279. Work/Life Balance Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

How do I maintain a good work/life balance as a software developer? What do I do if my employer doesn't provide me with the training I need? Why should I do side projects? Why would I work after hours? These are the questions we will answer in today's episode of Dev Questions.

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Work-life balance probably doesn't mean what you think it means. You've probably heard people say that you should maintain a good work-life balance. You've probably even said it yourself. I know I have, but what does it mean? What does it mean you should mean you should only work 40 hours per week? Does it mean that your employer should be responsible for your career training since that should happen during work hours? Does it mean that if you work outside the work hours, that you're not maintaining a good work-life balance? In this episode of Dev Questions, I am going to work to adjust your thinking about what work-life balance really is and why only focusing on your career during your 40-hour work week is probably holding you back from a great work-life balance.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Welcome to the Dev Questions podcast with Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Software development is more than just writing code. So let's talk about the rest of it. Specifically, let's talk about why work-life balance is not what you think it is. Now, I grew up around farmers. And farmers are sun-up to sundown and beyond people. And that's not five days a week, that's seven days a week. You know, my father grew up on a farm, and so he kind of passed down some of that you work hard kind of philosophy. And, you know, that's not a great work-life balance in some ways, but it can be if you do it right. Now, my father worked in a warehouse and he worked 12-hour shifts on swing shift. That can be a difficult career. Not just on, you know, during the day, but nights and weekends as well. I've seen what working too much can do, and I've experienced it myself. And I really want to avoid it and I want to make sure that you can as well. But I think there's also a danger in the other end as well, where you are doing too little and then wondering why you actually don't have a good work-life balance. So let's talk about how to hit a good balance in your career. Now to do this, I want to establish some common ground. Number one, work is what we do to afford the rest of our life. Okay. Work is about making money because we need money in order to live. We need food, we need shelter, we need, you know, the things that we use to do the work and then also the fun stuff as well. So work is what we do to afford the rest of our life, and which means that hopefully it should not consume the entirety of our life. Now, number two, even if you love work and love the work that you do, you would probably do things differently if it wasn't about money. So, for example, I love my job. I love being able to sit down and talk with you and teach uh C sharp and the related technologies. I love building courses and helping you go from knowing nothing to being a software developer. I was just at a conference where I had like six different people come up to me and say, I'm a software developer because of your training. And that's awesome. This is why I do what I do. And if I didn't get paid for it, if I didn't need money, I would still do something like this. But there would be probably changes. There would be things that, you know what, I'm not gonna do that. I don't want to do that. And so for your life, it's probably the same thing. Even if you love what you do, there'd probably changes if it wasn't about the money. If you were rich beyond belief, you probably wouldn't do the same thing you're doing right now, you know, even if you love your job. Now, number three, working too much can damage the other areas of your life. I have seen this. I was fortunate to have a boss early on that that warned me of the dangers. He was the lighthouse saying, look out for the rocks. Um, because it can it can hurt your health. It can hurt your relationships, it can hurt those around you if your focus is your work and to the exclusion of other things. Um, I have a person that was telling me how bad software development was for your body and how it can be horrible. And that's true if you let it and if you make that choice. But if you are not focused too hard on your job, if you take the time to work out, if you take the time to eat right, if you take the time to spend time in your family, it can be a great career. So working too much can damage other areas of your life. Number four, um, companies are going to want to get the most out of you for the least amount of pay. This is just the way it works. Okay. Um, I had a boss early on, um, actually, he wasn't my boss yet, um, but he cautioned me about going from hourly to salary because he said the whole thing about going from hourly to salary is now your employer can ask you to work as many hours as they want without penalty. Uh ironically, he was the boss that took me from hourly to salary. Um, he was a great boss, and and we worked through that. But that's what companies are gonna do is they're going to want to get the most out of you for the least amount of pay. So that's gonna hurt your work-life balance. Now, that's kind of the common ground we're gonna start from. Now, your specific situation might be a little different here or there, but that's a common ground we're gonna start from. Now, with that common ground, what is a good work-life balance? So uh number one, I think it's working enough to earn what you need. Now, um remember I said that we we work in order to fund the rest of our life? Well, if you make enough, then you know that's all you really need to do. So that might be that you work 20 hours a week. If you make enough money in 20 hours a week to cover everything you need, plus, you know, savings and all the rest, then that might be all you need to do. And that might be a good work-life balance for you to hit 20 hours a week. But, and here's where it's gonna sting a little bit, that might be 70 hours a week. I've been in situations where I wasn't making enough money and I wasn't earning enough to meet the needs that I had. And so what did I do? I did consulting on a side, I did some side jobs to help build that up. In fact, this YouTube channel came out of that because I was doing my normal day job, and then I was also teaching one day a week, and I was doing consulting work. And then people started saying, we'd love to have more YouTube content. And I said, I just don't have the time. And so I ended up doing creating courses. And I told, I told you, my audience, if you were there back then, I said, listen, I'm going to give you a paid course. And you don't have to buy it. I will try and give you as much free content as possible. But if you buy that paid content, then that's going to give me more time away from my consulting work. I don't have to do as much consulting because I have income from the paid course. That means I can do more training. And that started that snowball of I kept doing more and more of that, where I replaced entirely my consulting income and my teaching income, which that's kind of laughable. There's not really much income in teaching. But I was working more than 40 hours a week doing that. I was working 60 and 70 hours a week sometimes to try and get all that in. And that eventually turned into now where I work full-time for you. I work full-time giving both free content like this as well as paid content to help fund even more free content. So that balance for me was in the high 60s for hours per week, maybe a bit