This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 45-year-old Sripriya Balasubramaniam, from Chennai, India. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
When I had my son in 2009 at age 30, I’d been working in IT at Oracle India for close to seven years.
Two weeks into returning to work after five months of maternity leave, I couldn’t stop calling my husband to check in on my son.
I was fearful of missing out on milestones in his life — his first words, crawling, and walking.
Instead of leaving our son in daycare, my husband and I decided he would work, and I’d take a year-long career break to look after him.
My break ended up lasting 11 years. In 2021, I accepted an internship offer, which helped me get back into work, even though I had to compete with younger people and work tremendously hard to upskill myself.
I missed my financial independence when I stopped working
During my seven years at Oracle, I worked my way up from a software developer to a project leader. People were reporting to me, and things were going well with my career.
I resigned from my job and started looking after my son full-time in early 2010. My husband had to go to the office for work, so he wasn’t available during the day to help.
At first, I was fine with taking a break from work, but by the end of the year, I felt sad about it. I missed having financial independence. Because I was relying on my husband’s income, I felt I should ask him before I spent money, even though he didn’t require me to get his permission.
With only one person’s income, we had to make lifestyle changes. We both loved traveling, but we had to cut back on foreign trips and luxury travel.
Although the initial plan was for my break to last one year, I kept extending it. Our family relocated from the city of Bengaluru, where we lived, to the US for two years for my husband’s job. We came back to India in 2012, and I decided to put my son in preschool and let him get settled.
I continued to stay home and look after him even when he went into full-time schooling in 2014, four years into my career break. I loved dropping him off at school and enrolling him in different activities.
When he was at school, I’d focus on housework. I’d sit with him while he did homework and take him to the park. My life revolved around him.
At that time, I cared more about being involved in his life than returning to work.
An internship ended my 11-year career break
When my career break reached five years, I began to convince myself I couldn’t get back into the IT industry. It’s easier to still feel in touch with current technologies after one or two years off, but by this point, I felt like I was forgetting my technical skills.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and many people shifted to working from home, it felt easier to transition back to work as I could still be at home with my son, who was 11 at the time.
I was open to a range of roles, and started applying for jobs in January 2021. I used an online portal called Herkey for women professionals that included career returnee programs. When a few companies didn’t reply to my application, I assumed it was because my break was so big.
To prepare for potential new roles, I brushed up on my skills in SQL, a programming language. I also decided to be open in my applications about the length of my career break and which technologies I was comfortable with.
On the jobs portal, I came across a six-month internship program for career returners with an IT services company. Although it was an internship, I thought I could use it to upskill and move forward.
It was the fifth job I applied to in five months, and I landed the role in May 2021.
I studied hard to keep up with changes in my industry
I was happy to get back into the IT industry, but the thought of going back to work was extremely scary. During the interview stage, I had to write a few queries, and my hands were shaking during the task.
I was starting fresh at 41. Everything was now based on cloud technologies instead of a traditional database, which was a significant change since I was last in the workforce. I remotely attended company trainings on the latest technologies, but I also upskilled myself by learning from the internet.
After my eight-hour workday, I’d spend two to three hours a day studying to keep up. Without upskilling, you can’t sustain yourself in this industry.
At times, I found it hard to balance housework with learning on the job. My husband and my son supported me beautifully by motivating me and taking up responsibilities at home, even though they had to get used to me not being around all the time.
The internship was meant to last six months, but they hired me as a full-time senior engineer after three months because they liked my performance on a specific project.
In 2022, I moved to another IT services company, where I work remotely. I love working, coding, and meeting new people through my job.
I have no regrets
If I hadn’t taken a career break, I imagine I’d be a senior manager by now, which is two levels above where I currently am. But I have no regrets about my choices. I loved spending time with my son.
My journey required tremendous hard work. My son is 15 now. By watching me return to a job and study, he could see the value of hard work. I’m glad that he’s learning something from me.
Do you have a story to share about taking a career break? Contact this reporter at ccheong@businessinsider.com.
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