A few weeks ago I got stuck in unusually bad traffic and got to the office 10min late for our 10:30am team meeting. My manager saw me walk in and said, "Hey there you are! You're just in time for cake. It's Jeff's birthday!"

A few months before that, I ducked out at 3pm on a Friday to meet some friends in SF. Around 3:15 I got a text from my manager saying, "Are you in the office?" I was driving so I couldn't answer until I got to the city half an hour later. "No," I replied sheepishly. "That's ok," she said. "I just heard that the fridge we ordered for your office was going to be delivered soon, and I thought you might want to put your beer in. Have a nice weekend!"

These are two very different questions.

Let's talk about running late. In my experience so far (>2.5 years) there really is no such thing as "running late" unless you're committed to be in a meeting, and you're a crucial part of it. If you're actually not in the office or available to participate then, that's a problem. But guess what? You'll probably know this is coming at least a half hour before it happens. Ping the relevant people on the meeting, say "Hey I completely whiffed on this one -- I'm not going to make it. Can we reschedule?"

Everyone has done this. It's not a big deal. But don't make a habit out of it, because everyone will start to get the picture that you're the person who can't be relied on. And rightly so.

But if you're not late for a scheduled meeting and you're on track for all your goals and have a good relationship with your manager and your coworkers, it's not even a thing. As one member of a nine person team, at least one person every day sends a message to the team that says "In a bit late" or some equivalent. It's fine. No one bats an eye, because we know that everyone on our team is awesome, and kicks ass and has our back if we need it.

Now let's talk about work life balance. Google is a place that will take from you as much as you give it. It's appetite is infinite. That said, you don't have to give it everything. Of course, depending on your role there will be some times when you have to fix some code at night, or take a call on Thanksgiving morning (I've done this!). But that's not the real danger. The real work life balance danger there is that a lot of the work is self paced, and if you're the kind of driven person they expect that you are, you'll just naturally gravitate to dumping enormous amounts of time into it.

You have to learn not to do that.

Finally, I'll say that the work life balance thing is also team and manager dependent. Not that many people there will be overtly demanding of you. It could be the team culture though. Also, you might notice that once you get to higher levels, the people who live, eat and breathe the place get a promotion, and you don't if you're not doing the same. But that's anywhere, really.

It's what you make of it. You can do a good job at Google and not be a workaholic. It just takes practice.

For Google, completely false.

Your manager and HR actively work to keep your work-life balance, even if you have trouble with that. I’ve seen coworkers told to go home and get some rest… before lunch.

It is true that many Googlers are still in the office at dinner time… but those folks usually showed up just before lunch, and have team situations that make those working hours convenient. So, it’s not so much poor balance as a different solution to getting the balance right.

I’ve also seen nominally full-time Googlers working three days a week, but about 12 hours each of those days. I wouldn’t do that, but it appeared to work for them.

As for public shaming… anyone who did that would find themselves shamed and in significant trouble. That’s not how Google does things.

Work-life balance at companies of Google and Facebook’s size really depend on the employee’s location, team, time (both stage of growth and time of year), and manager. Plenty of insightful answers here already, but one perspective that hasn’t come up is the extent to which your work-life and life-life become one. My experience at Facebook was that even when you are not technically working:

1. You’re still a consumer of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, etc and your social graph most likely reflects your network of colleagues
2. You work closely with smart, like-minded people on important projects that your colleagues become part of your real life social network and work talk will inevitably dominate social gatherings
3. Google and Facebook are such big, relevant companies in the world that it’s hard to escape conversations with family or neighbors about how work is going or what you think of the latest headline about one of those companies

Now I’ll admit that I could have put forth more effort to really “unplug” when not working, but the standard across all industries (but even more in tech) is increasingly to be “on” 24/7. The proliferation of communication tools like Slack, Workplace, Hipchat, Google Hangouts, etc. enable and encourage this trend.

So while I don’t think it’s true that there is public shaming of any employees leaving the office at 5, the expectation to log back on and stay on after leaving the office is the bigger impediment to work-life balance.