more. I worked a lot in the very late night to try and guard my family time. Um, but that's hard, right? Because working enough for what you need sometimes looks like more than 40 hours a week. And that is not where you want to end up. But that may be where you need to hit right now. So that's number one is a good work-life balance is making enough to cover your needs. Now, number two, and this is also very important, it's something that uh I didn't get right at first, and then I had to make adjustments, and um we figure it out. And what we did was number two, we managed our finances to keep our needs reasonable. You see, oftentimes if you make X dollars per year, you end up spending X dollars per year, maybe even X plus some dollars per year. And that's not good because then if you earn Y dollars per year because of a big raise, you end up spending Y dollars per year. And so what happens is you continue to be reliant on having that full salary, which means that if the company requires you to work 60 hours per week, you have to do that because you're working enough to meet your need. But if you work to get your need down, then you could change number one, which is how much you need to work in order to meet your need. So uh number one, working enough to meet your need. Number two, managing your finances to keep your needs reasonable. And then number three, and this is a tricky one, adding enough training time to improve your salary over time. Now I recommend two to 10 hours per week. So what does this mean? If you're working 70 hours per week, that might mean that you have to work 80 hours per week, 70 at the job and 10 for training. You might say, well, Tim, I'm already working 70 hours a week. I can't do that. But let's talk through that. So let's first talk about what it might look like. Um, it's gonna look different for every person. If you're well established, if you're happy with your salary and you feel like you could easily get a new job, it might look like 40 hours per week, if that's what your current job requires, plus two hours per week to train. Yes, even if you're well established and uh are happy in your job and think you get a new job easily, you should still spend a couple hours per week to train. Otherwise, you will quickly lose that status. Now, if you're just starting out and your salary barely pays the bills at 60 hours per week, it might mean that you add another 10 hours per week for training to make it 70. The goal is for you and your family, um, with the least amount of time and effort to provide for them. So you're working on providing for your family. For most people, that should be about 42 hours per week, eventually. But to get there, though, you might have to put in a lot more. And that can be okay, especially if you're actively working to make that overall number smaller. You see, the worst thing you can do is only work at work when you aren't in a good situation. I've seen this over and over again, where people will say, I'm working 60 hours a week, I can't afford to do any more. I that's ridiculous to try and spend extra hours outside of work. But what does that mean for changing that, right? You're not gonna go down to 40 hours of work a week in a different job without adding skills or without changing something. Because if you could, you should. But if your job is the best you can do and it's 60 hours per week, well, you want to get out of that situation. And getting out of that situation isn't a matter of just waiting until the universe decides it's time for you. There's an active component of that where you need to work extra. And yes, that does mean sprinting through some tough times, um, but you work extra outside of that work in order to build up your skills, in order to make you more uh palatable, more um possible for better jobs, so that you can work into a situation where you can command a better salary, where you can command lower hours per week for the same salary. So you need to work yourself into a situation where you are working less hours. Because otherwise, what happens is that you spend a long time in a bad situation. I've had friends that um I have one friend that he has spent years and years and years and years and years working 70 hours a week, 75 hours a week, and just all the time. When he's not working, he's doing side jobs in order to make up for the fact that he's not getting enough of his day job. Now, there's a couple of things there. One, probably the finances need to be looked at because I think that if he brought down some expenses, then it would free him up from some things. But the other thing is that there's no growth in the career, right? It's a very, very, very long time for his career to grow. And sometimes that's gonna be what it is. But especially as software developers, you have a better opportunity to have a better hand in making some active changes where you can grow and you can change over time so that you can be a better developer than what your current employer is paying for, and that you can look around and find a better employer or find a better situation. Um, when I was looking for a job earlier on in my career, I ended up having to take a job that wasn't great. Um, but I took that job and it was okay. Um, later on in my career, when I decided I was working for myself for a while, and I decided I didn't want to do that because of how much time it took. Again, work-life balance, it wasn't a great balance. And so I said, I'm gonna get just a regular day job. But because by that time I had worked on my skills and improved myself and made myself better, I came into employers and said, I am not going to work for 60 hours a week. I am not going to work in the office. I am not going in all these things, I had my list. Here's what I want. I had one employer tell me that I would get a week of vacation after a year. I said, thanks, but no thanks. I know you're offering me a job, but that's not going to happen. Um, I waited, I held out until I had an employer that said, Yeah, we'll give you three plus weeks of vacation and you only ever work 40 hours per week. I made that choice because that was a great company to work for, and I had great work-life balance because of the fact that I had worked up to that point. If I had just done what my employers asked me to do at every job, I would not have been able to take that new job. I would not have been qualified for it. Therefore, I wouldn't have been able to work from home. I wouldn't have been able to work just 40 hours a week. I wouldn't have been able to have so much time off to spend my family. So there's times when I have put in extra work in order to build myself up. Your employer is not responsible for your career. Your employer should invest in your career. But that's not the same thing as do they? Do they invest in your career? If they don't, well, you could sit and complain about it, or you could pick up a slack and do the work. Because at the end of the day, it's your career. And you want to get to the point where your work-life balance is more life than work. And where you're spending more time doing things outside of work than inside of work. But that takes working through some hard times sometimes. So work-life balance is going to look different at different stages of your life. Just don't get fooled into believing being complacent about your career is okay. Otherwise, you're going to be actively hurting your work-life balance in the long run. You'll spend more time in bad situations because you didn't put in the extra effort to get beyond those. All right. Thanks for listening. And as always, I am Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions. When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to IamtimCorey.com and enroll in a course.