When you think of context-switching as a problem for software developers, you probably think of bouncing between your chat platform and your IDE, getting distracted by constant alerts, or changing gears from code review to performance review. At Stack Overflow, we’ve certainly given these challenges plenty of thought.
However for a lot of builders, these aren’t the largest context-switching challenges they face. They’re additionally parenting younger kids whereas concurrently caring for their growing older mother and father. These are the builders within the sandwich generation.
Having household or different non-coding obligations competing in your consideration isn’t a brand new downside for builders, in fact. And multigenerational dwelling and caregiving is the norm in lots of communities. However within the US, the place there’s restricted public coverage help for folks, caregivers, and aged folks, the variety of folks within the “sandwich technology” is rising—and that’s not a impartial truth.
As extra builders and technologists begin caring for youths and older adults on the similar time, it’s price asking how they’re managing their see-saw of obligations and how much impression this development may have on a technology of software program builders.
How many individuals are juggling parenting together with caring for their very own mother and father? Estimates differ, however the quantity is on the rise. A 2022 study within the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society discovered that a minimum of 2.5 million folks within the US fell into the sandwich technology. In accordance with that determine, nearly one in 4 of the adults caring for a minimum of one father or mother over 65 can be caring for a minimum of one youngster below 18. By October 2024, The Wall Street Journal put the variety of People within the sandwich technology at 11 million. Regardless of the precise determine proper now, it’s more likely to rise even additional as boomers and millennials age.
“Individuals are having kids later, and they’re dwelling longer, typically with care-intensive circumstances equivalent to dementia,” write Vanessa Fuhrmans and Veronica Dagher within the WSJ. “Which means many are caring for aged mother and father when their very own children are nonetheless younger and require extra intensive parenting—and for longer stretches of their lives than earlier generations of sandwiched caregivers.” I’m an excellent instance of those macro-level tendencies: I’m 38; my twins are two and a half; my mother and father, one among whom suffers from Alzheimer’s illness, are 68 and 75. Each they and my children will want look after years to come back.
Virtually a 3rd of the sandwich technology are millennials or Gen Z; 75% of us work full-time or part-time.
Individuals of their 40s are most certainly to be members of the sandwich technology, in accordance with the Pew Research Center. In accordance with a 2023 AARP report cited within the WSJ article, the typical age of a sandwich technology caregiver is 44. A rising share are millennials, or folks born between 1981 and 1996, in accordance with a 2023 survey launched by New York Life. Virtually a 3rd of the sandwich technology are millennials or Gen Z; 75% of us work full-time or part-time. And whereas ladies had been as soon as the near-exclusive suppliers of each child- and eldercare, a rising share of caregivers within the sandwich technology are males (welcome to the celebration, guys).
Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey, although centered on the worldwide neighborhood reasonably than the US alone, discovered that about 70% of builders are between 25 and 54, with about 33% between 35 and 54—a major age for locating oneself a member of the sandwich technology.
As you may count on, members of the sandwich technology face extra monetary and emotional pressure than their friends. As a bunch, they make monetary sacrifices and undertake main, steadily costly life-style adjustments to make caregiving possible.
They’re additionally more likely to discover themselves wedged between time-consuming, mentally and emotionally draining obligations at a crucial second of their skilled careers. Simply as lots of them are transferring from junior positions into extra senior roles, and may hope to have extra vitality to commit to their work, they discover themselves tapped out.
Like parenting and writing code, eldercare requires fixed context-switching. Sandwich technology caregivers could must be care coordinators, transportation suppliers, cooks, housekeepers, therapists, and companions for his or her aged relations. They dispense medicine and supply private care. They’re additionally sysadmins who moonlight as cybersecurity consultants—organising a brand new wi-fi community sooner or later and the following keeping off phishing assaults focusing on a father or mother with dementia. That is all along with the (typically related!) roles they fill for the youngsters of their care.
Offering tech help and defending in opposition to cybersecurity threats are essential, inescapable elements of caring for older adults. One survey of sandwich technology caregivers discovered that totally 100% of them assist their mother and father with tech help duties and 87% are anxious about their mother and father being impacted by a knowledge breach or different safety/privateness problem. Among the many normal inhabitants, this quantity drops to 74%, exhibiting that the sandwich technology is rather more involved, and with good motive, about their mother and father’ vulnerability to knowledge breaches.
After my dad’s Alzheimer’s prognosis, he fell prey to a number of unhealthy actors who claimed they had been serving to him set up antivirus software program (spoiler: it was spy ware). According to the FBI, greater than 101,000 adults over 60 filed stories of elder fraud with the FBI’s Web Crime Grievance Heart in 2023, a 14% enhance over 2022. Scams focusing on folks over 60 price $3.4 billion in 2023, an 11% enhance over 2022. The typical sufferer of elder fraud in 2023 misplaced nearly $34,000.
As with many crimes, the actual variety of victims is nearly actually a lot larger, as a result of many—even perhaps most—victims don’t file official stories. Individuals who have been victims of elder fraud and different monetary crimes are sometimes too embarrassed or ashamed to make a proper grievance. Or, as with my dad, they battle to grasp what occurred and the way they had been uncovered, which makes it subsequent to not possible to report the incident or stop it from taking place once more.
In case you’re a caregiver for an older particular person, chances are high you’ve a big administrative workload along with the monetary and emotional burdens you’re carrying.