I have been too ill to work for about 4 years now. My last 12 months was typified by still being in the office at 8pm getting my reports finished (writing or reviewing other’s work). I was usually alone. I hadn’t been diagnosed with diabetes then, yes I was hungry having not eaten since noon. I was on an industrial estate and the local cafe shut at 5:30pm. It was a long walk to anywhere else to get food and a difficult drive due to the one-way system.

It is only looking back now that I realise how dangerous that had been. After the cleaners had finished and gone home, no-one would have found me, had my blood sugars slumped to scary levels, until the next morning.

It was what I had to do, to get my work done. Glad I’m not there any more.

I'm a manager at Google. On Thursday one of my reports got in at 11:25. At 11:30 someone said, "who wants to get lunch?" We looked at him and everyone laughed. Then we got lunch.

Nobody cares. The impact that you have is all that matters. If your impact isn't good then it's a different story. Also I'm in engineering, not sure how this applies elsewhere, and I'm sure even in engineering there are places where this isn't true. Actually my own team is one of them, we have an availability requirement because we monitor security alerts. But that's an explicit part of the job description and our people knew that when they signed up.

TL;DR: yes, and I believe it’s always been that way.

“20% time” is not a specific slot of time you have allotted. It is a company policy that you are allowed to work on a project of your own choosing for 20% of your time (usually accounted for in a per-quarter basis - so you can do this one day a week, or two weeks a quarter, or whatever).

I would say that probably around 10% of Googlers use 20% time. I did last year to prepare and run Distributed Code Jam 2018. This year, I’m probably not doing it - my main job is absorbing and interesting enough that I’d rather devote time to that. One of my co-workers decided to spend some 20% time to contribute to a core library some functionality that we discovered would make our (and a lot of other teams’) lives easier. I don’t think anybody else in my 12-person team uses 20% time. I’m considering open-sourcing the DCJ backend at some point in the future if my main job becomes less absorbing.

20% time makes sense mostly if you have a specific thing that you’d want to do, you’re convinced that it makes sense, you can either do it yourself in a reasonable timeframe, or you can gather a team of 20% folks behind it (that’s how the Distributed Code Jam backend was created in the first place). It’s also good to have a bunch of ideas for 20% projects that you can use while there are lulls in your main project work (an alternative is a list of refactoring in your main project which you want to do).

The same way nurses, EMTs, firefighters, & anyone else does. You make sure that you have care & supervision immediately available for your children. That’s what I always did. There is always an assigned rotation for on call duty & you can plan ahead for coverage. Most spouses realize that it comes with the territory & are okay with it. I did once have an occasion when I was in the OR working an emergency case & the attending orthopedic surgeon’s insanely jealous wife kept calling to demand to speak with him & called me a filthy whore when I wouldn’t call him to the phone while he was in the middle of operating on a 2 day old baby. I had quite a talk with him later & I don’t think that marriage lasted much longer.

I would have preferred to stay home but as a single mom it wasn't feasible. Staying home with your children keeps them out of indoctrination day cares, protects them from disease & lice, & more. If you stay home you can teach your children what you so desire to teach them. They do not have to go to a day care to be socialized either as there are a lot of stay home & home schooler parentals out there. My son is 33. I worked every day to teach him how to think critically, question everything, & stand up for your self! Public schools do not teach this, instead they teach regurgitation of what the system want them to know. Yup main reason why a parent stays home? To save their children from givenment brain washing. George Carlin explained it well.

In my experience (note that it was a couple of years ago that I left), 20% time isn’t really a thing anymore. Perhaps in the teams on the sexy projects (like Search, or Machine Learning, or Adwords) they still do </speculation>, but otherwise it has been largely protracted by management decisions. Things like, “you can take 20% time to work on X, Y, or Z (stuff at least somewhat related to the mission of your team)”, and this only sometimes, and only if you’re current on your current 80% time project goals. Oh, and perhaps if it’s something charity/community related it might be allowed.

It would appear that the days of unrestricted tinkering every Friday died out some time before I was around. I got the feeling that it changed right along with much of the other Google culture when Ruth Porat became the CFO financial priorities started shifting. I wasn’t bitter about it though since: 1. I was just an IT peon lucky to work in “The Emerald City”, and 2. The dream had to die some time.

