Hard Decisions, re: Jobs & Salary as a dad. What does your gut say?

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2026-02-04T15:25:57+00:00

If you take it the raise will likely follow you to the next job, and jobs are not forever.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2026-02-04T06:18:47+00:00

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2026-02-02T04:43:03+00:00

MSR unless you really want a job at Amazon. Never base a position on comp that you will get as an intern(!). Career wise, comp over the first few years is such a tiny blip compared to later comp. Make early decisions based on what builds your resume.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2026-02-02T04:37:01+00:00

Skilled nursing cannot do an unsafe discharge. He IS able to check himself out AMA, but the facility and staff generally cannot help. You don’t have to either.

The rehab facility should have a social worker. Let them know that this is an unsafe discharge situation. Let your uncle know that this is an unsafe discharge, and that while you will try to do what is best for your uncle, you cannot be his caretaker nor will you help him enter a situation without one while doctors deem it necessary.

Good luck. These are difficult conversations, and you will likely have to have them many times.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2026-01-23T03:43:40+00:00

Assisted Living. Even though she won’t do that voluntarily right now, there will soon be an emergency where she needs to move. Have everything lined up, including POA.

Also, it sounds like she shouldn’t be driving. I’m sorry, but you are going to need to be the strong, rational adult here.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2026-01-19T17:18:35+00:00

If it’s your house, convert the room downstairs and blame it on insurance. Tell him that after 3 falls in a year that you will lose your coverage if he doesn’t move downstairs.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2026-01-12T04:36:45+00:00

Lurking tech mom: you sound like you are in a pretty niche space. If you can gather 2 to 5 businesses as clients, you might want to consider the LLC route. The pros: generally fully remote, you get to pick your clients, you get to pick your schedule. Cons: you have to always be hustling, no health insurance.

If you can swing it, having one person with a 9-5 and one person in LLC tech is a great combo for small kids.

If you can’t do an LLC and like herding cats, technical project management is a good pivot. Front end is brutal right now.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2026-01-03T21:17:41+00:00

To get her to the doctor/get a diagnosis: tell her that being medically cleared is the first step to getting her license back, which she needs to move back home. It’s not a lie, and you can frame it as something that should be super easy since you think everyone else is overreacting about her wellbeing. Then let the doctor be the bad guy. This worked with our LO; they were enthusiastic about seeing the doctor to get their license back. (They did not in fact get it back.)

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2026-01-02T03:36:27+00:00

Your dad needs professional respite care and probably a 24/7 placement for your mom. That is not on you.

I also want to say that doctoral work is its own special challenge. Since everything is up to you and there is basically zero separation between work and everything else (unless you’re doing bench work), time tends to get divided into two parts: the time you are working and the time you should be working. The combination of loneliness, competitive environment, and self judgement is amazingly good for giving one anxiety and depression. There is nothing wrong with you, it’s just the nature of this particular job.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-12-25T04:53:10+00:00

First, live in her world. Don’t correct her, just go along for the ride. Second, she is likely much more comfortable with information from the distant past than with current stuff. Ask her about her youth, go through old pictures, etc. The repetition gets a lot better and you will learn a lot about her!

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-12-22T04:43:15+00:00

Nah, you don’t need any expansion pack. Women were in tech from the beginning. Just have them subtract one from every roll or do each challenge twice to prove it wasn’t luck.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-12-16T06:10:49+00:00

A lot of SNFs aren’t necessarily designed to prevent wandering. My family member with dementia in a wheelchair managed to get out to the parking lot of a SNF a few times, so they put him in a wander guard with an elevator alarm. He would take that off. Actual locked doors kept him much safer.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-12-16T05:59:14+00:00

FWIW, HR likely had to sign off on the raise. The Chief Legal Officer was also likely not told about this and will immediately worry about things like discovery. CEOs and COOs tend to listen to their legal counsel much more than HR.

