About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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May 21, 2012
Recent discussions about money, higher-earners and expectations, external and internal to the relevant family members, has conveniently coincided with the point in time where we start talking about trajectories for the future.
I was fascinated, and disturbed to see, value judgments still being passed on choices like whether dads should stay at home with the kids. I completely understand having a strong personal preference one way or the other, but I’m not a fan of declaring one way right or wrong when harm isn’t being done in the pursuit of building and rearing a family.
I wandered into a parenting forum that disgusted and outraged me on the subject. One woman was stomping all over the thread (population: single dads/stay at home dads/dads being the primary caretakers for other reasons) telling all the posters that they were second class citizens, the second but worst choice, that they were harming their children by choosing to be home with them instead of leaving them with the women in their lives, because “women are naturally better at caring for children”. Her claim was that at childbirth, women are gifted with the skills and a level of cognition that men can never achieve, so men are bumbling incompetents apt to do more harm than good interfering with the women’s right to raise the children.
In this day and age, that was difficult to see.
When people are constantly decrying the deadbeat dad, the detached dad, the long-gone dad, how on earth does someone have the gall to decry those men who are choosing their children over their career or choosing to make their career work with their children as the first priority? And what about those situations where the mothers/females are not in the children’s lives because they simply cannot be or choose not to be?
I can tell you this much: giving birth to a child means you are capable of giving birth. I have never in my anecdotal experience of seeing dozens of cousins, first, second and third degree, and coworkers, have children, seen it confer any level of parenting expertise that outmatched anyone else’s if that person didn’t have a brain to begin with and resources to coach them. I say this from having learnt how to care for three children alone, a toddler and two infants, while their idiot mother swanned off for several hours to hang out. Because she figured a seven year old was appropriate childcare for her 3 kids under the age of three. And from watching more than one coworker smoke and drink her way through pregnancy and then wonder why her kid was on a respirator at birth.
So what makes the “choice” more or less “ok”? If it’s not a choice and one has to be forced into the situation due to unemployment, disability, or other circumstances beyond one’s control?
That was the situation my relatives found themselves in: the husband was becoming obsolete in his field due to rapid technology changes and the cost of staying up to date was beyond their means. With the kids, it made sense for the dad to stay home with them. Yes, they were poor but they weren’t latchkey kids. And for all I know, that could have been the choice that saved our family from eventual meltdown.
Good friends of ours consciously made that choice. Dad could have kept a horrible commute to make more money but his wife made good enough money for their household and it was better for their peace of mind to always have Dad with the young ones rather than babysitting with family (which meant no rules!) when mom wasn’t home so that’s what they did.
Let this pessimist declare that judgment system flawed.
I’d much rather try to make as conscious a choice as possible and plan ahead. I know what it’s like to be raised with not much in the till or on the table, and I saw how much my parents struggled with not having anything at the end of their lives. In the middle here, I’d like to attempt some informed choices that include all possibilities.
I like to think I’d choose to be a mother who stays in the workplace because I don’t think I’d be stellar at caretaking while I know I’m awesome at professional work. I know this because I’ve spent over 20 years caring for family and children, related or not. I love them dearly but it’s exhausting and I simply didn’t have the instinctive biological yearning that my mother did to want to continue to care for children. I’m not bad at it, in fact, I am a great sitter in a pinch, but I’m no Child Whisperer. In contrast, love or hate my job at the time, I’ve always been good at it. And even if I’m in pain, I can do my job. And when it’s really bad, I can work from home or take a sick day. You cannot take a sick day from your kid!
PiC, on the other hand, may not have 20+ years under his belt but he is goooood with kids. They love him. They love uncle to distraction. At any age, at any time of day or night, Uncle is awesome. And he has so much more energy than I do. And to him, a job is a job is a job. It’s there to make a living, he’d rather be (fill in the blank). He understands how to live life – which is what grounds me when I’m willing to be grounded away from work.
He’s never loved his work to the degree that I do. My theory is that he would be way better at home with kids than I would. I have no real idea if he’d survive nap times and setting structure but he’s so good at ignoring a clingy Doggle that I’m certain he’d set boundaries after a while. Men parent differently and I know he’d make it work.