Eventually all companies beholden to the shortsighted shareholders have to acquiesce to what is considered traditional financial responsibility by the establishment. In short, it just made sense. What company has shareholders and a board of stuffy traditional money folks that will tolerate things like giving out extravagant gifts to that many employees every year? What similar company will be able to keep giving out incredibly high quality free food forever? Writing’s on the wall, and Google is not immune to these pressures. In the end the only thing distinguishing GOOG from traditional workplaces as the awesome benefits evaporate one by one will probably be whatever remains of the originally awesome workplace cultural panacea that once reigned. Some within the company are actively working to erode portions of that as we speak due to this interest or that interest.

Others are still “Googley.” I came in and absorbed what it meant to be Googley almost right away. To me, in a word, it means taking responsibility for being a positive force to help make and keep life good for your co-workers and your customers at every opportunity. “Don’t be a jerk,” as they would say. However this is something that is by nature quite nuanced. Lots of folks just don’t get what it means not to be a “jerk.” For example, avoiding being a jerk means allowing your co-workers to argue/disagree with you respectfully while continuing to respect them as a person and value their work and input. It also means that you don’t say and post things that are ad-hominem attacks against a group of people with particular values or opinions. I might not be a “conservative” (quotes because most people misunderstand and misidentify with what that is supposed to really mean, and it now is something very different than what is sane), but nonetheless I wouldn’t dream of saying something disparaging about the group as a whole. How are we to bridge gaps and find common ground if we’re busy stepping on toes with malice? I saw on an internal forum once that a supervisor at a meeting said something to the effect that, “all these idiots should be killed off.” That just ain’t Googley, EVEN IF you are surrounded by lots of folks who feel the same. It’s alienation of different ideas, something which Google was once starkly against.

Lot of jerks these days, and I think the reason for it is the fact that the hiring standards are not what they once were. there was a time where the bar for any position in the company was so high that you were very unlikely to get folks that were not at least modestly intellectual. Not to toot my horn, because that is meaningless and I don’t care what folks on the internet think of me, but I’m at least a modest intellectual. Honestly by old standards I should never have been at Google. I don’t have any incredible credits to my name other than working hard, trying to be a good person, believing in teamwork, etc. I went to a community college (though it was a great one academically). I don’t have the prejudicial markers that generally announce the crowning of someone who is “smart.” So on paper, I’m just your random dummy. Of course starting your own company, or having an advanced degree today are some of the markers that we use to identify the smart folks and examples of non-smart people who have done those things abound. True intellectuals understand that true mutual respect and prioritizing “societal net gains” over money and status are the basis of real societal success, even in a small society such as Googlers. Those who don’t get “it,” are selfish, and disregard others because they often have no brotherly love for humanity at large and are primarily driven by fear.

It is possible to maintain a balance between work and family life.

When you are at work, you are able to give it your full attention since you know your child or children are being cared for and in good hands at school or nursery school.

When you get home, or even when you pick them up from school, make sure every minute counts. Sing songs in the car, chat about your day, ask about theirs. Talk about birthday parties that are coming up or activities you are planning for the weekend. When you get home, you will already have connected with your child.

Once home, spend at least an hour just playing, outside if at all possible, go to the playground, go for a bike ride or a walk as a family.

Then it’s dinner time, eat together at the dining room table and talk. Hear their stories from school, tell them something funny that happened at the office.

Let them help to clear the table and load the dishwasher. They must do their chores before bath time.

Allow at least an hour for the bath, washing hair, cleaning grubby hands etc. Put them in their PJ’s and play calmly for another half hour. Put them in bed, read a bedtime story, tell them how much you love them, how you look forward to tomorrow and with lots of cuddles and kisses, say good night.

The rest of the evening could be spent with your husband, chatting, doing housework, preparing lunches, just unwinding a bit.

Try to get enough sleep so you are well rested. The experts recommend 8 hours plus deep sleep. So don’t burn out by trying to be a Super hero. Be sensible and look after yourself first. Then you can be strong enough to look after everyone else.