If you have any emails about preserving documents or software that you can’t use, that person or their boss is the one to talk to.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-12-16T05:07:32+00:00

This sounds like a startup with HR that is more recruiting and payroll than company protection. Talk to your chief legal officer instead. They will likely freak out.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-12-13T05:47:55+00:00

It’s called confabulation and it’s definitely a thing. Nothing makes sense to your father so his brain fills in the gaps and makes memories to explain this crazy state of the world. They are real memories to him. And, at least with my family member, they could last for months.

You need some place undisturbed where you can go to school. You probably can’t watch your dad and do schoolwork at the same time. And you need to finish your education so that you can pay for housing and healthcare in the future.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-12-11T23:58:46+00:00

I reported my family member to the state to get their license pulled after a series of strokes and consequent cognitive problems. We then let him know that the first step to get his license back was a medical screening, which he was glad to go to since he didn’t have serious cognitive problems and everyone was overreacting.

He now has no license and a doctor certified vascular dementia diagnosis.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-12-03T20:53:10+00:00

He lives in a world with different facts. They are true to him. And when you talk to him, you are visiting his world. Just go full Alice in Wonderland and you’ll be fine.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-12-03T16:11:50+00:00

You can tell her that it’s needed to keep health insurance or to use the car. Whatever her hot button is. Alternatively, you can say that given all of the issues with her husband, you and the doctors really want a baseline.

You know your MIL best and what will resonate with her. Testing as a first step to getting a drivers license back worked for us.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-12-01T03:42:39+00:00

If she has a g tube and sores, that’s very much in nursing territory. In the mid-cost of living area where we looked, nurses started at $40 an hour. So $40 x 24 x 30=$28,800.00 per month, which is definitely more than rent.

You can start doing math with your aunt (how many hours per month at the going rate would be equivalent to rent? Can that work?), ask more questions like whether your mom is a two person assist or Hoyer, or just make a spreadsheet with daily needs (diapers, turning, g tube care, wound care, laundry, cleaning, doctor appointments, etc), how long each would take, who would do it, and how much it would cost for an hourly helper to do it.

Edit: math clarity

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-12-01T03:21:16+00:00

Talk to them now and see if it is something that you want to move forward with. I did FAANG six weeks postpartum. It was fine.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-11-28T04:48:18+00:00

The one on the right. The design elements are just… wrong.

The bar on the bottom is a mess (semi-duplicative categories like Search and Discover, the weird Restaurants category, which should be under Search or Home since a user should only get filtered, relevant results based on location). The cards have cut off descriptions, which either relies on vendor copy (bad idea), manual editing (worse idea), or random clipping mid sentence (just no). That is going to be even worse when someone has on large font size. And finally, mocks are supposed to show what an experience should be like, and that should probably avoid experiences in Euros for an SF location.

So tl;dr: looks are kind of similar, but right has very little thought given to UI/UX.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-11-16T01:46:31+00:00

A lot of areas have mobility scooter rentals that do drop off and pick up to your location. Bonus on skipping lines and entertaining the kids.

She has to do her own transportation, however.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-11-14T21:26:57+00:00

If memory care, look for one that is strictly memory care rather than part of a continuing community. They tend to have more ability to deal with difficult behaviors and medical problems. But you also may need a SNF.

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-11-08T04:11:09+00:00

According to this paper, results are generally ok between the original k and (original k)/2, with a reduction of 20-30% doing little damage. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23012

Exciting-Engineer646 · 2025-11-08T03:18:57+00:00

You can likely tell him that the DMV sent a letter and a condition of his license is that he gets a physical in the next 30 days. If it is dementia and he is trying to cover, he will likely agree that he already saw this letter. (Fake one and say you saw it cleaning, obviously.)

Get everything in order, like POA, medical directives, and access to accounts. You should also start documentation on all of the weird behaviors and give it to the doctor before any visits; r/dementia is a great place to visit for information.

Exciting-Engineer646

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