2002 Story Set
April 10, 2002
And Telecommute As Much As You're Allowed!In the first place, I have no daughters. And in the second, I am a single parent with two sons. And last but not least, I have worked full time since June 1964 until last month, March 2002, when the tech downturn succeeded to putting me on the streets for the first time in my long career. Of course it did, for the women are the first to go when the economy turns down. The prevailing attitude is and has always been that men need their jobs to support their families. An archaic concept that is very present in today's workplace.So this month, I cannot take anyone to work, since I am unemployed. But do not shed a tear for me as I have other plans and many things yet to do. I have a backlog of projects and the resources to spend at least 12 if not 18 months to do them. This corresponds with how long they project that this downturn will continue and the job market for talents like mine to be back in demand. I provide content development and technical training. Absurd you say? For a woman to be in that profession? I have been in that profession since 1964, when I wrote my first technical article, since 1971, when I taught my first college class and since 1978, when I built and ran my own customer education department for a prominent high-tech firm. My first son was born prematurely in 1976. I was working full-time then doing applications software and also teaching part-time at a local college. I was back in part time teaching in 8 weeks and back at my full time job in 3 months. Workman's compensation for a working mother was not established. My husband did not earn enough to pay any bills but his own. He also failed as a baby-sitter. The marriage was short-lived. An immigrant family, a Chinese couple and their extended family from Vietnam cared for my son. They provided excellent care until they had their English down and moved on to more professional occupations. I then sought and found in-home caregivers. Until I took the job in 1978 in Northern California. After a stint with potty training, he moved on to a day-care school facility. Prior to day care, when my son was ill, he was well taken care of and I did not need to worry. Doctor's visits were evening time at Kaiser. I was adept at spotting the ear infections. With day-care, an ill child must be kept home because you have 30-60 kids exposed rather than 2-3. Instead, my son went to work with me. I had an office. I did course creation on a computer. My son came in with his stroller, blanket, medication and pillow. I changed him at coffee breaks. I fed him lunch at lunchtime. He napped under the table while I typed. I turned the lights down low since I was working on a screen. I was lucky. He managed not to get sick when I was in the classroom. The Vice-President I worked for would look in on occasion and just stare at me. I never asked. My son never made a fuss. Later, I had my own building equipped with a 10-foot wide hallway, classrooms and offices. My son ran his three-wheeler up and down the hallways on weekends when I would go in to clean up my office after teaching all week. He played on computers. He was four. He had no idea what he was doing yet, he just knew the Mommy typed at them because I had one at home. With baby number two, I moved to Massachusetts and tried day care. Disaster. I hated it. I lived 1 mile from the office and 7 miles from the day care center, where I go at lunchtime to breast-feed my son. A sick child meant a day at home since the company was military-secured. The company wired me up with a remote VAX terminal so I could work at home on those days. You are looking at 1982, and telecommuting, before it was a buzzword. I did good work. I got the job perk. I then switched to an Au Par. That worked fairly well until I switched back to California. She did not transplant well. After a scary incident, I was back to in-home care with caregivers that took children into their homes. I was stuck with that until diapers were done with and both boys went to daycare. The house was up the hill from the day care center that was a block away from the elementary school. My older son was in that school and joined his brother after school. I dropped them off in the morning and raced to get them at night. I started writing down some of these escapades. Sick children again meant that they either went to work with me or I stayed at home. We had found out about allergies and tried shots on the younger one while the older preemie had turned five and his immune system had kicked in. I was fairly safe. No more constant ear infections. I again had a training facility. I worked full time and also taught part time for a nearby University. I taught the college classes on Saturdays and my children, both, went to work with me on those days. I taught the classes at the company, not at the campus. My children played on $100,000 workstations in the lab next door. The older one could do schematic capture while the younger one played space war with terminals and the delete key. My precocious children intimidated my students. Or maybe not. Grown men could not allow themselves to be one-upped by kids and so they got over their fear of the computer workstation faster. I think so. This was 1985 and engineering was moving to the computer, hardware engineers suddenly found themselves in front of a keyboard. A here-to-for tool for women, or, God forbid, software engineers. We have gotten over that these days with everyone from your doctor to your car mechanic running a computer in some form or the other. On non-teaching days, especially in