Financially, it could be a little tricky. Frankly, at the moment, he has far superior benefits. Mine are mediocre. If we had a family, I’d want his coverage. I make more now but I need to make way more if we were to lose his salary. In part, because we’re still covering my dad. But things could definitely change. I could find a better gig with better benefits, or at least different benefits, and then it could work.
At the end of all this, this is only the Right Now.
My health hasn’t improved appreciably over the last ten years and has in some ways, declined. This is a reminder that we cannot take our health and capabilities for granted.
There are so many unknowns:
What’s my actual health and earning life span? (No idea.)
What if he takes a break and has to go back to work? How does that work? (we could sort of plan for that)
What if I have to be the one to take a break?
How does that affect earnings and savings?
And what about cultivating alternative income?
And honestly, we could just change our minds and want something totally different from what we thought we wanted. I not only want, I need and expect that to be ok. That’s why any of this: choice.
May 16, 2012
One of the mistakes I’ve been making lately is getting on a plane without a good book. I never used to be caught anywhere without reading material at the ready, so being stranded on a plane was like the Spanish Inquisition. I didn’t bear it very well.
My past two weeks have been spectacularly rough, 10-18 hour days, and getting worse, now staring down the barrel of a full week of two business trips in a row, but feeling at death’s door has focused my mind wonderfully on the important things: Do Not Leave Without a Good Book.
Having had no leisure time, though, I had no idea what on earth is out there right now. I turned to Twitter and asked for help. Maybe fantasy or sci fi but it wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t, and it had to be around 700 or more pages because so help me, being stuck at 10,000 feet just having finished a book and needing another one for the next five hours is the sort of brain death I’ll trade someone’s toes for.
Twitter delivered and I share with you the bounty.
From @cthulhuchick: you might like The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Kind of slow, very long, but very good. Historian/Dracula stuff.
From @scoughtfree: the name of the wind and the wise man’s fear by Patrick rothfuss. Though you want only 1, you will want the second soon.
And I’m digging 1Q84. That’s almost a thousand pages.
From @moneymaus: unbroken by laura hillenbrand!
From @csdaley: The Dragon’s Path by Daniel Abraham. Only 600 pages but if you buy the Kindle version it comes packaged with Leviathan Wakes.
And The Reality Dysfunction by Peter Hamilton.
And Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. Short on pages (640) but my favorite novel of the last decade.
And Otherland: City of Golden Shadow by @tadwilliams
From @clareyt: I recommend Shantaram!
May 7, 2012
With my promotion came a healthy bump in salary to a number that I’d been aiming at for some time. It’s not the “magic” six-figure number but it’s a necessary and great goalpost to reach.
I’ve insisted on making specific progress on salary for several reasons:
1. Regain lost ground. If I had stayed in a different niche of my field, I had the opportunity to make that salary earlier, with more robust and affordable benefits. I consciously chose change because it was time to temporarily give up the money for wider experience and a different environment was the wiser and healthier life option. But I wanted to get back on top.
2. Aim highly, and fail at negotiating. And win as well. Negotiating is highly uncomfortable. Not as in, I won’t do it, but as in, I hate how bad I feel at it. So I have to keep aiming at a higher number that I know I’m worth and negotiating, failing or succeeding, to get better at it. My work will back it up but until I master the art of simply negotiating, I’d always wonder how much I left something on the table.
3. Winning. I like winning. Obviously. And I treasure a win that scores a point for women that much more. I’ve always played against the boys when I competed: in sports, in academia, in grit. I wanted to be faster, tougher, smarter, meaner, and better in every possible way. Call it a family legacy or a survival instinct, I was practically born knowing that the patriarchy* was my enemy and I was going to crush its influence as far as I could.
There might have been a pivotal moment in my life, when I might have gone down the path of becoming a traditional docile woman. Then my dad said no, I couldn’t do something “because you’re a little girl.” He was actually concerned about my weighing all of 28 lbs with a bookbag, rather than being female, but at age five I heard sexist discrimination which got my dander up and it stayed up ever since.
