Poetry of Work-Life Balance
By: Peggy Lawless
Tech careers can be stressful and demanding, potentially affecting workers’ productivity, health, and personal lives. HackerRank, a tech company that uses skill-based evaluation to help companies hire qualified programmers, asked Lawless Research to design a study to determine how important work-life balance is to developers.
We asked those who code for a living (software engineers, programmers, and developers) to describe what work-life balance means to them.
Nearly 3,000 developers from around the world gave us their heartfelt answers. Their definitions of work-life balance were eloquent and sincere. They spoke of commitment to their jobs and the need for time and energy for activities outside of work: family, children, friends, self-improvement, exercise, volunteering, vacations, special events, hobbies, traveling, relaxing.
After the study was complete, I asked Johannah Racz Knudson, Lawless Research’s corporate poet laureate, to write a poem inspired by developers’ personal definitions of work-life balance. The result, “Real Ventilation (A Survey Response),” captures the emotional substance of the comments and illustrates the qualitative data’s themes in a succinct and powerful way.
Real Ventilation (A Survey Response)*
Working is a passion, life balance with love
(Birdcall alarm,
showerwater echo,
teakettle scream)
Work is beautiful when we do
it but not if it makes us to do.
(Through the glass and
across the street,
cows graze by a mud puddle.
[black angus pushbutton] They chew
while I dial.)
I prefer to stay human.
(The bus home was crowded.
I stood and held my shopping bags tight,
brown paper softening against my body.
An elderly man with a cane boarded after me.
I could not offer him a seat.)
When a company-expects–
you to stay in and complete a task,
it takes my own self away
from her.
(She points out
cobwebs draped across the wall
[evacuated spiders]. We argue
about dusting and groceries.
Our hair mingles in the shower drain.)
Sorry for my long thoughts.
(I dial a series of numbers [mortal
data], digits corresponding to living beings
within finite spaces. [dinnerplate,
teacup, couchcushion] If they answer,
my voice pierces the finitude. [Wave
collapses to particle, possibility of knowing.])
My children would know me
from more than a photograph.
(I held his small soft hand
between my thumb and finger,
his eyes closed, born [insurance
card] into immediate [timecard] sleep,
still dreaming of the womb.)
I need to spend
as much time with him
as possible so I don’t want
my job to take all
my time and mind.
I need when I come home
to have enough energy
for the rest of the day to spend
with my child and wife.
(Tiny fingers, fingernail moons,
her blue scarf hanging
on the back of the chair,
steam rising from bathwater
[utilitybill])
It is like a state when you can be yourself.
(If I lean to the left
and press my face
to the glass,
I can see [prescription
lenses monthly premium]
a bit of sky
through the window.)
Do not even think of stuff when not at the right place.
([On-site laundry
exercise equipment
real ventilation
health schemes
a piece of daylight
lunchtime away from my desk
non-fluorescent bulbs
clean air ducts])
I have been pushed
with ridiculous
deadlines so many times that
I don’t care about them anymore.
(I want.)
Work place should be interesting
with games, gym, food, etc.
so that I whenever
it frustrates to work,
he has something
to refresh his mind.
(I want.)
Emergency actions, resume times, and coworker panics
(On the train to work,
I imagine pulling the emergency cord,
passengers launched forward
[screech stop hot metal]. The idea
won’t leave me alone,
so I distract myself thinking
of new names for passing streets.)
I spend a lot of time doing solitary coding.
(room with a window
a window [that opens]
a[n empty] room with a window
that opens)
I also like to play
with my daughter and
love my wife every day.
All this would take up
7+1.5+1+1 hours.
(From the window, I
imagine sending her
[mirror] messages
in code with flashes of [re
flected] sunlight.)
I can
working from
anywhere.
* Written in collaboration with Lawless Research; responses (italicized) collected by HackerRank from developers and software engineers around the world
©2018 Johannah Racz Knudson