If you have two parents working from home it's possible to shift call schedules arround and work schedules if you are a developer. Won't cover 100% of the cases in which case your kids might walk on to a call while you are muted and off camera and you take them away and explain. If they are really small you have to have someone around either way. I've seen this pattern implemented by 4 guys with kids at our work - they shift their availability hours towards afternoon and evening because their wife works morning shift and isn't flexible. Nobody really has a problem with this or seeing kids interiort a meeting every once in a while.
I am a an engineering manager, my wife is a project manager. We both have many meetings, with many people attending, throughout the day.
We also have two small children (1 and 4).
We bought a smallish house (1500sqft) with a 10 minute commute to our work, because a short commute was more important to us than a bigger house (so we could spend more time with the kids).
Right now, with no daycare and quarantine, work is basically impossible. Just feeding the kids takes up almost two hours a day, not to mention setting up activities and supervising the one year old as he plays.
We don't have offices. We both have to work from the living room/kitchen. Even when one of us watches the kids while the other is in a meeting, you can hear the kids yelling and playing and having fun in the background.
Even if we had someone to watch the kids at the house, there is simply no room. You can hear the kids no matter which room they are in.
Our setup worked great when we went to the office and had daycare. It does not work at all for full time remote work, and trying to sell the house we just bought to move somewhere further away from the city (and away from our friends and support structure) doesn't seem like a smart option. If everyone is remote, why would someone else want to pay this much money for a house this small?
> We don't have offices. We both have to work from the living room/kitchen.
I don't understand this. Are the rooms giant, or does the 1500 square feet include the lawn? That is 140 m^2, basically two family-sized apartments put together.
It is a three bedroom house. My wife and I have the master bedroom, my 4 year old has her room, and my 1 year old has the other room. We have a decent size front room, a normal kitchen, and then a smaller family room connected to the kitchen. There are no doors on anything besides the bedroom.
yeah, my wife and I are empty nesters (kids grew up and moved to different states for work). After 6 weeks of sharing our 1600 sq ft house to WFH, and we put it up for sale to get a bigger house. Don't get me wrong. Two years prior, when our kids moved out, we downsized from 3000 sq ft. We were FINE in 1600; before we were WFH. The house we're moving into now is about 2300 sq ft, and we are hoping: just about right.
I don't know how people with small kids actually cope. I have a co worker who is at his wit's end with his 2 year old, who is requiring constant attention while we're on slack meetings.
