Ask HN: How can I best assist my wife with a career transition?

[bluesroo]

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.

[jaylaal]

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]

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]

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.

[tehalex]

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.

[tptacek]

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]

I've edited the end of the post, thanks for the feedback. You're right that I can kinda mushing things together.

[jonbrennecke]

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]

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)

[bluesroo]

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

[pinewurst]

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).

[bluesroo]

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.

[Wistar]

Also HR positions. I know of several teachers who have gone into HR.

[tptacek]

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.

[conductr]

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.

[dwater]

Most private schools pay teachers less than public schools in the same locale and have overall worse benefits as well.

[kangman]

my wife is a private highschool teacher and is going through a similar situation with the OP's wife.

[mrtrombone]

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

[pavel_lishin]

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

[Thorentis]

My wife quit her teaching job once we had kids and hasn't looked back. Looking after children is a full time job in and of itself. Just because you aren't being paid by an employer doesn't mean you aren't doing something valuable. In fact, you could argue that the job of raising children is even more valuable. Sadly this option seems entirely over looked in these types of discussions.

[bluesroo]

Thanks for the reply! We've had long discussions about all the options (one job + one stay at home, moving to a cheaper area, part time, etc.) but both of us at the end of the day are fairly ambitious and want to have careers. Also, in order to be next to our families (not just parents, but siblings and grandparents) the CoL is pretty high and having 2 incomes is required.

She's not frustrated with needing to work, it's frustration with the sheer number of hours. A more normal job that would allow us to drop off the kids and pick them up together consistently would be great.

[fdgsdfogijq]

This needs to be screamed from the mountain tops

[francisofascii]

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.

[mmcgaha]

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.

[bluesroo]

We’ve talked pretty directly about what we want from our futures. We haven’t talked about the idea in a while, but she wasn’t interested in being a stay at home mom. Thanks for bringing it up, though. It’s worth talking about again.

[alistairSH]

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]

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.

[fhood]

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.

[1auralynn]

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

[neoeno]

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]

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

[jwilber]

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.

[j7ake]

Since your professional experience does not overlap with hers, the good way to help would be to spend more time at home taking care of the kids and doing housework/cooking so she can devote more of her time to job search and build missing skills.

[twunde]

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!

[xwdv]

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.

[xrikcus]

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?

[bluesroo]

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.