Danny and Rina, Tel Aviv engineers, on how to be a parent in the Dropbox family
Raising a family is a full-time job. Couple that with the demands of a professional career, and parenthood can become downright overwhelming. So at Dropbox, we’ve set out to build a company culture that allows all our team members, including parents, to thrive. Danny Sivan and Rina Artstain, who both work out of our office in Tel Aviv, have found that culture key to their success both at work and home.
Rina has been juggling the balancing act of a new parent for a few years, but she still had to recalibrate her work-life balance in the months after her last child was born. Flexibility in her job eased the transition between the two parts of her life.
“People think you’re Superwoman when you have a child, but that’s not true. It’s nice to have that image, but carving out time for yourself becomes next to impossible when you’re waking up at 5:30 am every morning, coming into work at 7:30, leaving at 3:30 pm and taking care of your kids. I stay up later than I should. My husband is in charge of mornings; he gets all three kids out to school and daycare every day, which allows me to leave early for work. One day a week he comes home early and I ‘get’ to stay at work later than usual, which takes a bit of the pressure off.”
“Having a family and a job can lead to burn out. It’s hard with support, and it’s impossible without. But Dropbox has allowed me to have flex time and a supportive atmosphere — they accommodated my unusual schedule and didn’t expect me to work until late at night. I’ve had to spend less of my energy on things that wear me out.”
Danny ran into challenges unique to the Tel Aviv office. As a father to a 20-month-old son, he had to figure out how he would manage the time he spends with his child with the sometimes unusual hours associated with his work. But that doesn’t stop him from being an involved father, a shift in parenting trends that has become increasingly common in the last few decades.
“Night meetings are sometimes a necessity when talking with teams in the US. My teammates have always worked these meetings around the time that I have with my kid — sometimes that means working from home to save time, and my teammates have always been okay with that. We also get help from both of the grandmas; they pick our son up from daycare twice a week, so we can stay at work until late. It helps a lot!”
“I’m proud of how impressed my teammates are when they find out that I’m a dad, in fact. When we were young, fathers weren’t involved much in raising their kids. But I don’t know how employers can manage if their workplace isn’t supporting parents. In Israel, you can barely find people in their 30s who don’t have children. If you don’t support these people, you’re losing the workforce of a whole generation.”
While raising a family comes with a new set of challenges, we’re looking for solutions. To find out more about how Dropbox supports parents in the workplace, visit dropbox.com/jobs.
