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Why Parents Make the Best Coworkers

Molly Struve (she/her) on March 27, 2019

I have mentioned this many times before on Twitter, but I think it is important enough that it deserves its own post. If you find yourself working ...
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Miriam Tocino

I love this post, Molly.

I never thought about it as a "metric" to take into account when looking for a place to work, but it does make total sense!

I'm a mom myself, and I always said that motherhood brings you clarity, both for the good and the bad. :D Since I had my son, I'm more able to look into what's really needed in a project and which things aren't.

What's the percentage of parents in your current team?

Thanks for sharing!

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Molly Struve (she/her)

About 25%, we have a really young team though which I think skews that percentage to the lower end. At Kenna, which is where I was when I wrote this post, we had probably 60-70% at least. I felt like I had many more coworkers that had kids then didn't.

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Miriam Tocino

I agree, Nick.

Things change so much when you get kids, and you do need to have priorities clear. Especially, if you have 3!

Have you been able to keep your patience levels up these days? Looking for ways to level them up over there. ;)

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Templar++

While every person is different and you can meet real ass**es, who are also parents, from my observation - the people who spend more time in the office usually compensate for personal life issues. Of course there are exceptions, but this is my experience.

And of course the patience - you know NOTHING about patience until you have to deal with a 3 years old... ah wait, teenagers make the 3 years old look like cute kittens.

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Kasey Speakman

This matches up with my experiences. One of the most professional teams I ever worked on was mostly mothers. We all got to know each other pretty well and still keep in touch.

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Mark Otway

Was that because they were mothers, or just because they were good, professionally competent people?

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Kasey Speakman

The latter, certainly. The article explains why it is that being a parent could contribute to that. Anecdotes are only worth so much, but I shared because I tend to agree with the article.

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Yechiel Kalmenson • Edited

Preach!

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Templar++

I'll second that about the patience...