Lend Me Your Ears

A friend from work sent me a long message yesterday on Slack to give me an update about all things. Even though we’ve known each other for maybe two years now, there are still things about his life that I don’t quite know well enough. That is not to say that I don’t care, or that he doesn’t trust me with personal things — it’s just a normal part of having friends who are also our teammates. In this specific case, this person used to report to me, so I guess the whole manager-versus-associate relationship may have also played a role. He’s also very quiet and keeps his personal life to himself, but has slowly shared some things with me and our teammates.

Just the other day, for example, we learned that he has a twin brother, and when he posted a picture of the two of them going to a concert, my reaction was the same as everyone else’s: he had used AI to generate that image. Yesterday’s message contained a lot of personal things related to where his kids were in their lives, as well as himself. I was quite touched that he trusted me enough to share them, so I decided to return the favor by sharing a more detailed rundown of what’s going on at our household. The fact that it also serves as a written-down reminder for myself that I can read in the future is a nice touch too. Here’s what I wrote to him:

Our 23-year-old graduated from college about two years ago but is still seeking her path. She’s had a variety of smaller jobs here and there as a receptionist, but she learned soon enough that customer service is not for her. This apple didn’t fall too far from this tree. She spent a month this summer in Scotland taking a class on medieval history and working there, because she’s been really into mythology and history, and she thought that maybe this would lead up to something… but it didn’t. She also paid for most of her expenses, but it wasn’t an amount as impressive as your middle son’s achievement (wow!), so we helped her out with personal expenses, etc.

She’s had this job for a while now where every two weeks she works crazy hours for 2-3 days taking photos for a company that photographs big events, and then handles their Instagram account. This gives her a lot of time to read, take yoga classes, and ponder what’s next for her. She’s wicked smart, creative, and in my opinion should be working in the film industry. But I know better than to try to influence too much what she should do, so I stay available for talks and advice, and mostly do my best to cheer her on from the sidelines.

Our 19-year-old just started her second year of college, most classes now being online with the exception of a Biology class (both lecture and lab, which amounts to about 4 1/2 hours) on Saturdays. She doesn’t like driving on the highway, so I drop her off and pick her up at campus, which is only a 15-minute drive each way. After she graduated from high school, she had to make a very hard decision: she wanted to go to the local school, the University of North Carolina (UNC) in Chapel Hill — that’s where we live — but she didn’t get accepted into their undergraduate program. She did get accepted to other good schools around the area — side note: compared to my eldest daughter, she did NOT want to go to a school in another state, probably because she wanted to stay closer to her boyfriend, though I prefer to think that she wanted to stay closer to home — but she was disheartened that she couldn’t go to UNC. A lot of her friends got accepted to name schools and were all flaunting it on social media, and I believe that pressure didn’t help her make a decision.

Now here comes the interesting part of this story: just before our third daughter was born, my wife went back to school to finish her undergraduate studies, and she chose the local community college, mostly because it’s a much cheaper alternative than a name college. It also, unfortunately, carries a negative connotation that younger kids believe implies that if you’re going to a community college, you’re not good enough to get into a regular 4-year college. There are some real disadvantages too — being only a 2-year experience, you can only earn what’s called an Associate degree, and if you still want a Bachelor’s degree when you’re done, you have to enroll again at a 4-year college to complete the remaining courses. On the flip side, it is much easier, then, to get accepted as a transfer student, and this is the path my wife took to earn her Bachelor’s degree in Education at UNC. So we had a long, several-day discussion with our 19-year-old to help her decide where she’d go to school.

Those were not easy conversations, and you could feel her frustration, and sometimes anxiety, and even embarrassment for not being able to flaunt it like her friends about where she was going. In the end, good sense prevailed, and she enrolled in the community college, and immediately after that, enrolled in a program that would increase her chances of transferring at the end of two years to UNC, as long as she keeps her grades up. Wouldn’t you know that at the end of her first year, she was accepted to UNC and will be able to transfer next fall (2027). This apple didn’t fall too far from the other tree.

Our 12-year-old just started 7th grade, and going in she knew that several of her best friends wouldn’t be coming back, as many either moved out of state or, in some cases, moved to their parents’ home country. There are many people who move to Chapel Hill to work at the university or the hospitals around the area, but most of those opportunities are tied to a 2-year contract, so it’s not uncommon for a family to uproot themselves after a couple of years here and move back “home.” She seems to have handled that quite well, and when I talk to her, she seems to be just fine with the friends who are still there.

