About this Episode

Parent Driven Development

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)