[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How can I best assist my wife with a career ...
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Ask HN: How can I best assist my wife with a career transition?
Some background first: I've been a software engineer for ~7 years
now. I have a decently paying job, but we're definitely in the
first base stretch of home ownership and have 2 children (~1 and ~4
years old). My wife has a strong academic background in pedagogy
and LOVES teaching high school, but with the pandemic teaching has
really affected her relationship with our girls due to the sheer
amount of work being dumped on her. Teacher and admin attrition at
her school was suffering terribly and it was leading to her being
forced to pick either continuing to work as a teacher and sacrifice
all of her time with our kids or figure something else out. I was
in awe of my wife's capacity for work and the number of plates she
can keep spinning while still getting the highest teacher
evaluation scores at her school... Only to be met with blanks
stares when asked for assistance or any sort of compensation or
promotion for the amount of work she was picking up. So she left.
After some reflection, we're both worried that teaching in general
is at a place where most schools will be similar. On top of this,
she originally went into teaching thinking that I'd take mornings
(get the kids ready and to school/ daycare) and she'd get
afternoons since schools are usually out ~3pm. But since the
pandemic school hours continue to stretch, further cutting down on
what little time she can be with our children. So, back to my
question: She's at a crossroads, but my professional experience
doesn't overlap much and most of my connections are not adjacent to
education or instructional design. I'm poking my network and
friends and family, but it's pretty difficult to find anyone
willing to give her a chance outside of education. My gut is that
she needs to talk with people because throwing resumes into the
void isn't going to work if you're switching industries and don't
have the right key words. (Edited this to make it more clear): So,
I'm looking for advice regarding how to get through to people who
are currently passing over her resumes and cover letters. I think
if she could get someone to talk to her, they'd realize she's a
strong candidate. Also, if there are significant others who have
been in my position, any advice on what I can do on my end to help
would be appreciated.
Author : bluesroo
Score : 34 points
Date : 2022-04-14 18:01 UTC (5 hours ago)
| mrtrombone wrote:
| I run a software dev/ digital services company and my take on
| this is for her to consider retraining in a business analyst or
| change management role. - These require very complementary skills
| to teaching, - good fundamentals training (iiba, acmp) is usually
| private, short and no too expensive as opposed to going back to
| college - the market demand is massive (at least in NZ) These
| kind of roles fly under the radar in startup world but it's a
| huge, well paying field in enterprise, local govt etc
| sbate1987 wrote:
| jvalencia wrote:
| Look at career opportunities at bloomboard.com
| tehalex wrote:
| I work at an ed-tech and most of our non-technical (sales,
| curriculum, customer success, etc) have a background in
| education. It's valuable for those roles to have education
| experience and it's a natural fit/transition for people looking
| to get out of education itself.
|
| However, *many* teachers want to get out of education for the
| reasons you have described, so unfortunately here it's quite
| competitive even for relatively entry level positions on that
| side of the house.
|
| It might be worth considering applying to education companies
| specifically, which would give some corporate/business experience
| that might enable a future pivot elsewhere for her.
|
| My brother and sister-in law (not married to each other but just
| by coincidence) also both work for tutoring/supplemental private
| education companies, but more on the
| business/leadership/curriculum side of things. Because of the
| nature of the job, their hours are unusual (late starts, not
| Monday-Friday), but otherwise seems like a better environment
| than public education. I know both of their companies hire public
| school teachers for instructional roles, but I don't know what
| the advancement paths are like.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Kids are 1 and 4. That is tough, but they won't be that young
| forever. Can she scale back to working as an occasional sub for a
| few years, and then go back into full time teaching down the road
| when the kids are much older? Sounds like she loves teaching.
| Even in a high COL area that should be doable for a few years
| possibly? Unless you are in the bay area.
| tptacek wrote:
| Is she talking to people in the tech industry about roles, or in
| a bunch of different industries? People here probably have sharp
| feedback about how to cut through resume screens in tech, but
| less confidence about other fields.
|
| In recruiting processes where the listed contact is an HR or
| recruiting person, cold resume/cover-letter pitches are tough,
| because the person you're talking to actually doesn't know enough
| to promote someone who doesn't fit the profile they've been told
| to look for. If that's what's happening, the common advice is to
| hunt down other people in the company and talk to them directly.
| tptacek wrote:
| Serious question: what's your goal with this post? Are you hoping
| to get ideas and then references for places where someone with an
| academic background and a career in teaching might move to next,
| especially in the tech industry? Or are you more interested in
| the dynamics of spouses helping each other with their careers?
