Family: The Myth of the Work-Life Balance

Whether a single coder like BJ or one with a spouse and a child like Will this week’s discussion focuses on the myth of the work-life balance. Work and life are intermingled and to imply a balance is to imply that one outweighs the other. A better description would be work-life separation and maintaining boundaries. This is accomplished by focusing on the quality of the time spent working and with family instead of the quantity. Throughout the episode Will and BJ share examples from their personal lives and lessons they have learned. Like a family they start with the relationship between significant others then move into the complexity that having children adds to that relationship. The episode closes out discussing the extremes of survival mode and how to survive it. Episode Breakdown * 11:42 – 17:20 The Myth of Work-Life Balance * 17:20 – 24:45 Don’t Focus on Time Spent * 24:45 – 33:44 Lessons Learned * 25:17 Significant Other Doesn’t Care About Coding * 28:47 Live in the Moment * 29:13 Be Conscientious of Your Attractiveness * 32:42 Take Some Time for Yourself * 33:45 – 41:55 Kids Add Complexity * 42:02 – 47:52 Surviving Survival Mode IoTease This week highlights a blog post by Nicole Kobie titled The Useless Side of the Internet of Things. In the post she discusses the IoT missteps and useless or rediculous devices that have been created. She also includes fake technologies designed to show the extremes of some areas IoT is reaching. It’s worth a read if just for a laugh at the jokes. Tricks of the Trade Many people are learning to code and wanting to become developers. Some will make it and some will not. The ones that have had the most success are the ones that pick one language and become an expert in that language as opposed to learning to write ‘Hello World’ in many different languages. Early in your career specialization is important because it leads to making more money and being sought after for that skill. Mid and senior level developers may want to look into learning more languages to learn new paradigms and extend the breadth of thier abilities. Generalization in coding leads to stability. Eventually you want to find a balance between being a specialist and a generalist. Links * Big Active Audience Teardown * Work-Life Balance Is a Myth * Programmers in the Family * The Significant Other of a Programmer * Family Coding Day *