Why parents in tech still feel the brunt of developer toil – and how to fix it

A high-flying career in the tech sector is often seen as incompatible with a conventional approach to parenting – and nowhere is this perception more visible than in high-pressure engineering and DevOps roles. It needn’t be that way. “Always on” mindsets, which prioritise individuals’ activities over teams’ impacts, and viewing outcomes as the sole measure of success are all outdated management structures and, more often than not, push working mothers and other caregivers out the door. 

The stats documenting this phenomenon make for depressing reading. A 2024 study found that in the UK, 40% of women who left the tech industry cited childcare commitments as a decisive factor. Google experienced these sentiments publicly in 2020, when a group of working mothers spoke out about the company’s return-to-office plans and the lack of adequate support.

To build a fairer, healthier and more sustainable industry, leaders must go beyond perks and endless debates about the virtues of working remotely versus on-site. The industry needs to fundamentally rethink what visibility, presence, valued outputs, and teamwork mean. Often, it’s the work which might not show up on a dashboard which makes or breaks culture and morale. 

The overlooked weight of invisible work

DevOps, site reliability and engineering teams are famous for tight deadlines, complex systems and constant change. But behind every deployment and every line of code, there’s a web of hidden work: mentoring junior developers, training new hires, architectural design, smoothing conflict within teams, and keeping morale afloat during late-night incident responses. 

Many organisations still measure success just by output, with outdated yardsticks like lines of code written, tickets closed, and hours logged used to define input and ultimately how hard or how well someone has worked. This renders the contributions that build long-term success, like project management, knowledge sharing, trust-building, diversity of thought, and team morale, practically invisible.

Managers need to get better at tracking and rewarding this value. Peer feedback, 360-degree reviews and recognition of culture-building efforts should carry real weight in promotions and bonuses. By making the invisible visible, companies create an environment where working parents, who often lead in these areas, don’t pay a career penalty.

Finding the right balance: synchronous, asynchronous and in between

Flexibility is often pitched as the golden solution for working parents. Too often, though, flexibility is narrowly defined as “pick your hours and log on from anywhere.” In reality, healthy flexibility blends synchronous and asynchronous collaboration thoughtfully, without turning work into a 24/7 drain on personal time.

Synchronous, ‘agile’ moments – like co-located team days, pair programming and real-time incident response – build trust, speed up problem-solving and strengthen relationships. They’re also vital for teams working across different time zones, where overlapping schedules or deployment windows can prevent the burnout that comes from middle-of-the-night alerts. Individual goals matter, but stronger development cultures value equally a team being successful at a sprint versus an individual developer.

At the same time, robust asynchronous practices, clear documentation, well-organised codebases, and time-shifted peer reviews empower team members to contribute meaningfully when it works for them. One proven example is “code buddies,” pairing engineers for peer-reviewed coding that combines live feedback with async flexibility. Code buddies reduce bottlenecks and distribute knowledge more evenly, so no one person is left carrying the load.

Physical presence plays an important role for some. Many working parents want the option of hybrid setups that let them choose when it makes sense to come together in person, whether to mentor, brainstorm or simply feel more connected.

Designing workplaces with choice and clarity

When employees have a say in which products, projects or teams they work on, they’re more engaged, motivated and can better align work with life demands. A parent returning from parental leave might prefer a stable platform team over a launch-heavy greenfield project, while another might thrive in a fast-paced DevOps rotation if given predictable on-call cover.

Co-locating teams where possible, or at least synchronising core hours across global offices, helps reduce the stress of mismatched schedules that force parents into impossible situations. It’s about designing for sustainability, not heroics.

AI can and should drive flexibility 

AI should reduce toil by automating repetitive tasks, freeing engineers to focus on complex problem-solving and strategic thinking. In reality though, there have been repeated examples of companies using these potential productivity gains as an excuse to squeeze teams even harder; more tickets, tighter deadlines, longer on-call rotations.

Instead, companies should embrace AI’s potential to enhance flexibility and better measure success holistically. AI can help track hidden work patterns, identify mentoring and training contributions, and balance workload distribution more fairly. Smart automation can minimise middle-of-the-night incidents, reduce developer toil, which studies show eats up 30 to 50 percent of engineers’ time, and give parents breathing space to do their jobs well without burning out.

When teams are content, connected, trust each other, and feel seen, innovation doesn’t have to be squeezed out of them; it emerges naturally. Proper visibility, valuing team-based performance, equity and intelligent flexibility aren’t simply HR ideals. Rather, they’re the pillars of resilience that businesses depend upon. Working parents are not simply a special case or nice to have: they are the early indicators of whether your company is working for everyone.

Richa Gupta is the chief human resources officer at CloudBees

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