I’m joking a little but really, if I heard sexism when I was five, I was probably long lost to docility. Sorry, Nurture.
This made me an insufferable little sister growing up, of course, until we figured out that it made me a perfectly decent little brother. As an adult, I don’t need to “think Iike a man” or a woman to get ahead. I think like me: I am rational, reasonable, seek compromise to create solutions but equitably because I’ll stand my ground until the cows come home. No one is going to play me, my team or my department. No one makes the mistake of thinking I’m soft in the workplace twice. And going over my head only gets the finger pointed right back to me.
So if women are chronically underpaid against men dollar for dollar? You better believe I’m going to do something about that.
4. Family. As much as my quest for breaking barriers and seeking equality for women in my small way, I always always sort of expected I might have kids. Practically speaking, I still have no idea how I’d manage but financially, the safest plan seemed to be: make as much as possible, secure a hefty savings, allow one of us to stay home.
Just think: If I earn at least six figures, or more, can you imagine what our savings would look like?! I regularly dream about that. And I will admit to trying to game the system of “creating choice”, to become the primary breadwinner, so that it would “only seem logical” that PiC stay home with the kid(s). I’d feel guilty secretly confessing here except he already knows I’m up to no good (TBD). 😉
*Patriarchy doesn’t equal men. The patriarchy I fought was the assumption that “little girls” can’t do the same things that men or boys can do, nor should they try, simply because they’re girls which automatically makes them weaker, dumber, illogical, morally weak or any number of demeaning assumptions that come with “don’t worry your little head about that.” Patriarchy is the assumption that men are superior in any and every way to women and deserve more (money, prestige, property, rights) simply because they are men and we are women.
I get along just fine with males as long as they accord me the respect I’ve earned, as I will for them. I spent many of my younger years competing and associating with males. Incidentally, that made it quite easy to very quickly disabuse several male bullies of the notion that I was any kind of a target, much less an easy one.
Many young males of my acquaintance bonded through competition, bragging, and chest beating; social order and hierarchy were established by these means though sometimes folded into somewhat more civilized behaviors (video games, academics), and since I was right in the middle of it, I learned to understand them quite early on. And they became pretty great friends.
April 30, 2012
Paranoid Asteroid sat on the interviewing panel for her coworker’s replacement and noted some of the same things. One of her examples that I didn’t note:
My “favorite” applicant so far has been the one who emailed D, saying, “I don’t know much about [our company, our business, and our project], but I figured I’d throw my hat into the ring.”
That’s another thing I found incredibly annoying from the perspective of having to sift through multiple resumes and applicants who really aren’t serious about the job. And those who are internally thinking that but don’t show it until they hit the interviewing room and waste all that time.
Thanks to Savvy Working Gal for a lovely bird’s eye view and breakdown of my recent promotion and the things I did to achieve it in How to Get a Promotion? She includes some great links for further reading.
eemusings asks what your job means, and suggests how to get your mojo back if you’ve felt off your game lately. No kidding, I’ve had more of those then not but frankly, I’ve just done a halfway decent job of hiding it except from the person I needed support from. That person just happened to see through my facade really easily.
April 25, 2012
Read Part I: Career Life: Securing the battlements for a promotion here
The wait would have been excruciating after Round 1 if I hadn’t firmly [very firmly] decided: I’d done my best with each interviewer (even if it wasn’t the best I could possibly do ever), I had advocates, and my best opportunity to prove that I was the right person for the job would be to continue to do my job well.
Besides, I was stressed enough with having to do my job, take care of my family and a million other things. I simply added a couple new interesting projects to my plate as backup plan hatchlings in case I didn’t land it, and moved along with life.
Stage 4: Getting the offer
It was a bit of a surprise, given several weeks’ wait, that rather than another round of interviews, the panel had decided in my favor.
Obviously, I was quite happy to hear I’d won. … erm, gotten the job, but then I had to receive the offer. I was verbally informed of the terms with the usual caveat that “there isn’t movement” in the offer and that HR would be following up with the formal letter soon.