On weekends, cook large enough dishes enough to have two meals - one that can be frozen for a week night. Have pre-prepared food that can just be put into the oven while you play, and be ready by dinner time.

Make sure you have ingredients to pack interesting healthy lunches for everyone. This helps with mood regulation and energy supply for everyone to function optimally.

Plan weekends with your husband to maximise on quality time and so that everyone knows how the weekend will play out. Allow for quiet time with hubby to re-connect and have a glass of wine together by candle light.

Be careful not to overload your weekends, a quiet movie night with popcorn is as much fun as going out. Just being at home with nowhere to rush to is good for everyone. And it creates calm and connection as well as grounding.

Keep work problems at the office and home problems at home or at least within the family. It’s the best way to give your best to your family and your job.

Make use of your support systems like Granby’s and Grandads, family or friends who are keen to help and offer a much needed break. Invite Granny to visit regularly or arrange sleep overs at her house if possible. It creates a wonderful opportunity to bond with grandparents who have all the time and patience in the world. They learn unique gifts and skills this way and it is good to have strong family bonds. It’s also great for when a new baby arrive and Granny is able ymto help out with the big brother or sister.

Have boundaries for both work and family, certain things are just not going to make your life any easier and once you allow it, it becomes expected. So draw a line, and stick to it.

Keep a good sense of humor, sometimes laughing out loud is much better than blowing up! Remember, you are enough: good enough, loving enough, wonderful enough.

If anything, these are two of the employers that have the best work-life balance of anywhere you can work. Startups that care about work-life balance often borrow HR policy ideas from Google and Facebook.

I heard from some Xooglers that the policies in their European offices are particularly employee-friendly. For instance, someone who wants to start a growing family can repeatedly go on maternity or paternity leave, which lasts for a year, so there are cases of people not coming back to Google for 2 or 3 years.

See also Quora User's answer to What is the work life balance like at Google? What happens if you are running late for work one day?

As Arik Afek said, it is a challenge (and we've used the zone defense analogy for a long time too!). Where you are right now with the kids' ages is going to be one of the most trying times (the next will come when they're all pre-teens and teens).

A few things that I can think of that can really help:

• Consistency: in scheduling, in parenting, in discipline, etc. Have meals at a set time, and keep to it as closely as possible. You should try to have as many meals together, sitting down together, as possible. This will pay off in family relations and in your kids feeling loved and secure (which will make them easier to live with and better people overall). In general, if kids know that there are consistent patterns for when to wake up, get dressed, have breakfast, etc., all the way through lights out at night, life will be much easier for all concerned.
• Chores: each of the kids over the age of about 3 should have a morning and evening chore. Or at least that's how we survived. :) We put together chore wheels so that the kids rotated things like washing the breakfast dishes, gathering the laundry, sweeping the kitchen floor, etc. - your list will depend on what needs to be done each morning and evening (see consistency above). We also had a separate list for Saturday chores in which we all cleaned house together.
• Take time for you and your wife. At times my wife and my "dates" would be a walk around the block after the kids were in bed. It's all we could afford (a big date was going window-shopping at Ikea :) ). But even that was a help. The real important part is to remember that it was just you and your spouse before the kids arrived, and it'll be just the two of you after they're gone too.

Roughly, yes, most people spend their 20% time on their regular work, but perhaps not in the way you might think.

It’s important to understand that for most teams 20% time isn’t a written accounting of hours you can save or spend at will. Instead, in most of Google it’s actually more of an understanding that it is perfectly ok to work on a project of your own choosing, outside of your regular responsibilities, as long as it was clear that your priority is on your main job. While most people don’t have literal 20% projects, they do incorporate this understanding into their work—they use this flexibility to work on a side project that others may see as a lower priority, or to participate in cross-organization “citizenship” activities that make working at Google better for everyone, like serving on a Hiring Committee, writing “Testing on the Toilet” episodes, coordinating Tech Talks, etc. Having the freedom to work on some things on the side that you enjoy makes your regular job, and the whole environment, feel more fun and creative.

There are some folks who spend one day a week working on something they hope will become the next Gmail—the outside world’s idea of what a “20% project” is… but for most people, “20% time” just looks like having some flexibility in how you spend your time.

