and in-person at this year's RubyConf in Los Angeles.

01:09 Catching Up On Sleep, Spending Time with Friends, and Spending Spousal Points

• Conferences are NOT vacations, y'all!
• Traveling as a job.
• Being present at home.
• Partying is WORK.

11:16 Communicating to Loved Ones at Home

• Facetiming, calling, audio messaging.

18:50 Going Home / Reentry to the Parenting World

25:04 It Takes a Village... Support Systems When Away

29:30 Self-Care While Away

• Treats!
• Massage!
• Movies on the plane!
• Room service!
• Fancy coffee!
• Tattoos!?!

32:34 Genius / Fail Moments

• Allison: Her son drew her a picture "so Mommy doesn't scream as much". (#Fail); Attending an anger management for parents of small children class. (#Genius)
• Mandy: Forgot to download things to her devices on the way to LA! (#Fail)
• Josh: Mistook a sprained ankle for growing pains. (#Fail)
• KWu: Mistook roseola for windburn! (#Fail)
• Jonan: Ruined waffles for his kids. (#Fail)
• Andy: His daughter learned how to swim! (#Genius)

Follow & Support

Please follow us @parentdrivendev on Twitter or email us at panel@parentdrivendevelopment.com.

Our website is at ParentDrivenDevelopment.com.

Support us via Patreon and get access to our our Slack Community.

Panel

Andy Croll
Mandy Moore
Allison McMillan
Josh Puetz
KWu

Special Guest: Jonan Scheffler.

Episode 017: Work and Family Boundaries

00:16 Welcome, Chris Arcand!

Chris is a Software Engineer at HashiCorp where he works on Terraform Enterprise, a product that adds collaboration and governance features to the popular open source infrastructure tool, Terraform. As an advocate of distributed teams and open source, he’s spent the majority of his career at other distributed, open source companies such as Red Hat. He calls the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota his home where he organizes the local Ruby users group, RubyMN, as well as moderates the ‘MSP Tech’ community Slack. Outside of software, Chris is an avid backpacker and amateur ice hockey player, as well as the father of a rambunctious little 19-month-old.

01:32 Balancing Working From Home with a 19-Month-Old

• The Aspect of Literal Time: Utilizing time when kids are napping/otherwise busy
• "Shift Work" vs Having Flexible Hours
  • Hashicorp's "Flexible Time Off" Policy vs "Paid Time Off"
• Approaching Work and Dividing Up Your Day

06:46 Making Family Plans

09:29 Commuting Vs Working From Home

• Location is Vital
• Having an At-Home Nanny

13:28 Choosing a Nanny Over Daycare

18:19 Maintaining Balance and Avoiding Excessive Interruptions

• Noise. Cancelling. Headphones.
• Shutting The Door

21:14 Improving Mental Presence When Not Working

• Give Yourself Time to Decompress Before Family Time
• Mindfulness/Meditation

25:23 Exposing Kids to "I'm working, and this is how I'm working."

43:42 Genius / Fail Moments

• JC: Has successfully kept his kid alive for 18 years! (#Genius) Also, his sophomore is starting in varsity football! (#Genius) Also, also, he is the team photographer which is a great hobby to have. (#Genius)
• Josh: Andrew Bredow's Chore Chart
• Chris A: His hockey room! His son is showing interest! (#Genius) ...But, having a new roof put on his house during naptime was probably not the best plan. (#Fail)
• Chris S: Let his kids help him paint a room! (#Genius) ...But, it turns out they weren't very good at it. (#Fail)

Follow & Support

Please follow us @parentdrivendev on Twitter or email us at panel@parentdrivendevelopment.com.

Our website is at ParentDrivenDevelopment.com.

Support us via Patreon and get access to our our Slack Community.

Panel

Chris Sexton
JC Avena
Josh Puetz

Special Guest: Chris Arcand.

Episode 013: Babies at Work?!

00:15 Welcome, Leah Silber!

Leah is the CEO of Tilde Inc. She is also an organizer of EmberConf, RustConf and RailsConf, and Ember.js Core Team Member, a jQuery Core Team alum, author of Event Driven: How to Run Memorable Tech Conferences, and all around technophile.

01:08 KWu is Planning Her Son's 1st Birthday Party! + How Old Are They?

Don't let first birthday parties get out of hand. Not worth it. Get a cake. Let the kid smash. Also, please stop referring to your child's age in months when they turn 2.

04:05 Babies at Work: It’s Weird that it’s Weird

In August 2017, Leah wrote this blog post and it was super well received. In the blog post, she talks about a lot of the objections and concern she had at first that turned out to be unfounded. It turns out, bringing her baby to work changed the mood and culture of Tilde in a positive way -- even among self-proclaimed "non-baby people".

09:26 What About The Fussy Days?

• Working from home can be an option especially on days like vaccination days.
• Having a quiet area like a conference room or an empty office gets people through short fussy spells.
• If that doesn't work, going home is encouraged.
• Leah says that having the babies at work made actually for a much happier baby!