|
| I ask because you might get more useful answers if you clarify a
| bit; the post is fine!
| bluesroo wrote:
| I've edited the end of the post, thanks for the feedback.
| You're right that I can kinda mushing things together.
| twomoonsbysurf wrote:
| xwdv wrote:
| Why not just let her be a stay at home mom and put this whole
| career thing to rest?
|
| You can afford it, and having a parent that can be around 24/7
| with the kids is immensely valuable.
|
| A teaching career isn't going to contribute much to your family
| unit.
| bluesroo wrote:
| Because we both have career ambitions. Also, we have financial
| goals that we'd like to make regarding our home and future
| schooling for our children.
| xrikcus wrote:
| That's an interesting reaction. My read of the post was that he
| wants to help his wife do what she wants to do. Your read
| appears to be that he is forcing her to do something when she
| really wants to stay at home.
|
| Do you naturally assume that all mothers want to stay at home
| with their children full time?
| sethammons wrote:
| Former high school teacher turned developer back in 2011. I had a
| small portfolio of work I had done (some for free and some
| charged). My resume dropped non-relevant work (so long to the
| teaching, construction, financial planning, insurance, and
| graphic design entries). I had some light project work at the
| end. A recruiter sent me to a few places and I managed to get
| through the interview at one. Doubled my teaching salary and
| never looked back.
|
| My spouse was supportive of the extra time I had to put in to
| studying concepts and building toy things.
| conductr wrote:
| Independent/private schools could be an option for her. The
| teachers at my son's school seem to get the best of all things;
| work life balance, compensation, resources, etc. I feel they
| navigated Covid more thoughtfully than my local public schools as
| well and were very proactive towards planning for different
| scenarios that could play out. By most accounts I've heard the
| public schools displayed a low level of leadership and strategic
| planning to get ahead of even the most likely scenarios which
| caused nearly ever stakeholder a degree of stress. Probably
| teachers above all.
| kangman wrote:
| my wife is a private highschool teacher and is going through a
| similar situation with the OP's wife.
| dwater wrote:
| Most private schools pay teachers less than public schools in
| the same locale and have overall worse benefits as well.
| fhood wrote:
| Seconded, the main draw is a better work environment and free
| tuition.
| brimble wrote:
| Assuming the school's good (the majority of private schools
| aren't, really) that is absolutely one of the main perks.
| Free or reduced tuition can end up, effectively, being
| _most_ of your compensation, especially if you have more
| than one kid going.
| conductr wrote:
| Interesting. A case were my observation doesn't match reality
| at large. Where I live the private school teachers seem
| relatively well compensated. But I live in a mecca of sorts
| for private schools (Dallas's "private school corridor")
| jonbrennecke wrote:
| My wife is in a similar situation. She's a middle-school teacher
| at a public school in a state that doesn't value public
| education. While she still loves teaching, her experience mirrors
| your's in regards to overwork, attrition, etc. For a job that
| should get off at 3pm, she routinely works all evening on
| grading, lesson planning and other admin tasks.
|
| We also live in an area where teachers are poorly compensated
| relative to the cost of living. I'm well paid as a software
| engineer, which just makes her feel worse about the value of her
| career in teaching when she works longer hours than I do.
|
| We've talked about her leaving teaching at the end of the school
| year with the plan to get her PhD so she can teach at a college
| level.
| brimble wrote:
| Damn, how many of us are there?
|
| I'm trying to get mine to switch to project or product
| management because she'd be awesome at it and has, for years,
| kept taking on big projects at schools she's worked at (think:
| leading teams to create and implement new educational systems
| from scratch, running various extracurriculars, et c) and
| basically doing one or both of those roles, with great success,
| while enjoying it. I'm like "you could have half the stress and
| double or more the pay". She's semi-open to it and I'm
| continuing to wear her down, but she's likely not going back to
| teaching next year regardless (may just take a year off--the
| last four or five years have been _really_ rough)
| joshmlewis wrote:
| Same boat here! My wife is leaving her virtual K5 teacher job
| when school is over in June. She just got her masters in
| instructional design and has been looking at roles like what
| has been discussed in this thread.
| bluesroo wrote:
| Wow, that sounds like a carbon copy of the conversation we've
| been having my household.
|
| Good luck to you guys
| bluesroo wrote:
| It's pretty crazy. My wife went the grad school route on the
| way here, not sure there's any willpower left for more of it
| haha. Good luck to you guys
| jonbrennecke wrote:
| Yeah my wife is a math teacher, and getting a PhD in Math is
| no joke. I honestly have no idea what this process will look
| like. But we don't have kids yet so it's now or never to make
| big life changes haha
| BadCookie wrote:
| A more likely path would be getting a doctorate in
| education or math education, but I'm not sure whether
| either of those would be helpful to her.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Yeah that would be quite the achievement.
