Jenni Snyder is a Lead Database Administrator at Yelp and a mother of a 15 month old daughter.
She is really passionate about her job. As you would gather from her LinkedIn profile, she has over a decade of experience as a DBA, but she just recently became a mother. I had an opportunity to talk to her about experiences as a professional mother.
I have broken this post into two pieces. In this one we talk how she prepared herself for this responsibility without letting her career fall behind. In the follow up post we talk about how she manages her work responsibility with a child at home.
Q: How did you prepare yourself for the change? What books/blogs/advice/quotes do you remember that motivated you during the time?
- Networking can be really helpful. Most of my friends are in the education and healthcare industry. I didn’t have (at that time) a lot of women in technology in my circle.
- I found the Motherboard podcast, and it was really helpful. Kathryn Rotondo interviews moms at startups about their experiences while pregnant, on leave, returning, and once settled in, and it helped give me a lot of perspective.
- Also I had a valuable experience at Yelp years before I became pregnant. Our CEO, Jeremy, had presented for our company a fireside chat with Mariam Naficy, founder of Minted.com and one of our board members. He asked her questions about the maternity leaves she took, and how she returned to work. It was the first time I had gotten to hear a woman’s experience around taking leave from and returning to a startup, and it was incredibly valuable.
- I have learned a ton from the Yelp Moms group, and encourage any woman to reach out to those around her and build a network for learning from each other and support.
Q: Do you have some advice on how to choose a daycare/pre-school/baby sitter? When to choose a nanny or daycare?
- It is a very personal choice. After taking a “Choosing Infant Care” class at Bananas in Oakland, I found my baby sitter through Care.com. I feel so fortunate to have her. She takes my daughter to the Library, Parks, various activities, and texts me with updates and pictures through the day.
- Fortunately, I’ve had the experience of interviewing and hiring before. That experience helped me a lot when I was interviewing nannies. I think I did 15 phone interviews, had 4 people over to meet me in person, and shortlisted two. My husband met with the last two candidates, and our nanny was the obvious choice at the end.
- I highly recommend Children’s Council in SF, or Bananas in the East Bay as resources for choosing childcare. They both have classes and offer childcare referral services.
- In general, a nanny is an employee you manage. They’re in your home, and it’s worth it for everyone to think about how you want to handle it.
Q: How did you find out about the various benefits that you were entitled to as an expecting mother? How was that experience?
- Yelp has an HR team. At the time of my pregnancy, there was a maternity leave policy and process all women taking leave went through. It was very smooth.
- There are a lot of parents at Yelp, but I was the first woman in the San Francisco Engineering team who was embarking on this journey. Yelp as an organization has been very supportive. Based on the feedback I had for Mother’s room, changes were made almost immediately!
- When I joined after the leave, I was feeling isolated. My manager suggested to start a Yelp Moms group. I co-founded the group, and I feel so happy about it. I have gotten to know so many mothers in our organization through this group.
- This is the amazing things about our Yelp culture, it’s collaborative and friendly.
Q: What advice do you have other women, how to create a healthy environment at home for both your kid and spouse, your relationship and yourself?
Professional moms coming back from leave: Don’t be hard on yourself. It takes time to be an expert. Trying something new is hard. Your code doesn’t compile the first time, it’s ok for there to be some mistakes along the way. At a couple of my new parents classes, I was always told: When you are on an airplane, attendants tell you that oxygen masks will come down on their own if the plane loses cabin pressure. There is the clear instruction: “Please put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.” You can’t be too self-sacrificing. If you don’t take care yourself then you can’t take care of your child. Through the Yelp moms group, I have found so many moms in different verticals within Yelp. I’ve gotten a lot of great insight and advice from them, and have hopefully helped others.
Read on to find out how she juggles between her work and family responsibility and maintains the work-life balance.
Originally published at www.pimothers.com.