17:56 Nursing

• Up to the mom! Breastfeeding in public is acceptable, and there are dedicated nursing rooms/spaces to keep it legal (and more private)
• It becomes normalized! People don't even notice
  • Squatty Potty

23:53 Culture From The Core

• Stating expectations for parents/non-parents during the interview process
• Scaling as children age
• Bring the Nanny to work too!
• Older children must be up to date on vaccinations
• Becomes a routine

32:43 Does Company Size Matter?

• Just because there are 50 people in a company does not mean that the volume of babies is going to go up
• Setting a limit is an option: luck of the draw
• The bigger the company, the more space non-baby people have to stay away from the babies

35:02 Program Evolution

• Effects on Nannies
• Beneficial for dads too!

42:37 Avoiding Judgement

• Turns out, people (who aren't the child's parents) are more helpful than judgemental
• Pets are not babies...no, your dog can not come to work because my baby is here

48:31 Genius / Fail Moments

• KWu: Water coming out of the tub faucet is fascinating and acts as a baby magnet to draw them to the bathroom for a bath! (#Genius)
• Allison: Creating an insane schedule of hodgepodge childcare that involves massive amounts of logistics. (#Fail)
• Leah: Shoutout to the parents who think their kids will never walk. Her son started walking at 18 months! (#Genius)

Follow & Support

Please follow us @parentdrivendev on Twitter or email us at panel@parentdrivendevelopment.com. Our website is at ParentDrivenDevelopment.com.
We are listener supported. Please consider Supporting us via Patreon and gaining access to our our kind Slack Community.

Panel

Allison McMillan
Katherine Wu

Special Guest: Leah Silber.

Episode 008: Remote working with kids

00:37 Who all works remotely?

02:30 Working remotely with kids at home

Lifestyle choice
Nursing and alternate schedules
Spouses working from home as well

06:00 Working remotely before and after having a child

The difference between working from home with a spouse also working from home vs. not
Hard starts and stops to your day

10:00 JC forgets pickup

11:00 Dealing with interruptions

This classic example
Interruptions from your spouse vs. the kid(s)

15:00 Allison joins

15:45 Do companies who accept remote work also do better at understanding flexible schedules and work/life balance?

Tyranny of the green dot on Slack
What are the expectations of being remote?
Do we feel guilty about doing "life" or kid stuff during the work day?

19:53 Being a remote worker vs. being on a distributed team

Understanding working hours
Helping colleagues be more purposeful about working hours and communication

23:00 Shared calendars and communicating hours to your team

slack notifications and snoozing
google calendar work hours
basecamp Tools

24:00 Based on Cate's blog post Going in to an office established a lot of defaults for a team and working remotely it helps to be more explicit

25:30 Being in the office is nice because you get to talk to other adults. How do you deal with isolation?

Going to stores
Being in the coffee shop
Parenting groups and daycares
Playdates with other kids
The difficulty of coworking and coffee shop working while pumping
Leads to great isolation which is pretty difficult
Rant about when people tell you to be social while pumping (spoiler: it's not that easy!!)

31:00 Being home instead of going out as a matter of priorities

What do you want to have time for?

33:00 Listener Question!! Our first!! It is so exciting!!!

When is the right time to introduce screens to your child and how did you do it?

Allison introduced games first, mostly on flights. When Allison introduced tv shows, she tried to make it educational like Daniel Tiger, PBS shows, etc.
Talking to your child about what they watched and what they learned
KWu thinks what screen time and for what purpose. And introduce something, see the effect and make changes from there.
JC said as you have more kids, it's harder to control media and screen time. Having structure around things is very important.
Josh remembers lots of research but can't remember when they introduced screens
Andy says do it collectively and sparingly
KWu says that technology and watching things can be used as bonding time and can focus on artistic or creative endeavors as opposed to isolating
JC talks about use of imagination using programs like minecraft.

45:00 Genius / Fail moments

JC - my daughter has been playing softball and she looked at pictures of herself batting and fixed an issue! She was resilient and didn't get discouraged. #Genius
Allison - Everything is a genius and fail right now. My son's preschool teacher told me that he's doing fantastic #Genius
Josh - my daughter has guinea pigs named Ana and Elsa and one of them fell which led to a visit to the vet. There they found out Ana and Elsa are male which led to a great discussion about gender and what gender means. #Genius
KWu - Marriage win! We started watching the Americans together and it is so nice to be doing something together and have something not household related to talk about. #Genius
Andy - After a difficult day, my daughter wrote "I love you daddy, even when you're grumpy" #Genius? or #Fail?

53:00 Contact Us!

Tell us what you're learning!

Follow & Support

Please follow us @parentdrivendev on Twitter or email us at panel@parentdrivendevelopment.com. Our website is at ParentDrivenDevelopment.com
Support us via Patreon and get access to our our Slack Community.

Panel:

Josh Puetz
Allison McMillan
JC Avena
KWu
Andy Croll

Additional links:

• 100 Remote Work Stats, Quotes, and Statistics
• https://medium.com/@benthompson/breaking-down-the-father-on-bbc-being-interrupted-by-his-children-9840cdc8857b
• https://youtu.be/-Ojvk-4IcOE