Of course I mentally scoffed at the caution that there wouldn’t be movement – there would jolly well BE movement.
Stage 5: Negotiating the offer
I had my baseline number that would make me happy in mind. I already knew that the offer had come in below that number. So? I did my research to confirm how I could couch my counter-ask.
My advantage (and disadvantage) were the same: as an internal candidate, I was getting a standard offer. That’s just what they do. Nothing extraordinary to entice me from wherever I was coming from, and nothing more than they “had” to give me from one grade to the next.
That meant I knew exactly what the offer formula was and could point out in my Ask that the standard was actually not in keeping with the situation. As the selected candidate, I was confident that they knew my work was well above standard and I’d been held up as the star performer and best hire in my boss’s history of hires during my tenure more than once. I had excellent history and having beaten out candidates with 20+ years of management experience, I felt that reminding them that my salary should reflect that confidence wouldn’t be out of line.
Having built my team out of the ashes I was given, and made it one of the strongest and happiest teams in the most challenged section of the organization, alongside a few other serious accomplishments, I pointed out:
A) My track record in our rather unique culture was a given. My past history was laid out in front of them and a clear indicator of my future performance.
B) I’d already taken a paycut to come to this company and had made my investment of time and energy and commitment; I’d further dedicated myself to the next stages of growth but while my intent to stay and make a career at the organization was steadfast, I have my own life to consider.
I was asking the organization to come back to the table with support in the form of a commensurate salary that allows me to continue to make the choice to stay on with them long term. (Note: no threats, just the observation that we need to grow in our careers and salary is an integral part of that growth – and staying stagnant in salary and career was not something I signed up for, I made that very clear from the get-go in the interviews.)
My negotiating point of contact asked me what I wanted: I gave her a number substantially higher than my baseline happy number. My negotiator to take my Ask and to negotiate for a 6 month review if they couldn’t meet my number. The accelerated review cycle was my next negotiating point so that was perfect.
Stage 6: Round Two, Negotiations
I didn’t get my higher number, but I got my baseline. Then I asked for one more item that would have been useful to me in quality of life: increased vacation time. This isn’t an area that’s normally negotiable but as usual: you don’t get what you don’t ask for. I also didn’t get what I did ask for but no harm, no foul. The reason given wasn’t really a good or a bad reason. I’ll ask again later when the water’s warm.
Stage 7: Closing Statements
In the end, I got the money and the title with the job that I was mainly already doing. With a few rounds of mockery and a laugh, we signed the paperwork.
Observations: It wasn’t a fun process but both parties were satisfied with the results and there wasn’t any animosity. I’m set for the next year: to build up the strongest, most productive team we’ve ever had with the highest retention rates we’ve ever had and with the most ambitious team goals ever set so far. That’s not going to be anything like easy but I didn’t get this job or this raise because I set low bars to achieve.
And perusing SavvyWorkingGal’s post on women in the workforce and job disillusionment reminded me of something. Someone once said to me, “They won’t let women get anywhere near power in this place.” I’d laughed and said something random to deflect but I very carefully filed that away. We have women directors aplenty, strong and outspoken, bright and introverted, if you have the eyes to see it. Never let anyone, male or female, faux-befriend and trick you into thinking that the patriarchy is the reason you can’t grow and achieve. They may actually be the ones hoping to keep you down.
Do great work. Enjoy what you do. Support good people. Find allies who love what they do. Mentor people who need mentoring and want to love what they do. Ask for mentoring from people who have integrity, strength, humor and sway. Find your joy and to quote my favorite bus driver: “don’t let nobody take it away.” It all adds up to something substantial.
April 24, 2012
As you may know, I was promoted this year.
It was a long road in getting there, and I thought I’d share some of the process.
Even though I had the advantage of knowing the job description when it went live, it was never a given that the job was mine. This was serious business. Sure, I could learn from someone else. But this was my team. And I wasn’t prepared to let someone else be my boss, other than Boss.
