How do you balance parenting with your career?

My perspective here is shaped by two things: One, my kids are a little older than yours (so I've seen a little further ahead), and the experience to have changed up my career not through promotions but through upskilling.

Prioritize spending time with your kids. You already know that you will never get that time back, but what you don't realize is how much you'll value in retrospect having spent that time.

Career advancement doesn't happen because you put in 20% more hours. It just doesn't. No one appreciates you more because of doing 'more of the same'. In each of the jobs I've had, I look back, and some of my former colleagues are doing pretty much the same thing for a little bit more money. Some get promoted, not everyone. MUCH WORSE is, in having spent all this time doing 'the job', windows have closed to do anything else.

Real leaps happen when you're able to be X but then suddenly also Y. This means upskilling. Finishing your regular tasks a little early means nothing; automating your tasks means a radically different state.

The great thing is, there is more time than you think. People think their careers are set by the time they hit their late 30s. But for many others, that's when things get exciting.

We got 2 kids, 6 and 2. We both work full-time. Our priorities are kids first and then career. So we have made decisions that are not maximizing our earnings potential like taking a WFH job over higher paying positions.

We are okay with it for now. As someone who eventually wants to do my own thing, I’m not too worried about climbing corporate ladder. Probably when kids are older and need us less, I will re-start working on my side projects. In the meantime, I’m improving my technical and leadership skills.

I do want them to pursue their dreams though and if I don’t pursue mine, then it would be pretty hypocritical of me. So I think we should set an example for them with our actions. Just need to take care of responsibilities before chasing big dreams.

One thing, kids are hard but they teach you things that will help you in career. In my younger years, I was impatient with others, had hard time being assertive, didn’t know how to work with distractions in background. Now kids have taught me all these skills which let me be better teammate and mentor.

When my kids were that age I just did a ton of work in the middle of the night. Switched to electric piano/violin/guitar over headphones so family wouldn’t be bothered by that either

Well, the most important thing is to identify which is your priority, and it sounds like you've already achieved that, and I would say, landed on the correct answer.

Everything else kind of flows from there really.

of course it will impact your careers. you're partaking in a privilege above your class so it will have hefty costs to keep society in an equilibrium.

you should reflect why being away for the entire day is not already seen as the heavy cost, but just not doing overtime is now a privilege to few. but instead you have internalized the oppression and feel good just by not being crushed under two jobs or something more time consuming than "just" full time jobs for both parents.

Similar situation here. I don’t know about your locale/CoL but to me you seem to have your priorities right, i.e. family before career. Keep up the good work!

Parenting definitely impacted my career and cost me a job that doubles the pay and leads me to a better career path.

I don't like it but I don't have much choice.

How can you work part time and be ambitious in your career?

You chose to have 3 kids. About 2x the average so yeah it will impact your technical career because it’s a huge time sink. Your coworkers will wonder if you are some sort of wired religious breeder but you won’t have time to hang out with them anyway. That being said managers like the fact that you are now a slave to the salary and entirely dependent on continued employment so they may push you up the corporate leadership chain because they know you will tow the company line.