|
| The distance between math teacher and math professor is
| vast.
| pinewurst wrote:
| May I suggest looking at corporate sales enablement/internal
| education? Usually super nice people, well paid, not especially
| stress-y (at least in any healthy organization).
| Wistar wrote:
| Also HR positions. I know of several teachers who have gone
| into HR.
| bluesroo wrote:
| She's been focusing on those types of roles, but I worry she's
| not getting through due to not having experience with specific
| tools they use (e.g. Adobe Captivate). It feels to me like if
| she can just get someone on the phone she'd be a very strong
| candidate, but that first step is hard without knowing people.
| mxuribe wrote:
| Small, minor suggestion: maybe there are free, open source
| tools that are equivalent to what your wife might be expected
| to know...you being a techi can spin up some of these free
| tools, and she can gain some - though minimal -
| experience...and in her resume, or maybe cover letter tie her
| experience to these free tools as "similar to the industry
| standard set of tools...", etc. This helps because it inserts
| the keywords of industry standard tools, enabling the
| automated scripts to help get her on HR-system search
| results...but its not lying since the resume/CV states her
| experience is adjacent or something...and by then maybe a
| sympathetic hiring person might give her a shot? Obviously,
| this is a tiny tactic part of a greater set of strategies
| that she couild employ. ;-)
| tomas_nort wrote:
| bluesroo wrote:
| That's a good idea, thanks. We'll poke around and see what
| we can find.
| pinewurst wrote:
| I was actually thinking more about designing/teaching
| enablement classes - often live in many places - rather than
| using various goofy design apps for canned lessons. :)
| twunde wrote:
| Many colleges/universities have career offices that offer
| services for alumni switching careers. It's at least worth
| reaching out and seeing if they can help set up informational
| interviews if nothing else. If your wife went to grad school for
| her educational license, it's also worth reaching out to them as
| well. Other avenues to explore are to talk to members of your
| church/synagogue/whatever if you belong to one, and/or talk to
| parents of former students.
|
| Other ideas: - Potentially sell curriculums, etc on
| teacherspayteachers or alternatives - Apply for jobs with
| education-industry companies like Scholastic, ed-tech companies
|
| Best of luck!
| jeffwask wrote:
| I have a friend who bootcamped her way from teacher to software
| engineer.
| bluesroo wrote:
| Haha we've talked about this, but her interest couldn't be
| farther away from software. I have another family member doing
| something similar right now.
| Xeronate wrote:
| I just want to say I think it's good you're supportive of
| that. As I'm sure you know, getting into software for the
| wrong reasons ends very poorly.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| Have you considered that she wants to spend most of her time with
| the children rather than working? Maybe she does not know how to
| say it to you or herself but she could be looking for an excuse
| to move into the full time role of a mother. I would find a
| gentle way to introduce the option to her and even offer
| encouragement to see if she bites at it.
| neoeno wrote:
| Software engineering education is a good job market right now and
| (I believe) has better pay and working conditions than public
| sector teaching. If she's up for that path, she could learn some
| technical skills and then teach them.
|
| I'm probably the wrong country (UK) to help directly but I lead a
| team of technical educators and happy to have a chat about the
| path of useful. Email in bio.
| mettamage wrote:
| When I just graduated CS I started teaching a bootcamp. I was
| one of the best teachers and some of my students are having
| better careers than I do as a software engineer.
|
| If I've learned anything: technical skills need to be medium,
| teaching skills need to be high. I also observed about 5
| teachers (sitting in on their classes with their permission)
| and have seen teachers that have:
|
| - high programming, high teaching skils (e.g. compiler
| construction, web-design, SIMD stuff, reverse engineering with
| x64, PHP, C++, trees with cycles, it didn't matter, he could do
| it)
|
| - high web dev, low teaching skills (he got fired)
|
| - high web dev, medium teaching skills, from a macho culture
| (he got fired, as I come from a more egalitarian/feminine
| culture)
|
| - medium web dev, high teaching skills (he aced it)
|
| - Myself
| jaylaal wrote:
| Beyond her own professional search, I'd suggest you making more
| time to be with the kids and handle household crap that she might
| be dealing with. Take things off her plate so she can recover
| from her previous situation and reflect and act on her future
| path. In my experience, this will be hard for you because you'll
| necessarily do less at work and have less time to improve
| yourself professionally and personally outside of work, but the
| payoff in stress reduction for your wife should be worth it in
| short- and medium-terms until she gets re-settled.