She’s grown taller over the summer and, I dare say, a bit more mature too. I think the fact that she gets to hang out with her two older sisters, who lead their independent lives and care for her, has a lot to do with that. Most nights, when we go to our room to read and then sleep, my wife and I can hear the three of them in the living room having a great time together, laughing and talking — and if you didn’t know their age differences and all you had to go by was their voices, you’d think they were in the same age group. While they have their individual personalities and preferences, they seem to “speak” the same language, and sometimes my wife and I can’t follow their conversations or understand their references to something or someone they saw online.

She’s our remaining link to having a small child still dependent on us, but also the remaining link to that feeling that you’re still an important part of their lives. That’s not to say that we’re not important to our older daughters, but as they grow older, your role in their lives starts to take up a smaller part of their day-to-day. To say that I’m holding on to her for dear life while doing my best not to be too clingy would be the understatement of the year.

My wife, after about two solid years of working under other, more experienced teachers and being overlooked for an opportunity to become the main teacher for a classroom of her own, has finally gotten a chance. And even though she led a class for children with special educational needs—her specialty—for the second half of last year’s school calendar, this August is the first time she’s starting as the primary teacher from day one. She’s worked really hard to get to this position, and you can see how thrilled, but also scared, she is to embark on such a pivotal career chapter for her.

We talk about her day and her many challenges every day over coffee when she’s back home, and I do my best to be supportive and provide guidance without getting too managerial in the process. You might be surprised to hear me say that a lot of the challenges she faces are not too different from the challenges I’ve faced as a manager of Software Engineers. Every day brings a new adventure, and sometimes you can see that she’s building the plane while she’s flying it — which, again, is not too far off from what we do every day in software engineering, right?

This summer she decided she wanted to enroll and volunteer to be the teacher for children with special educational needs, so that she could get a little more practice before the first day of school. This also meant we had to change our plans for the summer, but we still managed to take a week off and go to the beach. As if this wasn’t enough, she’s also working on her master’s, which means that there are days during the week when she has to attend an online class for several hours, and she always has homework due and a quiz by Sunday. This is definitely going to require a lot of collaboration and coordination between us, but it’s good to see her working toward something she’s always wanted to do for quite some time.

Lastly, me. With my wife now back to a regular work schedule and our youngest back at school, I was able to re-prioritize the time I dedicate to my personal health. So I took a day to clean up my work schedule and shift things around, and now I’ve been able to carve out one hour to go to the gym every day, and another hour to grab lunch. This also required me to change my overall start and end times for the day, but since my wife is the first to leave home for work, and I’m up at 6 o’clock anyhow, it’s not like I have to do any additional work to start an hour earlier every day. I also take our youngest to school, and then our eldest picks her up in the afternoon. Once the chaotic early days of the school year calm down and the buses become more reliable, she’ll probably start taking the bus back home in the afternoon instead. There’s never been a dull moment at work, as you know, and I’m doing the best I can to adjust and roll with the punches.

One positive change I’ve noticed is that I’ve spent much more time closer to the codebase, doing the maintenance-specific work required to keep the lights on for a project. It feels good to have moments during my day when I can be, or feel like, an individual contributor, instead of being stuck in meetings all day and just doing managerial work. In the age of AI, and being responsible for a product related to delivering AI-specific functionality, we find ourselves constantly fighting a battle against vulnerabilities and security issues, as well as working on the pipelines and mechanisms to facilitate the quick release of software. This isn’t too far off from my personal experience as an individual contributor back in the day, so I feel right at home, and I have a solid, smaller team to work with. I still feel that I’m delivering value without compromising all the other tasks I have to perform as a manager.

The world in general, and the economy, look kind of scary, and I think it would be easier to fall into a perpetual death spiral of despair if I let myself think about it too much — so instead, I’ve been reading, writing, and exercising, and I think that’s helping a lot with my mental health. I’ve also just recently changed my reporting structure, and I think I’m still enjoying the honeymoon phase with my new manager, who seems to be very different from everyone I’ve reported to over the last five years.

At my current age, I’ve also been thinking a lot about what I want to do when I reach 55. For a while, I thought I wanted to retire, but now I can tell you that’s not necessarily what I want to do. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to be able to just kick back and enjoy life, and maybe finish up writing some of the books I started. But deep down I know I still have some gas left in the tank, and I don’t think my brain would let me stay quiet for too long. I think the real plan will solidify in the next year or two, but I have an inkling it will still be related to working — hopefully toward a bigger, more impactful goal that’s more aligned with my personal values. Delivering software is something I’ve done for quite some time, and while I did get a lot of enjoyment from this kind of work, I feel I’m at a point in my life where I need something much bigger than that. Time will tell.

Thank you for lending me your ears :)

Written between meetings, edited between cups of coffee.

Check out some of my notes: