[slics]

As a developer and a parent with young kids, it is nearly laughable at the amount of stress one deals with everyday.

Wake up at 5:30, get all things ready for kids, wake up kids, get their breakfast ready, check my (work phone - who decided work phones are a good idea).

Take kids to school, get back to work, meetings and more meetings ( countless meetings are a waste of time but they still have them)

Time for lunch, hell no time, skip lunch, I got to finish implementing this thought. Chat pops up, someone is asking for help, stop what you doing, help them, back at your thought, what thought???

Ah time to pick up kids, rush to school, look left and right for cops while you going fast. Pick the kids, go home, work with the kids homework (I am going through elementary again and again and again ….)

Time for dinner, cook dinner, kids need to get ready for sleep and finally I can get back to my unfinished thought.

Oh man, it’s late, I need to get to bed, to get ready for tomorrow.

Being single and having that level of anxiety and stress, multiply that times 10 with kids. That gives you an idea what life as a developer with little children is.

It is called the “hamster wheel syndrome”. You think you are getting where you want to get, just to find out that you are stuck in the same place where you started but a hell a lot of more stress and anxiety.

1- taking breaks is important, but can’t seem to take them

2- we don’t do it enough as we don’t feel as we have time

3- life is moving to fast (stupid Covid) to stop and do things that matter in life (family and friends)

4- If we are not here one day, I promise no one from work will miss you past one week. Family and real friends will remember you forever.

Life is short, cherish it. (Coming from a guy that never stops working)

[bertr4nd]

Are you me? This is precisely what my life feels like. Honestly, one kid was actually manageable; two sort of hit the breaking point (it didn’t help that my work went to hell at the same time), but then we had twins and life now feels basically untenable with both of us working.

I love my kids profoundly, and I think in the long run I will be happier than if I’d not had them and focused on work instead (work tends not to care about you after you leave. Maybe if you’re Steve Jobs or something). But in the moment, life is pretty stressful.

[scruple]

> Honestly, one kid was actually manageable; two sort of hit the breaking point (it didn’t help that my work went to hell at the same time), but then we had twins and life now feels basically untenable with both of us working.

We have 3 kids, 3 years and under. Our twins are 3 and we have a 1 year old. I'm a Staff Software Engineer and my wife is a Senior Software Engineer II.

I feel like I'm perpetually treading water. There is a tug of war happening between my personal life and my professional life and it's frankly obscene. The professional life will lose if push comes to shove, and that will actively damage my employer, but my management team doesn't seem to give a shit.

I've become very Peter from Office Space about it all: I just don't care. When I feel my work-anxiety levels rising, I let it all out with a heavy sigh and stop caring. Work is work. I get my work done, but I prioritize higher quality and bug-free as much as possible. If work doesn't like this (and they don't, they really just want me to blast through my tasks -- despite the fact that some of them are extremely ambiguous at my level, things like digging through code no one has touched in 8 years to sort out performance problems; "So, you'll have that done by Thursday, right?") then that's their problem to deal with.

[eggsmediumrare]

I have a solution for you: be less productive. Seriously. Ramp down slowly so no one noticed, but just stop caring how much you get done. It doesn't matter. Or at least it doesn't matter nearly as much as you or your kids.

[bigDinosaur]

I've come to think that breaks are actually a necessity, just like sleep. Yes, you can compromise for a while but it will catch up to you. With young children you're basically trying to outlast the sleep deprivation but it cannot go on indefinitely (fortunately children grow up). I know it's easy to say, but I truly believe the vast majority of people require a breaks or will inevitably suffer extremely negative consequences.

Not that that will reduce your anxiety but if burnout hits you it's genuinely devastating.

[joshxyz]

how the hell do you manage to survive that, being a dev and being a parent is separately challeging good lord.