I considered this a strategic battle and I prepared as such.
Stage One: Signal of Intent
Once the job was created, my mind was ticking. There was never a moment to just sit back and think about it so I kept the back of my mind in high-analysis mode for weeks about what I had to shore up before the interview.
Then, of course, I went over my resume about ten more times before I was satisfied, and started crafting a cover letter.
I hate writing cover letters.
One of the benefits of my job for this situation has been hiring and hiring a lot. I’ve read well over a thousand resumes and cover letters, and helped other people with theirs. It didn’t make writing mine easy, critiquing is always easier because of the mental distance, but it was easier. Once completed, rewritten, burnished, and rewritten again, I asked the favor of the eyes of a few respected expert resume and cover letter readers for feedback. *Interestingly enough, I wasn’t comfortable submitting my cover and resume until I had already started working my way through some of the areas I knew were weaknesses or lacking. There had to be truth in advertising as an internal candidate.
Stage Two: We Have Contact – The Interview
It was unfortunate timing that the process coincided with my Mom’s passing. My Powerpoint was half done and largely unpolished, my plan was still putty and I had to pull it all together while trying to stay on top of work. Jobs may be easier to get when you have one but the process is pretty painful.
Still. Eye on the ball: my team. (I’m not possessive, oh no.)
Once the interviews were scheduled, the panel was set. I knew who my audience would be and what perspectives/departments/concerns might be represented in our conversations. From there, I tailored my presentation.
Honestly, despite carefully dressing (totally out of character for our culture, predictably earning me a few jibes), an excellent Powerpoint tailored to be inserted into each conversation with individuals rather than having them each sit through the same thing, I felt that my performance was inconsistent.
I was not in my best form that day (or any other day that month – holidays, new life, without Mom were basically hell). The most important person to sway on the panel was very insistent to sticking to a script and after a full day swapping gears between work and interviews, I simply didn’t keep framing the conversation as I should have.
It took about four days before I got past post-interview jitters and unnecessary recapping.
Stage Three: Immersion and Negotiations (pre and post offer)
Post-interview, I immediately immersed myself in salary negotiation and interview technique writings and videos. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t at that stage yet. I was still, in essence, at that stage. I needed to be in the right mindset. It was the next best thing to practice and to achieve a sense of control and calm.
As well, without practice, all of the following would feel impossible. It would feel “easier said than done.” I simply couldn’t leave anything to chance or hope, so analysis, strategic planning and more planning it was!
The interesting thing about negotiating with this particular organization and the people involved is that while they certainly don’t make it seem like the job itself will be rescinded simply for the asking, they have been less that open to negotiating itself. Or that initiating and continuing the process for more than a weak gesture means you’re “hard-nosed.” Nossiree. Know what I know?
This is business.
“When people with hiring authority think of winners, they think of people like them who live and breathe this business thing. They negotiate things as a matter of course: that is a major portion of the value they bring to the company. Volunteering a number when asked says the same thing to people with hiring authority that flunking FizzBuzz says to an engineer: this person may be a wonderful snowflake in other regards, but on the thing I care about, they’re catastrophically incompetent. It will also cause them to retroactively question competencies they’d previously credited you with.” Patrick of Kalzumeus, in his 7000 words on Salary Negotiations
My mindset: I represent my business interests in this negotiation and those interests are my life, my ability to make choices, my freedom. This is my family I’m negotiating for.
And if that isn’t enough, I absolutely acknowledge that as a woman, as a minority(somewhat, this is a slightly wibbly wobbly factor), and as a relatively young person, I apparently have the cards stacked against me, not to mention the dismissive attitudes that don’t come right out and say: it’s not that your work doesn’t merit the higher salary, but you’re just sort of too young so we don’t actually understand why you’re asking as you should be glad to have landed the job.
And to that I say: You’ve had the time and opportunity to observe extremely high quality, high powered work and know that I will bring even more value over the next period of time, and for that? Appropriate compensation is appropriate.
But at this point, it was a waiting game. I had been interviewed, other candidates would be interviewed, and a second round of interviews would commence for final candidates.
