
The Jobs That Offer Great Work-Life Balance (and Some That Don't) - m-i-l
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-20/the-jobs-that-offer-great-work-life-balance-and-some-that-don-t-
======
geebee
It is important to distinguish between job flexibility and what I call
_career_ flexibility. As a software developer, I can often work from home, and
I can go get a cup of coffee more or less whenever I please. However, what
happens if you want to scale back or leave the field for a few years? How does
that affect your ability to get back into it?

Among my family and friends are a radiologist, emergency room physician, nurse
anesthetist, and a (multiple) registered nurses. This is just my own
observation, but they appear to have much greater options to scale back on
work for a half decade while they have kids than the software developers I
know, without severely compromising their career path when they re-enter full
time at a later date. And all these career paths pay, at the median _in San
Francisco_ , more than the median for a software developer in San Francisco.

With the exception of radiology, telecommuting, which may people consider to
be a critical element of a "flexible" job, is not a big part of most health
care jobs. However, jobs like registered nurse, pharmacist, nurse anesthetist,
and emergency room physician, may offer more flexibility where it counts most,
especially to people who want to pursue meaningful careers but recognize that
a period of life, probably when they have small children at home, will require
scaling back for an extended period.

~~~
grecy
> _As a software developer, I can often work from home, and I can go get a cup
> of coffee more or less whenever I please. However, what happens if you want
> to scale back or leave the field for a few years? How does that affect your
> ability to get back into it?_

I'm a Software Engineer and I've taken major breaks.

After a year working at the DoD, I spent three years dong whatever I wanted /
snowboard instructor / kayak guide, etc.

Then I got a job as a Software Dev for 2 years, no problem at all, got the
first job I interviewed for.

Then I took two years off to drive Alaska->Argentina, and generally do
whatever I wanted.

After that I again got the first Software Dev job I applied for, and did that
for 4 years. Now I'm off again to drive around Africa for at least 2 years.

Granted, I have not "climbed the ladder" like my university friends who have
been working all of those years, but I've had absolutely no problem dropping
in and out when I please.

~~~
vicda
I would imagine this gets harder as you age, get more set in your ways, the
higher on the career ladder you've climbed, and/or as your required salary
increases.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I think its less about age and more about financial independence; the more
monthly obligations you have, and total debt, the harder it is to be flexible
in your career choices.

Have a low personal burn rate, save at least 20-50% of your income, and don't
live in places with exorbitant living costs (SF, London, NY), and you too can
be the master of your destiny.

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guava
From my experience it seems like in many technical roles the work-life balance
can be as good as you can afford to make it. There is an obvious trade-off
between career development and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

~~~
Retric
Being willing to say no, is also a huge part of this. The sad thing is always
saying "yes" often results in both a worse product and spending your life in
the office.

~~~
wmeredith
I've also found that it can also damage your career. Being a yes-man does not
gain you respect or the time to do well on what you take on. Not to be
construed as "being difficult to work with is a good career move", it's just
worth noting that saying no at the right time can be just as good a move as
saying yes at the right time.

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k__
For me it helped to switch from on-site to remote.

People tell me "what" they want and "when" they need it and I can decide "how"
I get it done.

I had to switch from "8h office/online a day" to "being availble for questions
at reasonable hours", because no one sees or cares when I'm online.

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canjobear
What's the difference between "Data Scientist" and "Data Analyst" on their
list?

~~~
hudibras
A data scientist is a statistician who lives in San Francisco.

[https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/428914681911070720](https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/428914681911070720)

~~~
willis77
"A data scientist is a person who is worse at statistics than a statistician
and worse at software engineering than a software engineer."

\- Me (Data Scientist)

~~~
geomark
I think that's a pretty good definition. To define it for myself I took the
Data Science Specialization from Coursera
[https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhudatascience](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhudatascience).
There's a fair amount of stats and programming involved.

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at-fates-hands
It's interesting that front-end developers rate so high. Having been in FED
for a while, I can say it totally varies from company to company.

I've worked at dev shops that were virtual sweat shops and had insane goals
for each month. This caused you to work 11-13 hour days to hit your goals,
less you get put on a PIP (performance improvement plan).

Others shops went to great lengths to give developers what I thought to be far
too much reign to do what they pleased. Come in at noon and work till 10pm?
Sure. Take two hour lunches? No problem. Sure the work got done _eventually_
but the atmosphere was super lax with little or no oversight.

