The Tech Parent's Dilemma: Home All Day, Present for None of It
My son asked me today why I’m always on my computer. Fair question from a seven-year-old who doesn’t understand why Dad’s work doesn’t end when he leaves the office. Mostly, it’s because I don’t leave the office anymore.
It deserves a straight answer, starting with an admission: working from home has given me more hours near my kids and fewer hours actually with them.
The promise remote work made
Remember when remote work was sold as more time with family? More flexibility, better work-life balance, no commute eating the evening.
For some people, maybe that’s how it turned out. For me, it blurred every boundary that used to exist. The commute was annoying, but it was also a hard stop. Walking out of a building ended the workday whether I’d finished or not. Now nothing ends it except my own discipline, and my discipline is not as good as a door.
What a normal day actually looks like
Here’s the honest version.
Morning. A quick standup while I’m making breakfast. Andriel is telling me about trains. I’m nodding, but I’m watching Slack.
Afternoon. “Dad, can you play?” “After this meeting, bud.” The meeting runs long. There’s another meeting after it.
Evening. Dinner as a family. My phone buzzes. Production issue. “I need to check this real quick.” Twenty minutes later, I’m still checking.
Night. The kids are asleep. I’m catching up on the work I missed during the day because I was… supposedly present with my kids?
I’m neither fully at work nor fully with my family. I’m stuck in a limbo where I’m failing at both, and the worst part is that it looks like availability from the outside. I’m home. I’m in the next room. But being in the next room on a call is not the same as being there.
The guilt is constant. When I’m working, I feel I should be with my kids. When I’m with my kids, I feel I should be working. That loop is unsustainable. Something has to give, and if I don’t choose what, the choice gets made for me, usually in favour of whoever is loudest. Work is almost always louder.
Why tech makes this worse
Tech culture glorifies the always-on mentality. Async communication across time zones. Global teams. “Flexible hours” that in practice mean “work whenever, but also work all the time.”
I’ve seen LinkedIn posts celebrating people replying to emails at 11 PM or taking calls on holiday. We’ve gamified productivity to the point where rest feels like failure. Then we act surprised that burnout is everywhere.
There’s also a trap specific to people who build systems for a living. We’re used to being the person who can fix it. When something breaks at 7 PM, the instinct isn’t “is this mine to fix tonight?” but “I can probably sort this in ten minutes.” It’s never ten minutes, and the cost doesn’t show up in any incident report. It shows up at the dinner table.
The irony is that we’d never accept this design in a platform. A system with no defined operating hours, no on-call rotation, and every alert routed to one person is not resilient. It’s a single point of failure. I’ve been running my evenings like that.
The rules aren’t just mine anymore
One thing worth saying for Australian readers: switching off is no longer just a personal preference. The Fair Work Act’s right to disconnect has applied to employees of businesses with 15 or more employees since 26 August 2024, and it extended to small business employees (fewer than 15 employees) on 26 August 2025. Employees can refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact from their employer, or from a third party such as a client, outside working hours unless that refusal is unreasonable. It covers national-system employees; if you’re a contractor or run your own practice, the boundary is a contract term you negotiate, not a statutory right. Whether a refusal is unreasonable depends on factors like the reason for the contact, your role and level of responsibility, your caring responsibilities and whether you’re paid to be available. If you’re on call and compensated for it, the right doesn’t make that evening yours.
The law won’t fix my habits. A lot of out-of-hours contact is invited by being visibly online. But it changes the framing. Protecting the evening is now a recognised boundary. If you lead a team, it’s worth asking whether your own 9 PM messages are quietly telling everyone else that the boundary doesn’t apply here.
What I’m trying (poorly)
Hard boundaries. Phone goes in a drawer during dinner. Computer shuts down at 6 PM. No Slack after 8 PM. Slack lets you set a notification schedule so notifications pause outside the hours you choose, which takes willpower out of the equation. Do I follow all of this perfectly? No. But I’m trying.
Calendar blocking. I block “school pickup” and “family time” on my calendar as if they were client meetings. Because they are meetings, and they get the same respect.
Saying no. This is the hard one. There’s always another project, another opportunity, another thing that seems important in the moment.
Being honest. With my kids: “Daddy’s work is taking too much time right now. I’m working on that.” With clients: “I’m not available for calls after 6 PM.” With myself: “You’re not going to solve this tonight. Let it wait.”
What Andriel is teaching me
Having a son with autism has forced me to be more present. He needs routine. He needs predictability. He needs me there, actually there, not physically present while mentally in a meeting.
He’s taught me that my presence is the gift, not my productivity.
Lessons I keep relearning
Your kids won’t remember your code. They’ll remember whether you showed up to their school events, whether you played with them, whether you listened.
Your career will wait. The urgent email can usually wait an hour. The production issues that genuinely can’t wait are rare, and those should have an on-call process behind them, not a parent at the dinner table.
Fix the single point of failure, not just the habit. If every alert lands on you, willpower won’t hold for long. Agree in writing with your team or client what counts as a genuine after-hours incident, and put that on a rotation so it isn’t always the same person. Then route Slack and email escalation through the on-call channel instead of your DMs, so “can you just have a quick look?” goes to whoever is on call tonight, not whoever replied last time.
A hard boundary isn’t always the right answer. If the team is genuinely understaffed, or your role is paid partly for being reachable, a flat “never after 6 PM” either won’t hold or isn’t fair to the people covering for you. In that case, make the availability explicit instead of open-ended: a defined on-call window with a start and end time, an availability allowance or time in lieu for the evenings you carry the phone, and a named backup for the nights you don’t. An agreed, paid window is something you can plan family time around. Vague “just be around” expectations are not.
Boundaries are necessary, even when they feel selfish. Taking care of yourself and protecting time with family isn’t selfish. It’s essential.
No one on their deathbed wishes they’d worked more. I know it’s a cliché. It’s a cliché because it’s true.
Four commitments for this year
- True presence. When I’m with my kids, I’m not half-listening while checking Slack. If Andriel is telling me about trains, he gets all of me.
- An end-of-day shutdown ritual. Close the laptop, write tomorrow’s priorities, walk away.
- Weekend protection. Unless something is actually on fire, work stays closed on weekends.
- Regular check-ins. With my wife: “Am I disappearing into work again?” With my kids: “Am I spending enough time with you?”
The check-ins matter most. I’m a poor judge of my own presence; the people at the dinner table are excellent judges of it. I’ve written before about building on foundations instead of chasing resolutions, and this is the same idea. A few rules I can actually keep, and people who’ll tell me when I don’t.
Will I be perfect? No. But I need to be better than I’ve been.
To my fellow tech parents
If you’re reading this and feeling called out, good. Me too.
We chose careers in technology because we solve problems. Somehow we’ve failed to solve the most important one: being present for the people we love.
The work will always be there. Our kids won’t be this age again. Act accordingly.