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Comment by somethoughts | Hacker News Reader

Haha - I hear you - its a treat if you are single or a DINK (dual income no kids) and need some solo social time. Especially if Monday and Friday are travel days.

But if you have a family you actually like/love - then a full week away really is a non-starter. Especially if its Sunday night and Saturday morning travel. School plays and parent teacher conferences don't get planned based on the AirBNB week long retreat schedule.

And if you are in a dual income family with the stereotypical two kids - if both of you guys are in similar work situations - then on your "on" week - you're gonna be the one doing 2 school pickups and all after school driving.

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I worked with plenty of family people (and been the family person) who could find two weeks per year in exchange of complete WFH flexibility the rest of 50 weeks of the year. Especially since steps were taken to accomodate them and not schedule things in the middle of "parent-teacher conferences" and "school plays".

I also did notice that there are plenty of parents who will blame their children for things they themselves don't want to do and not be honest about it. It's not the children that are at fault there though.

In the end, there are plenty of WFH jobs that don't need on-site time at all so you can pick and choose. It's a great market for an engineer to be in now.

You don't seem to realize there are many jobs that parents do which require more travel than 1 week per quarter.

Surely the trade off of spending 50 weeks a year with your kids (when they're home sick, school holidays, etc) you wouldn't be able to with a normal job is worth 2 weeks of not being at home a year?

I definitely feel you on the Sun/Sat travel and I'd push back against that.

Although there are sometimes reasons for it (e.g. community-related conferences that tend to span a weekday and a weekend day), for the most part I sorta resent conferences that force weekend travel. Sometimes I want to take the weekend for myself, but I want it to be my choice.

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