~~~
bsilvereagle
> Sure the work got done eventually but the atmosphere was super lax with
> little or no oversight.

What's the problem with this? If the work is getting done, and meets quality
standards, do all employees need oversight? Does a lax work environment
immediately imply that the work done there is poor?

~~~
at-fates-hands
Not necessarily, but if your developers and QA and PM's are all on different
schedules, it can lead to some major headaches.

I worked at a place where devs would regularly come in around noon or later.
Code wouldn't get checked in and then the QA people were complaining they
couldn't test code and the PM's couldn't tell the "business" stuff was ready
to look at.

Likewise, if the QA people are coming in late and the dev is waiting for stuff
to be checked off so he can tell the PM to send the app for review, it can
screw delivery up.

Is the work done poorly? No, but there were headaches when everybody was on
their own schedules.

~~~
wcummings
Noon to 8 covers most of the core working hours, I've never seen this cause
problems.

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7Figures2Commas
> To find positions where work-life balance consistently comes up as a plus,
> Glassdoor looked at its company reviews. Users who review a company can also
> rate several workplace attributes of their job, including work-life balance,
> on a scale of 1-5. To make Glassdoor's list, a job title had to have been
> rated by at least 75 people with that position at two or more companies, and
> 15 percent of reviews for the job title had to cite work-life balance as a
> pro.

This seems like an awfully tenuous way of assessing work-life balance.

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paulojreis
It seems that a correlation exists between work-life balance and the
"hypeness"/"buzzwordiness" of a job/position held. Which is, indeed, very sad.

~~~
at-fates-hands
You also have to understand the data was culled from Glassdoor and the people
leaving reviews there. I would think to some degree you have to take the data
they got with a grain of salt.

~~~
_xander
Especially because access to their site requires entering information about a
recent job or interview. There's very little incentive to do this thoroughly
or accurately.

------
galfarragem
How would you translate work-life balance to an equation?

WLB = being suitable for the role + sallary + freetime + company friendliness

~~~
codingdave
I wouldn't.

For me, work-life balance is not a numbers game - it is a question of whether
or not I can step away from work to do activities with my family, pursue
hobbies or personal projects,etc. If I get sick, does my boss say, "Get better
fast and get back here.", or does he say, "Get better, and let us know when
you are ready to come back." If I take an afternoon off to go to my daughter's
track meet, is that frowned upon, or does my team say, "Great, let us know how
she did!"

If the company truly cares only about getting the work done, and truly lets
you live your life as long as the work is getting done, then you have balance.

~~~
stegosaurus
Indeed.

Fundamentally it's about trust and respect.

If my boss, or my team, feels they need to track my time, my output on a day
to day basis, whether I was actually ill when I took sick pay, something is
wrong.

That same team has to trust, to some extent, that I respect my work, that I
produce good output, that I don't cut corners, that I'll be in the next day
and not wander off into the horizon.

The two seem inconsistent to me. I'd far rather employ someone who isn't a
perfect clean shaven 9-5, than someone who's in first, out last, but pumps out
half baked solutions (or worse still, actively includes backdoors or similar).

I firmly believe that flexibility in work is almost always the way to go. Even
for shift patterns, a large enough company should be able to find cover if
someone can't (or simply doesn't want to) turn up on Wednesday.

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ycosynot
This is an ad-conspiracy to fill the market with data experts, and reduce
their salaries. I swear. We're subservient to this oligarchic cartel. (Praised
be Marx.)

Vade retro Bloombergas. Happiness is doomed to decrease. It's the consequence
of private property... I know what you think: "please no".

~~~
xacaxulu
I sometimes think (although less conspiratorially) that the high number of Dev
bootcamps teaching Rails must definitely drive down salaries. Best to focus on
'the hard stuff' to stay relevant.

