Shane Auerbach
Shane is an Economist at smlXL, a Web3 startup. He lives in Berkeley with his wife, Mikaela, and two sons, Nelson (6) and Dmitry (2).
What does your normal working day look like?
We get up at 6:30 and take Nel to the bus stop at 7:15. I have a team meeting right after at 7:30 because many of my colleagues are on the East Coast or in Europe. Mikaela works at her Berkeley office three days a week and drops off and picks up Dima at daycare at around 8:20 on these days. I do it on the other two. I work from home until 4pm if I’m doing the pickups or when they get home (~5pm) if Mikaela is. Nel goes to an afterschool program, so they get picked up together.
How long have you had this routine?
We absconded to New Zealand, where I’m from, during the worst of COVID-19 and got back in August 2021. We’ve had some version of this routine since then, but it’s fluid.
How has it changed as your children have gotten older or as your family has grown?
It’s hard to answer this concretely as it’s constantly fluid, but I’d say as they get older, it feels like the logistical challenges both expand but also become more manageable. Nothing was harder for us than that first winter for each of the kids when they were in daycares and getting sick one week every month. Now that Nel’s 6 we have friends, soccer practice, summer camps, etc. Lots to manage, but it’s all fun.
What boundaries have you set around your work and how did you work with your colleagues to enable them?
I don’t really maintain boundaries. My colleagues, and our founder in particular, are really considerate about explicitly not requesting my attention outside of my work hours, but I’ve never wanted the separation. I used to view this as some sort of personal failing of mine, an inability to devote my full attention to my kids. But now that we’re some way into this parenting adventure, I’m getting better at enjoying (/suffering through) the experience for what it is, rather than comparing myself to other parents.
What are the most important things for you to get right to have a successful day?
I’m more engaged and get more enjoyment out of the evening when I’ve had a productive day at work. If I get bogged down during the workday, it’s hard for me to fully clear that frustration from my mind in the evening.
Switching to weekends, what are the most important things to get right to have an excellent weekend day?
With two young kids, weekends can feel like a marathon of trying to get through the hours. But as logistically challenging as going anywhere with two kids can be, nothing’s more exhausting than sticking it out at home.
How do you "turn off work" and give the kids your full attention?
Yeah, I don’t. I’m ignoring them right now to answer these questions, and they’re doing just fine. Nelson has set up one of the couch cushions on the floor, and he and Dima are taking turns skydiving off a recliner onto it. Dima turned off the dryer and unloaded a bunch of still-wet clothes onto the kitchen floor. That was kind of him.
What has been the most impactful thing that you've automated or outsourced in your family?
It’s a little thing, but when Dima was ~18 months old, we got him one of those “ready-to-wake” clocks from Amazon. We ignore him until 6:30am, when that green light comes on. He respects it. It wasn’t an easy routine to establish–sleep training is hard generally–and it’s still not 100% effective, but being able to get up at the same time every day is such a relief. And it helps him have a more consistent sleeping routine.
What principles have served you best in your parenting?
I became a parent while in graduate school studying economics, so the first thing I did was go out trying to find literature to discover some optimal approach to parenting. It turns out society hasn’t done as much robust experimentation in the parenting space as you might like. There are certainly amazing experts out there with great advice (Emily Oster, etc.), but a lot of it is just heuristics and common sense. When they shunt you out of the hospital with the first kid, it’s terrifying because it feels like they forgot to give you the instruction manual. But later on it’s liberating: if the kid is happy and healthy, you’re not doing it wrong. I don’t really have principles beyond that. It’s my job to feed them. The rest of the agency is theirs.
What is your approach to screen time?
I don’t know too many parents who are winning the war on screen time. Easier to just accept and rationalise it. Rationalisations I like:
We tend to think about all the things they’re not doing when they’re on the screens, but what about what they are learning, especially with some of the immersive and collaborative games in Roblox, Minecraft, etc.?
Mightn’t our reticence around screentime be partially attributable to some irrational nostalgia for our own childhoods?
There are going to be lots of screens in this world they inherit. Better get them ready…
How many hours do you spend on a screen a day? If you’re trying to keep them to fewer hours than that, aren’t you a hypocrite?
So many great rationalisations to choose from! Just give up and embrace the screens. And don’t forget to buy screen protectors and cases. :)
Is there a primary parent in your household or do you split the parenting evenly?
I guess de jure it is split evenly, but any neutral evaluation would reveal that de facto my contributions to parenting are less than Mikaela’s. I don’t think it’s healthy to overly focus on that ledger, but that is exactly what you would expect the relative shirker to say. In any case, while I don’t think I can legitimately claim to be doing half of the parenting, whatever that means, I do do a lot of parenting, and we’re decent at supporting each other and appreciating the other’s contributions.
If there is an even split between parents, how do you divide the work and make sure that it is fair?
Again, my positionality as the (slight?) relative shirker is problematic in answering this question, but it seems to me that “fairness” in situations with two working parents might miss the point a little. What matters more is that the kids are happy and healthy and that each parent feels able to do their work to the standard that they aspire to, and that all parties feel appreciated and loved.
But you could argue that hand-waving away questions of equity, like I’m doing, is part of the cause of the wage gap and other inequities. All of this stuff is pretty fraught and problematic.
I once took Nelson into a grocery store and bought a donut and a bottle of vodka (something for everyone!) and the clerk and other customers smiled at me like I was the best dad in the universe. Imagine if Mikaela had done that… Another time Dima was home sick and I took him for a walk (~10am on a Tuesday). A woman I don’t know said to me “What a great dad! Taking time off work to let mom sleep in.” Mikaela had been at work since 8am, and I was only home with the sick kid on Tuesday because it was my turn after she took off Monday. There are so many issues around equity in parenting.
What is your top trick for making it through flights?
One tablet per child on a flight. If you’re not excepting flights from your screen time-limiting aspirations, you’re really parenting on “Extra Hard” mode.
What book has been most influential for you as a parent?
The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown. It’s a novel for children, not a parenting book. But the parent-child relationship is central within it. I read a bunch of novels to Nelson before he learned to read and this was his favorite. It’s no literary masterpiece, but it’s perfectly written for a ~4-year-old to engage with and understand. And it’s sneaky moving, even if you feel silly for finding it moving.