the summer, I had empty offices near me and my children took over one. In the summer, once a week or twice, when I was not in the classroom, they would come to work with Mommy. I would wheel in a TV set and VCR, pop in tapes. They carried in toys, like Lego's. We walked to Macdonald's and back at lunchtime to curb their energy. We made hot chocolate at break time in the lunchroom. I also did this during Spring Break, and when the school switched to all-year with three weeks off every nine on. I never asked permission to take the kids to work. I did have to chase fellow engineers away from the movies. I also put my kids in day-time Cub Scout camp. First the one and then both as they grew. And later on, as many weeks of Boy Scout camp as I could arrange. I paid extra for computer classes, pottery classes, anything that would be of interest and different. Straight day care is lethal as children age and when children are active and bright. My older son learned to program, FORTRAN, COBOL, ALGOL and PL1. He did a science fair project on recursive algorithms. He started programming at 8 when I brought home the first Mac, an AppleIIe. He read Osborne. I also moved to working 16 hours a week (and later as much as 24) from home. This applied to non-teaching weeks. This was great since I was also a Cub Scout and then a Boy Scout leader as my kids headed for their Eagles. I could run errands in the day and type at night. This is called flex hours. Worked out really well. Of course, grateful employees actually do more work than is required when at home. There is no conventional "Stoop time". Working from home kept me out of reach of a touchy-feely company president and out of the parking lot after dark. As my kids phased out of daycare, working at home was vital. They came home from school and I arrived by 4PM, an hour behind them. In summer, they were now allowed to walk down to the Pool and Racquet club and swim until I came by to pick them up. They had lunch with Mommy since I could run home on occasion and fix and run back to work. I rented a lot of videos. I broke up the weeks with days at work and my time working at home. Boredom must be avoided. Patterns must be kept broken. My working at home continued to the last job I held, a job where my younger son, now in high school, occasionally dropped in for the day. Especially on Take Your Daughter to Work day, which my company had changed to Take Your Child to Work Day. My older son would drop by as well, for coffee or lunch. He is now working in the Programming Tools Group at CISCO where he is a "Programming God" (we call them senior programmers). He writes code and applications that make my head spin. His little temperature application has saved CISCO millions of dollars so far and bodes to be a feature product. It was something he "was fooling around with" so says the child that played on EWS workstations and learned to program at his mother's knee. When my younger son was diagnosed with Leukemia, my computer (complete with a computer table) went to the hospital with me. I went to work, checked in on meetings, and went to the hospital until 11PM daily. I went home, fed animals, showered and changed, grabbed a little sleep and started over again. I launched an eLearning course on Advanced Chip Synthesis from Stanford Pediatric Hospital while my son battled for his life. My boss got email at 6AM , around the clock to 2AM the next day. Flex hours again. When he came home, in a wheelchair, I worked part time from home. I launched a revised online class, wrote proposals and drafted a second eLearning class. I was just getting back to a fulltime schedule as he relearned to walk when the layoff occurred. My children have seen a computer in the house since their birth. They themselves have gone through several upgrades, the last being the Mac G4 Titanium laptops. I have six computers in the house at the moment, three are laptops. We h ad as many as three in the hospital room, complete with internet connections, while my son was held captive. (He was in the hospital for 10 months.) Computers have freed women from 9-5 shifts in the office. Zip disks allow work to come home to your machine. The internet allows you to stay connected. Working mothers need to do this in droves. Telecommuting needs to be embraced. You still need to show up at work - 40-60% of the time - for face to face meetings. But the difference to kids is immeasurable. Taking your kids to work, any gender, shows them that men and women work together in the workplace. They get to see other people at work, look at other jobs, and know where Mommy is when she is not with them. It removes the mystery. Being home and working shows them flexibility. And working at home shows them options. Men should do it too. And both my kids use computers. Both will end up self-sufficient. So when a woman with a husband asks me how I did it, complains how hard it is to raise kids these days, I have to shake my head. I raised two ADD high-intelligent hyperactive boys all by myself. Take my kids to work? Every chance I got. Unless you work in a fab area or around dangerous equipment, why not? Work at home? Reasonable telecommuting if great! Flex hours? You bettcha. Between these two, everyone benefits. Employers get steady work and more of it. Employers get less turnover and people who go the extra mile in return. Single mothers, non-single mothers (and fathers) can straddle the two big jobs of child care and working full time. Children feel they have more attention and quality time. Win-win. How can anyone complain? |
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