This is a great question, and one that so many parents struggle with all the time, myself included. There’s no real easy nor equal answer for every parent, but I’ll share with you how I balance mine.

In my family, I’ve always been the one that has handled the family running around. I have a 15 year old, that, when she was between the ages of 4–8, I would take to dance classes two days per week. I was fortunate with her because we only lived a couple of blocks from where she took the classes, and they were always scheduled for well after when school was over.

Now, my current 8 year old is a different story. For she is a cheerleader, both for youth football and competitive. The youth isn’t a problem so much, but where we run into issues is with her competitive practice schedule. For her, the school bus drops her off at 4. She basically then has a half hour to eat and wind down before we have to get her ready for practice. This is two nights per week, and if I’m being honest, it’s not always fun.

Trust me, there have been times with both of them when I just wanted to keep them home from practices on multiple occasions, but, we figure that because we are paying good money for her to participate, I have to get her motivated and to practice within an hour after she gets home from school.

Additionally, there are times when I have felt worn down by being the kids taxi, and trying to maintain a healthy relationship with them otherwise. However, when I look at all of the responsibility that comes along with having kids and active ones at that, I remind myself that this won’t last forever, and I try and treasure every moment.

Short story: when my 8 year old first started in cheer two years ago, one of her coaches commented to me that she wished her dad would have taken more of an active role, like I have, when she was young and in cheer herself. So, that tells me that I’m alright, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my kids. It’s worth my time, and I hope theirs as well.

I laugh when I see comments like this that are obviously not from mothers.

Mothers are in love with their children, as though they are their very own flesh and blood, BECAUSE THEY ARE!

It is indescribable.

If is quite astounding that the only labour required, a mother's labour, isn't listed as having any value but exists as her debt.

The centers that gain custody, daycares schools, have set up a supply and demand for children's time as product. But these custody transfers would not occur if the mother was not forced to choose survival over motherhood or her own imprisonment for not surrendering custody.

I suspect if schools and daycares didn’t exist, children and mothers would not experience such harassment. The schools and daycares exist to compete with her for custody of her own child. The schools and daycares receive loans against her children’s time not yet served, let that sink in.

NEITHER HAVE INVESTMENT IN HER OR HER CHILD but lay in wait for her to step into the trap forcing her to surrender.

In the 1970’s when I started my working career it was normal and acceptable to put in a few extra minutes or hours on the job if the tasks required it. Our employers were grateful for the loyalty and our jobs were pretty secure. As a matter of fact, I began working in one of Canada’s big five banks and those jobs were considered “cast iron”.

However, over time, the attitude of employers changed drastically. The “bottom line” became everything. If letting a couple of loyal employees go increased the bottom line, then off you go. If denying raises for a year or two increased the bottom line then “you are free to look elsewhere”.

So in view of this new attitude of employers to their staff, staff came to realize that any extra effort on their part to benefit the employer would not be recognized or rewarded. So I would say these days most experienced employees are out the door on the dot.

Loyalty is a two way street.

Its an excellent question Elaine thanks for asking it.

In all honesty my short response would be with great difficulty!

On a more serious note I’d begin by saying “Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize.

A focus on one area at the expense of others only leads to imbalance which in turn leads to disharmony, neglect and possible breakdown.

The truth is each and every one of us needs balance in life.

We all have but 24 hours in any given day, what we do with those hours ultimately determines the quality of our life.

We begin by asking ourselves whats most important?

Do we live to work? or work to live?

Are we living, or simply going through the motions, or running on what I call cruise control? Remember theres a vast difference between living and surviving.

Most of us need to work in order to live, but too many of us are engaged in activities that dont align with our passion and gifts, this turns work into toil as opposed to being labor.

A means to an ends, with a focus on renumeration as opposed to taking joy and pride in regard to what we do or produce over the course of any given day.

Ultimately we need to value what we do in order to appreciate both the time and energy spent on producing it.

One leads to contentment the other frustration. One leads to a sense of pride and an ability to rest after a hard days work, the other, only weariness with the promise of no relief, just more drudgery to follow.

