Tools for new parents navigating journalism and tech

And some advice for those who are re-entering work

Keeping your career on some kind of track when you have young children is difficult for everyone — and it comes with particular challenges for parents in the journalism and tech industries, which often involve shift work and unfriendly hours.

In response to huge interest from members, Hacks Hackers London held a workshop in September 2019 for parents navigating tech and journalism careers in the early years of having kids.

This was the first such workshop we’d ever run, and our vision was an event tailored to the requirements of those who needed it most. Evening events can be hard to attend with a tiny baby at home. A weekend workshop would eat into precious time when partners and friends are around to share the load. And daytime events can be all but impossible with a baby or child in tow (small babies need feeding, changing, rocking; older ones need amusement; toddlers need to run and shout.)

So we wanted to meet three main criteria — an event held on a weekday during the day, with childcare available, and that would be in-depth enough that it would be worth parents’ effort to make the journey into central London with buggies and kids in tow.

Making it worthwhile

Key here was the facilitator, and we knew the right person: Jessica Chivers, who had run a workshop I attended last year, just after I’d gone back to work after maternity leave. Jessica has expertise (she runs The Talent Keeper Specialists and has published the book Mothers Work!), and she’s adept at tailoring the content of her workshops to the people there (in this case, the Hacks/Hackers London community).

She also respects peoples’ time, so she packed the day with both affirmation and concrete advice, and gave us the chance to commune through hearing other peoples’ stories (and she’s not afraid to share her own experiences, too.)

We asked Matt Cooke at Google News Initiative to cover Jessica’s fee. GNI has given some funding to Hacks/Hackers London and Matt — who’d been supportive of the idea from the start — came through immediately.

Finding a venue was more of a challenge. We needed somewhere where parents could meet and talk, while their children were looked after and could play in another space. Eventually and happily Liz Hoselitz (our event producer) found Coram’s Fields, which is a great spot for any parents needing to spend time with small kids in Central London. It’s an enclosed park on Guilford Street, and free to enter if you come with a child. (You can’t go in without one). Once inside, there are grass and trees, several playgrounds, a place to buy coffee (essential) and even some animals: goats, chickens and rabbits inhabit one corner of the quad.

The childcare question

Finding affordable childcare wasn’t easy either, and one firm we had booked several months in advance let us down with less than two weeks to go. We were lucky that Bea & Co were able to step in. Their childminders are all actors or people who work in other creative fields, and they can meet in town for short (minimum 2-hour) sessions or come to one’s home.

Since beginning this process, I keep hearing about other situations where childcare is provided, and where it’s conspicuously not. That research led me to the conclusion that all conferences should offer childcare — as some, like PyCon UK, already do. There’s a lot to be said about childcare provision at workplaces but for now, I’ll just link to my colleague Jenny Anderson’s story on adventure-wear brand Patagonia, which has its own onsite childcare and, as of the publication of her piece, has had 100% retention of mothers returning from maternity leave.

Advice for parents re-entering work

Some participants had babies on the way; some were on parental leave with under-ones; and some had more than one small child. Most, but not all, were female. They were a mixture of news journalists and those from specialist publications, techies, and freelancers.

Jessica’s advice was manifold, but here are a few takeaways for the re-entry into the workplace:

• You’re fresh: After a break from one’s job or career, it’s easy to feel like a novice again, or like things have moved on and you’re not in the know. Flip this on its head, Jessica suggested. Because you’ve been out of the game for a while, you’re primed to see things with fresh, unbiased eyes. Your altered perspective is an asset that you can offer your employer.
• Enter in “listening mode”: Instead of bluffing your way through meetings pretending to understand every nuance, or feeling the need to arrive with big ideas, make a virtue of your deep interest in what’s going on. Arrange meetings and tell your colleagues and managers that you’d like to hear all about their recent experiences — Chances are they’re going to enjoy offloading worries and sharing achievements.
• Try not to self-compare: Everyone moves through their career at a different pace. It’s easy to look at contemporaries and worry that you’re achieving less, or less quickly. But Jessica suggested everyone needs to make peace with their own journey, which will have slower and faster sections. When it comes to colleagues, we’re mostly only comparing ourselves with an invented version of someone else’s life anyway. Who knows what’s going on behind the scenes?
• Imagine life as a banquet, she suggested, with delicious things of all kinds laid out before you. Trying to eat everything would quickly make you feel terrible, even though all the food might be good in its own way. The happiest people are those who know what they want to eat and start with that.
• Be intentional. It’s easy to re-enter work feeling trepidacious about how one might be seen, what will be possible and impossible, and whether you’ll encounter discrimination. Jessica suggested that one of the best ways to approach work is to decide how you want it to be and then find a way of presenting that as useful to the company. A need for greater flexibility can be framed as helping you do your best work. Less travel can be framed as doubling down on research. Whatever it is, find an angle that makes it advantageous to both parties. Make the things you need easy to agree to.

“I will definitely be doing things with more intention and focus from now on and I found the exercise about aligning how you want to be perceived vs how people would describe you particularly helpful.”

— Workshop participant, 2019

Next Steps

There was plenty more good advice tailored to the people in the room. (Hopefully, a follow-up blog is coming soon.) We’d love to make this happen more regularly and for more people. Get in touch if you have thoughts — especially if you’re in need of help (maybe we can connect you to the right people) or want to offer it!

Our email is info@hackshackersldn.co.uk.

Want to join Hacks/Hackers London? Check our website or subscribe to our newsletter for future events and info about our guest speakers. You can also watch the talks from previous meetups on our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.