Would you give up pay for more family time?
Tor de Vries spent the first part of his career as an art director in New York, working more than 80 hours a week and pulling in six figures. Then he had his first child, and everything changed.
He wanted more flexibility, something not easy to come by in the corporate world, so he went to work at a nonprofit that didn’t mind if he needed to work from home or leave early to take his son to a doctor’s appointment. And when his wife, a doctor, got a job near Portland, Maine, the nonprofit allowed him to move there and telecommute full time.
But taking that job meant a 40 percent pay cut, and losing the prestige that comes with working for a high-flying digital agency in New York — a path taken by some of his grad school peers, whom de Vries occasionally sees quoted in magazines and speaking at conferences.
“Do I occasionally go, ‘Man, that could have been me’? Yeah, once in a while, but I get over it,” he said. “I wouldn’t have this great relationship with my kids if I hadn’t made that decision.”
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