April 22, 2012
PiC scheduled me for a pain therapy massage last weekend. As usual, I felt like a completely spoilt brat every step of the way.
There’s this oddly named Chinese restaurant nearby that has an awesome lunch special that goes until mid-afternoon so my appointments can be obscenely late and still squeeze in a delicious cheap meal afterward. This time I had a solo lunch including my favorite bowl of hot and sour soup. It’s always almost too hot and too sour but juuust on this side of tolerable. Usually I steal PiC’s too so I had to settle for just the one bowl, and my own meal. 🙂
When I walked into the spa, one of the ladies at the front desk greeted me by name, asking if I’d gotten her message that my requested masseuse could see me. It took me completely aback, startled that she recognized me. She just laughed and waved me through. Snuggled into my warm, freshly laundered robe and slippers, I had a drink of fruity water and an unnecessary brownie.
My favorite therapist checked with me about what I needed this visit and we settled in. As always, she asked after my comfort level with the pressure some time into the massage even though it wasn’t necessary – she’s always spot on whenever I let her know what to do from the beginning and she still always checks. After our appointment, I felt as close to pain-free as I have felt in years. Amazing. It lasted about 6 hours but it was still absolutely lovely.
Posts for Perusal
SingleMa mostly unraveled IRA contributions for High Income Earners. I hadn’t even touched IRA contributions this year because I had no clue what PiC and my combined MAGI would be. Heck, at this point I still don’t know. *shakes fist* Complications!
Ella describes Maternity Leave in Norway. It was a big surprise though, made me really sad as I responded with what we have in the US. Wow. We … we suck. Yet another reason I’m having some trouble imagining motherhood. I don’t think I want to stay home a year, to be honest, but to go back in six weeks if I were to bear a child also feels rather too short.
Nicole and Maggie asked what I’d been asking myself quietly: what would you do if you didn’t have to have a job?
Interesting. I’ve been secretly griping of late, overwhelmed with waves of fatigue and pain that feel unstoppable and so tempted to just … stop. And I wondered, what if I could? What if I found myself somehow able to not need to work? What would I do with myself? Eat, sleep, cook. Play with the dog, play on the internet, work on the internet. Probably actually manage to write like I mean to several times a week but never have time to. I’d need to find more animals to play with, groom, do something helpful with. But then I would get bored and want something more. Or maybe I would start healing and getting better. Who knows. Or bored. In which case…
Travel, yes. Friend time, yes. More of what I was doing during that unemployment stint minus the fretting about being unemployed and trying to find a new job. Gardening because I wouldn’t be taking this time unless we’d gotten out of this place and into a place with a yard so Doggle could roam and I could garden. All in all, things productive. Plus some elusive project that would likely generate income because we all know I have a complex about not being income positive. What would that be? What would you do?
Donna’s revelation about her war with her body is strikingly similar to how I’m feeling right now. Hence the massage that I wasn’t bright enough to schedule for myself.
A recipe
@clareyt led me to her bestie’s site Whit’s Amuse Bouche which had the most mouthwatering chicken and dumpling recipe I’ve ever seen. Sadly, my hands were simply not up to manually making the dumplings and we don’t have even the most basic of kitchen implements any self-respecting cook should have so I had to figure some alterations that would preserve the deliciousness.
Chicken N’ Potato Stew
(6 servings)
Ingredients:
1 roasted chicken, shredded
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
1 onion, diced
1 large carrot, diced
2 celery ribs, diced
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
5 cups chicken stock
1 cup heavy cream
3 small potatoes, diced
Directions:
To start, shred your roasted chicken, and set the meat aside. (I did this last.)
Melt the butter and add the flour, cooking for about 2 minutes to create the roux. Slowly add the chicken stock, constantly whisking to avoid lumps. Add the carrots, celery and onion, and simmer for 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the heavy cream, and bring to a simmer.
Add diced potatoes to the pot, place the lid over the pot and gently simmer for 20 minutes while shredding roasted chicken. Add the chicken, and cook for 5 more minutes.