My wife and I are going through this right now. My wife has a senior director position in a multi-billion dollar financial company, and I am a programmer at a startup. We just had a child several months ago, and it's been very hard trying to balance work and life. It's actually the hardest thing we've both had to do in our lives.
Her job is a minimum of 60-hrs per week, but luckily I'm able to limit my work to 40-hrs per week, my company has been incredibly supportive. But truth-be-told my productivity has been affected by at least 50% over these past few months, especially after my wife and I both went back to work. There's been a lot of guilt from both our ends, due to how much slips through the crack both at work and at home because of trying to raise our kid as best as we can.
The key, I hope, is to keep focused as a team, meaning we try to pick each other's slack with no resentment. It's tough living and raising a family in Silicon Valley, due to the demands of work, and given how expensive things like houses in decent areas are.
After working the first few months and taking days/weeks off whenever I wanted to, I took an entire month off with full pay and no PTO days. They didn't even question it. If I need to take more time off on the order of months, it wouldn't be a problem. On top of that I had to push out some deadlines by a couple of months. That's incredibly supportive in my book.
Hehheh you American people are crazy. 60 hours, 40 hours... I work three days per week, my wife two. I get to enjoy taking care of my baby girl for a full two days every week while the wife works. The weeks fly by.
Nearly identical situation, newborn kid. I'm at a place now where working 40 hours a week is not unusual or looked down upon. It's still a successful web company. I ended up here having worked anywhere from 50-100 hour weeks in academia, by following the "deathbed principle:" when deciding whether to do X, imagine yourself on your deathbed, and decide if you would wish you had done X or more of X. It puts things nicely in perspective. I now sleep well at night (well, kid permitting) and don't feel bad about not killing myself with work. There are certainly coworkers who work more hours, and no doubt they will get better bonuses/promotions but that's fine by me.
Her job is a minimum of 60-hrs per week, but luckily I'm able to limit my work to 40-hrs per week, my company has been incredibly supportive. But truth-be-told my productivity has been affected by at least 50% over these past few months, especially after my wife and I both went back to work. There's been a lot of guilt from both our ends, due to how much slips through the crack both at work and at home because of trying to raise our kid as best as we can.
The key, I hope, is to keep focused as a team, meaning we try to pick each other's slack with no resentment. It's tough living and raising a family in Silicon Valley, due to the demands of work, and given how expensive things like houses in decent areas are.