Working Together to Success - What Hurts... [Family]

Hi All,

I am assuming that you have read my previous article on "Working Together to Success - The Good Part [Family]

I am not exactly an optimist nor am I a pessimist... and I know that I'm a perfect Gemini! Here, I am focusing on all pains and troubles that a couple would face, when they work in the same office. A prelude: I am quite young and inexperienced. I am pointing out a day in life scenarios you can expect to face in an IT Profile work in an organization whose core business in non-IT.

Let us pick up each of the nine points in my previous blog, and dissect them...

1. Yes, having a lot of time together is great, but remember, longer you are together, more you are exposed. I personally have faced scenarios where my wife felt I was not focusing on her. I am not blaming her, rather, it would be my mistake - I take her for granted... "aah... anyway we are together...". The compassion you have when you meet after 12 to 14 hours of work in two ends of the city... "honey! I'm hooooommmeee!!!" thing will be missing here. The choice is yours.
2. True that logistics become simpler. But there will be some points where you will have to wait till your spouse finishes his / her work, or even vice-versa. You may not be able to leave after wrapping up your work. Even worse, after a long wait, when your spouse has done with work and you are about to start... something pops up and you started getting work... it happens once in a while though. But if you are a person who takes things seriously... better think of the impacts! The choice, once again, is yours.
3. Not much to say about this point...
4. You can be a good guide to each other, no doubt, but as days pass by, you should know your limit of "guidance". I often give an overdose of "professional guidance" to my wife and become an object of her irritation. Take a loooot of care while doing so!
5. Yes, staying in your neighboring teams, you can get cross-team activities done with more confidence... but if the D-Day comes, where you are to draw your guns... you are in trouble. You can neither shoot - your spouse is in the receiving end... nor can u retreat - team spirit! Beware...
6. Yes you do understand your spouse's pressure and stress. But many-a-times, you are stressed yourself, and your sense of appreciation of your spouse's pains goes to drain. Trust me, this is more detrimental than actually not understanding your spouse's professional stressors. You can neither tell your spouse you are in pain too, nor can you explain her effectively to cope up with her pains.
7. Knowledge sharing and all that are fine. But there comes a point where comparison becomes a pain. We have seen people comparing their own growth with their spouse. Such a comparison happens in scenarios where man and wife work in the same place, except that the repercussions of such comparison are fare more severe! In IT work environment, there is no guarantee that two professionals putting the same amount of efforts, would have the same remuneration and career growth prospects. You often get hit due to this phenomenon. When your spouse gets hit and you don't, well, that isn't your day exactly! Neither you nor your spouse can help this phenomenon, but still, the frustration is real and unavoidable...
8. This part is a bit serious. Probability of both you and your spouse having a good and understanding reporting managers is close to zero, if not zero at all. In fact, in our case, we had reasonably good bosses, who understood and advised us in days of trouble. This, I should say is good luck... but things didn't stand ideally long... read through my next point and you will understand...
9. Friends... this is even more serious... we as couple are still evolving in this. We had made a lot of friends. A couple of them "friends" actually dug our graves in progress for a while. Things went to an extent where one of our bosses was "poisoned" by our common "friends". If you could take any advise from our experience, please... please take your time to judge who your friend is... fine even if it is a year. It is better to stay without friends around than to confide on a wrong friend. Addendum: We have now few trust worthy friends around. One of them, AKS, does not help us professionally, but saves us from harms around... he has a different thought pattern all together.

I am not attempting to give any conclusions on whether it is good for man and wife to work in the same office. We, as a couple, have now made best of the pros and coped up with the cons. All that I would tell my fellow prospects is, take extra efforts and care before you pick this option. Wish you best!

It would be my pleasure to accept reviews / criticisms!

Regards,
SKB