A Little Help Needed From My Fellow Working Moms...

Discussion in 'Working Women' started by naturalkind, Apr 27, 2017.

  1. naturalkind

    naturalkind Senior IL'ite

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    Your reply made me feel so good.
    I always doubt my ability to the level sometimes I wonder why did they hire me! :(
    I am going to be hardworking and sincere in what I do.
    Most of the time my guilt trip about my daughter just distracts me from work. Please tell me it gets easier and my daughter will not grow up hating me from putting her in daycare every day.
     
  2. Emarald

    Emarald Silver IL'ite

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    Op You are trying your best and working hard. No your daughter will never hate you. She will not even remember anything about daycare or you leaving her. She will turn out to be smart by interacting with other kids and learn so much. At home she will do mostly watching tv or playing video games. She will soon become independent. Don't feel guilty at all. Be strong and confident. Not everyone get opportunity like you. Life is all about choices. You choose whatever is best. Kids grow fast and appreciate working mom more. They will have their own world soon. At this age you can handle both. Relax your mind and focus on important things. Learn in office hours as much as you can. We all go through same phases.
     
  3. Nuzhath

    Nuzhath Silver IL'ite

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    Hi,

    Roughly, here are my inputs based on my experience

    - First of all, I would advise against going on a guilt trip where your daughter is concerned. If the baby has to be woken up at 6AM - so be it. She will get used to it slowly. Start by waking her up around 10 mins earlier. Also, dont allow the child to have a fixed bed time habit - there should be a range. You cant always devote your time to her at exactly the same time everyday.

    - Since you are in the US - find out the typical breakfast a US kid has. If they get milk, egg, a slice of bread/dosa and some dry fruits- it should be fine. You can never compensate for what they miss out during lunch. Trust the day care people to feed her well.

    Learn to take power naps - even a 10 minute nap will help. It will help you feel fresh.

    Keep some study material around the house. Study in parts when you are spending time with her. The baby will not know the difference that you are smiling at her but thinking of a java function.

    You will have a burn out if you follow what you are doing presently - slicing your time 'nicely' -a working mom's life is 24*7. You cant run it like in school - especially if you are in the IT industry with crazy deadlines and bug fixes.

    Coming to the issue about your senior colleague. Team work is almost mandatory in IT. Check with your manager if you can take up a small project that does not call for his expertise. Develop a new skill that will accelerate your product's quality. Quality is the key. Take a step back. See what kind of help you require. Document the processes - the design docs, QA docs, bugs. Generate reports to assess the gaps. See if you can provide a solution.
    Build an identity slowly for yourself, so that even the consultant will take notice and will not feel threatened. If he is dispensable, he will be fired. Your manager needs a backup in case the consultant leaves. So, it is all team work. Dont get overwhelmed with his 10 years of experience.
    I think you are getting stressed unnecessarily. The internet has solutions for every technical issue. What help do you really want from him? Make a list of these items, prioritize it and you will realise that you have lesser worries. If you provide a list of items required for you to complete a task, your manager will ensure you get that help. Escalate with facts and figures.

    Schedule calls with your India team around your kid's bedtime. Take those power naps on the day you have the call. Discuss with them if it helps.

    I think your's is a simple issue that will turn into an unhealthy serious one - if you dont make granular changes in your work - life balance.

    Happy parenting and good luck with your career!

    Regards,
    Shereen
     
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  4. armummy

    armummy Platinum IL'ite

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    At home front - enlist your husband help to give you more time to study for the work .

    I think you already got good suggestions on home front ..

    9 months is a long time for anyone to find a foothold on the project. Why do you need a senior person to give knowledge , are you new to technology , did you get some I initial overview of the project. Consultants won't help , their knowledge is key for them to retain the jobs . So it is you who need to put time to learn stuff on your own using net or going through application or documentation .

    After 9 months it is difficult to convince anyone that you still need to learn from senior team member .

    Think that the person left the job and you are alone here and try to do it by yourself or from offshore .

    Offshore also will not be happy if they have to teach you constantly , they can very well say that they can fill the position at onsite if they have to teach the onsite person .

    Try to see what are your weak areas , if this is new technology , take a course, almost every system has a test or development instance , use that and learn the functionality .
     
  5. naturalkind

    naturalkind Senior IL'ite

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    Thank you nuzhath and armummy for giving me a kick in my back, I needed it. And I too agree I should be a fully functional employee by 9 months in the project.
    What I seek from the senior is business knowledge and whom to contact since this is such a distributed work system and all have huge egos. For example there is a prod issue and XYZ is happening now I need to make an inquiry from ABC group due to dependency in XYZ issue, what help I need from senior generally is what is the common email id for the ABC group or may be instead of directly mailing them I see a table may be querying that table will help me resolve the issue but I don't know the schema name of that table to query (And there is no documentation!!) he will ignore all my messages or calls! And I can't wait for the India team to come back online at their day time.
    As I go I am creating my own documentation hope that helps me in the future.
    But I am going to do well and not crib all the India team and this senior guy are friends for a long time and I know they ridicule me for my helplessness but I want to be and going to very tough. No one gets killed by hard work.
    I know thousands will kill to be in my position and I am going to show them I am worth it!
     
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  6. armummy

    armummy Platinum IL'ite

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    For the email ids , I think you can send out an email to offshore to provide you a consolidate email and contact groups for this project as you don't see it anywhere in the documentation and will help speed up the resolution.

    Ask to be included in the resultion emails from offshore as well as senior person.


    Go through old tickets by your own ask for resolution details from offshore saying you would like to create documentation or keep track of issues and look for long term.

    Rest I think you need to read code to find what code does and then you will be independent.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 22, 2017

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