What are I saying here? Life balance begins with finding that niche where you belong as an individual. Identifying with a role where your passion and gifts can be fully utilized, not left on the shelf.

If we’re to live at our best, then we must first be at our best.

Commit to a role that provides you with both the time and flexibility to enjoy both the social activities that fill up your emotional tank and the family activities to see you stay strong as a family unit.

Enough families have been sacrificed on the corporate altar already, you cant afford yours to be one of them.

Plan, commit and follow through. Let me coin a phrase, if you dont play together you wont stay together. Good intentions mean little if you allow distractions to redefine your calendar.

Somethings have to be non-negotiable.

Find out what works for you then continue to engage in those activities that lift you up, activities that give you energy and peace as opposed to those that drain you.

Ultimately you're in charge so make the most of those 24 hours, after all each day gone is one you can never get back.

All the best to you!

You know what? You are overthinking about your personal life and it unable you to focus on your professional life. So, keeping it short, I'll suggest

# Communicate with your husband and seek his support. It is good that he is supportive. So, if he can help you to manage the household chores, then I guess it will reduce your burden slightly.

# Communicate with your maids and direct them on weekends to keep every year in a good state. If you do it once, then they can do it on their own for the rest of the days.

# Focus on your career. When you are in office, focus on work and when you are in house, focus on your married life. If you do like this, trust me you can find it easy to manage both. But, initially you will find it difficult because constantly the household problems will disturb you. But, you need to focus on your professional area. In fact, I'll say that talk to your husband about it too and seek his inputs to improve the career life. It will help you a lot.

# Don't think much about your relatives or neighbors or so. Because most of the time, most of these people only find flaws in you and your work but won't give you improvement suggestions. So, don't give a damn about them.

# You need to understand and accept the fact that things not going to change overnight. It will take time. So, keep doing efforts and experience the change.

# Stay happy and spend small but quality time with your husband. It will emotionally and mentally make you strong and happy. And, when someone is happy, he/she used to be more productive.

Apart from that, marriage is that challenge which can't be solve independently. And, that's why there used to be two person as a team to deal with it. So, enjoy the challenge.

You Can Do It. And, You Can Believe THAT!

Hope this helps. Thank you!

Work/life balance tend to vary between projects. Projects like Android which have hard deadlines dictated by competitors and holiday shopping seasons, tend to be more stressful. But those things aside, once you hit L6, you are expected to be a leader, and to be a multiplier for your team.

You have to learn to share your knowledge, mentor newer engineers so they become better and more self sufficient. That is really the only way to manage your workload and juggle all the projects you are running without collapsing under the workload. Basically, you have to learn to trust your people and to give them room to explore, to fail, to learn and to get better. If you don't do that, they will continue to depend on you to hand hold them through every situation, and you will find it increasingly more difficult to scale your influence and productivity.

Its a challenge! :-)

My answer will be general because I lack a lot of specific info, but here are a few tips:
Families manage. Its a fact. Some do better then others. Some find it harder with just two kids then other families with four kids or more!

I like the basketball analogy: with one child we thought it was tough. we were two on one. with two kids we found it hard. one on one. We realized one child was so "easy". With three kids we had to go zone defence. two kids were suddenly a "treat"...

more seriously, the parent at home works hard. its tough managing a home, driving kids all around, helping them out with homework and hopefully doing something else. We try helping out so each of us has at least some time to himself.

We make it a rule to keep a little time for working on our relationship on a regular basis.

We make sure all kids help out, even a little. They grow up used to sharing the workload and as they do their help is more significant. (my kids are 13/5, 11/5, 9, 4).

Things tend to get easier as they grow, even though compexity increases.

If you are lucky you can get help from parents. (we don't).

It is very important to give each of them a little private time with parents. that way they know they are important and are more helpful when you need some help. on weekends one of you can take three of them to the park while the other parent gives the remaining child the attention he needs.

If time is too short you may need to adopt time management methods from work, manage your time and make a better use of it even at home. plan and keep your home schedule and stick to it. living with an organized schedule helps. if for example you go food shopping every other day, try to shop only two or three times a week, combine shopping excurtions...