You may also want to determine energy of lawyer, arrange trusts to guard your beloved’s belongings, designate healthcare proxies, work out what kind of long-term care is critical and easy methods to pay for it, decide precisely what long-term care insurance coverage covers and easy methods to qualify for it, and perceive what sort of help is offered from the federal government within the type of Social Safety and Medicare, amongst a lot else. If that appears like a whole job on high of your day-to-day caregiving obligations (to not point out your precise job), you’ve the correct thought.
One other grim actuality of caregiving is that the executive work doesn’t finish instantly if and when your aged relative dies. Funeral prices, probate, and property disbursement wait on the opposite aspect.
The prices shouldered by the sandwich technology are appreciable: They battle each financially and emotionally in comparison with people who find themselves caring for growing older mother and father however not kids below 18. University of Michigan researchers discovered that “general, sandwich technology caregivers had been twice as more likely to report monetary issue (36% vs. 17%) and extra more likely to report substantial emotional issue (44% vs. 32%) than their friends who solely act as caregiver to a father or mother over 65.”
Greater than half of respondents reported sacrificing their very own monetary safety to care for his or her mother and father along with their children.
Within the 2023 New York Life survey, 9 out of ten sandwich technology adults stated they made adjustments to their life-style or monetary plan due to childcare or eldercare obligations. Greater than half of respondents reported sacrificing their very own monetary safety to care for his or her mother and father along with their children. A 3rd of respondents reduce on different bills, 26% contributed much less or nothing to their financial savings, and 26% took on extra debt.
Caregiving in only one route at a time will be time-consuming and emotionally draining, so being sandwiched between parenting and parenting the mother and father exacerbates the issue. For sandwich technology caregivers, each hour spent serving to Dad reconnect to the web or driving Mother to the physician is an hour that may’t be spent with their children, can’t be spent writing or reviewing code, connecting with colleagues, catching up on sleep, getting some train…you get the thought.
“One factor I needed to juggle always was weighing every interplay between my youngster and mom and attempting to curate experiences that offered every essentially the most profit and the least emotional hurt.”
And it’s not simply alternative price that sandwich caregivers should account for. Facilitating optimistic interactions between children and the older folks of their care is usually a continuous problem. A senior software program developer at Stack Overflow who managed his mom’s medical care whereas parenting a school-age youngster put it this manner: “One factor I needed to juggle always wasn’t simply the chance price of time spent with my father or mother vs. youngster, but in addition always weighing every interplay between my youngster and mom and attempting to curate experiences that offered every essentially the most profit and the least emotional hurt.”
This strikes a tragic chord with my very own experiences, particularly since my dad has moved into reminiscence care. Seeing a grandparent bodily unwell, confused and disoriented, or in an unfamiliar hospital setting can upset children. However in a sandwich caregiving scenario, these laborious moments are sometimes unavoidable. That provides to the emotional load sandwich caregivers already carry.
As we talked about, folks of their 40s are most certainly to fall into the sandwich technology, with an growing variety of thirty-somethings becoming a member of their ranks as millennials age and extra of us begin caring for each mother and father and children. Inconveniently, this is similar age vary when {most professional} builders have a tendency to maneuver from junior roles into extra senior positions: “the crucial early-to-middle levels of their careers,” because the WSJ article places it.
In different phrases, whilst their expertise and expertise begin to yield extra thrilling alternatives and satisfying initiatives, many mid-career builders are being stretched skinny with caretaking obligations. That’s a difficulty not only for particular person builders however for dev-centric organizations in every single place—even, probably, for the nationwide financial system. Because the WSJ article places it, the 11 million adults within the sandwich technology bear a rising burden that features “a drag on month-to-month budgets and long-term monetary well being.” Zooming out, this demographic development may pose what one strategist termed “a large threat to the US financial system.”
Definitely, the downstream results of a technology of builders whose monetary and emotional well-being is compromised by sandwich caregiving will likely be vital and wide-ranging. For instance: distant work. Sandwich caregiving obligations and schedules are incompatible with sweeping return-to-office mandates. Firms embracing rigid return-to-office insurance policies could discover {that a} rising share of senior devs are taking their abilities elsewhere or, as many builders did in the course of the pandemic-era Great Resignation, choosing self-employment. “I do know that I’d not have ever thought-about a job that wasn’t 100% distant this previous 12 months except I used to be completely pressured to,” stated the senior software program engineer who managed his mom’s medical care. My ideas precisely.
Individuals weighed down by caregiving obligations may also be much less more likely to tackle formidable work initiatives or launch all-consuming startups. (The expression “There aren’t sufficient hours within the day” involves thoughts.) Equally, it’s cheap to marvel in regards to the impact on software program improvement groups if extra seasoned builders have much less time and vitality to commit to planning and design. Will junior builders step into the breach? And what number of of these junior builders, although they might be unencumbered by childcare and eldercare obligations proper now, will tackle these duties over the following a number of years? Within the absence of their extra seasoned colleagues, may less-experienced builders develop an overreliance on GenAI coding instruments that may create a headache for each roadblock they take away? When you have ideas, tell us within the feedback.
Are you a developer or a technologist balancing childcare and eldercare? What are the largest challenges you face? Have you ever constructed any instruments or options which have made sandwich caregiving simpler?
Possibly you’ve discovered or constructed a software to assist with the repetitive work concerned in caregiving. It could be a sandbox to allow an aging parent to write code without inadvertently erasing their computer. It could be an app designed to help people with dementia manage daily tasks. This software program designer and engineer arrange an e-ink display to satisfy the wants of a father or mother with everlasting anterograde amnesia. Likewise, tell us within the feedback.