|
| Background: Software engineer for over 15 years; twin 3 year-olds
| at home; wife is a teacher.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| It will be hard, but there's ways to balance this at work -
| when my wife was attending a bootcamp, my work was flexible
| enough to let me change my hours to work early mornings and
| evenings on more asynchronous tasks, while I took the main 9-5
| hours to handle childcare.
|
| Everything else suffered, of course - forget improving myself,
| I had little time for basic maintenance! - but she graduated
| from bootcamp, got a job, and now has a much better career
| trajectory than at her previous career.
| bluesroo wrote:
| This is something I like to think I'm decent about. We tend to
| have a fairly decent work split, but you're right that picking
| up a bit more would probably be a good thing. It's a bit of a
| balance because having something productive helps her feel
| better about the job search dragging on.
| 1auralynn wrote:
| Go into curriculum development. Work for Wiley or Pearson or
| someone like that.
|
| Edit: As far as how to break into curriculum development, she
| should highlight any of her work adapting or implementing
| cutting-edge educational content. Or play up her management
| skills if she was on any committees or pushed things through at
| her school. Maybe take up freelance writing or editing? Start a
| blog and accumulate enough high quality content there to have
| something to point to
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Does she want to continue with education/learning, or do
| something else entirely?
|
| If she wants to continue in education, a good next step might be
| a Customer Success role for a company whose customers are
| schools/districts, e.g. edtech and curriculum companies.
| bluesroo wrote:
| Education would be her preferred landing spot, it just doesn't
| seem viable for the work/life balance she's aiming for.
|
| Customer success roles are definitely on the radar, just
| getting through the resume filter has been tough.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I'm sorry if I'm just having a hard time understanding - what
| specifically is your wife looking for? It looks like she's not
| looking to remain a teacher, but I don't think I understand what
| types of jobs she's applying for.
|
| Regardless, I work for TeachersPayTeachers, and _a lot_ of my
| colleagues are former teachers themselves; I 'd recommend taking
| a look there if she's not looking to remain a teacher, and you're
| welcome to contact me with any questions
| [deleted]
| jwilber wrote:
| Education design is a decent area she can potentially pursue from
| a non-tech skills standpoint (interviews probably contingent on a
| masters degree). Plenty of tech companies hiring in that area.
|
| For a complete career switch, recruiters are also in very high-
| demand at the moment.
| alistairSH wrote:
| What area are you in? Local to me (DC metro), I know about a
| half-dozen former teachers who transitioned into corporate
| L&D/instruction/etc (all prior to COVID, so maybe the market has
| changed). Most of them had Masters degrees in education. Can't
| tell you what they did to get interviews, but it was definitely a
| viable career path in the 2010s.
|
| Edit - my wife made a massive career change about a decade ago.
| But, different industry and background. No college, but worked to
| director-level at her then-employer. She knew she wanted to
| change, so got them to pay for her MS degree, worked the required
| time after, and found another job.
|
| My part was just being extra helpful with our son - more of the
| driving to sports and things like that. Helping more around the
| kitchen. And also serving as editor while she working on the MS -
| it was an adjustment doing academic writing after many years of
| corporate jargon.
| bluesroo wrote:
| It's helpful to know that the stuff she's applying for has
| worked for others you knew! She's also looking for instructor-
| adjacet corporate stuff. Getting the interviews is definitely
| the hard part right now.
|
| We're pretty evenly split on most housework, but I agree that
| picking up some extra to help out would be good.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Another option, assuming she wants to leave education behind
| completely, might be some sort of HR generalist role. Might
| have to start at the bottom, which could sting a bit at
| first.
|
| Long-term, she could aim for something like an HR Business
| Partner (HRBP) - they are often equivalent to senior
| manager/director/AVP. They seem to do a bit of everything,
| frequently with senior leaders in the business unit they
| support and/or senior external consultants.
| bigthymer wrote:
| Does she just cold apply or does she do some networking first
| then does an apply w/referral?
| fhood wrote:
| If money isn't important, finding a good private school might
| provide a much more pleasant alternative. It may not be the most
| morally satisfying thing to transfer a good teacher from public
| to private education, but I went to public elementary and
| highschool and a private middle school and the contrast is
| shocking. Small class sizes, vastly better behaved kids, and a
| social hierarchy dictated in part by academic success, as well as
| much nicer school supplies and transportation, largely funded
| through donations from the wealthier families.
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