The challenge of juggling childcare and eldercare
Many developers are handling two major caregiving roles at once, raising children while supporting elderly parents. That’s not sustainable without adaptive environments. This dual responsibility generates real pressure. It demands attention, energy, and context switching that pushes beyond the normal bounds of any conventional job. The overlap between caregiving and professional workloads deepens stress and drains bandwidth. These developers aren’t losing productivity because they can’t write code, they’re under pressure because they’re running two full-time commitments, simultaneously.
This is becoming more than a personal issue. It’s a macro-level signal. There’s a growing shift in demographics and caregiving needs, especially in countries like the U.S. where public infrastructure for care is minimal. These developers are stuck between generational duties without much institutional support. Many are hit hardest during the precise window when they’re reaching the mid-point of their careers, just when they should be running bigger projects or moving into leadership roles. Instead, they’re allocating that energy to caretaking decisions that can be physically and mentally exhausting.
For companies that rely heavily on engineering talent, that has real consequences. You’ll lose velocity on product timelines, team leadership development, and potentially burn out your most capable minds if there’s no room to breathe. From a leadership perspective, allowing flexibility isn’t about perks. It’s operational risk mitigation. You either build the structures to retain this talent, or they leave, by choice or necessity.
A 2022 study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society estimated at least 2.5 million Americans are balancing this dual load. By 2024, the Wall Street Journal raised that number to 11 million.
The signal to executive leadership is clear: Put structures in place that let people bring their whole professional selves to work, or watch systemic attrition play out over time. Empathy here is intelligent design of the modern workplace.
The sandwich generation is growing
We’re witnessing a demographic change in the workforce that’s happening fast and at scale. Millennials and Gen Z are now a dominant share of the caregiving population. People are having children later, and their parents are living longer, often with needs that require daily attention. That overlap is more common now, and not temporary. This trend is here for the long term.
The old assumption that caregiving responsibilities fall primarily on women is no longer accurate. A rising share of men are stepping into these roles, managing schedules for schools and doctor visits alongside technical work. You now have full-time engineers who are also part-time nurses, drivers, task managers, and IT support, inside their own homes. And most of them are doing it while holding jobs that need focus, precision, and long-deep thinking. This, combined with the expanding role millennials play in organizational growth, is becoming part of the leadership pipeline. It shouldn’t be ignored or delayed.
People in their 30s and 40s, the prime range for innovation, decision-making, and management, are balancing complex personal dynamics while trying to define their next decade of professional growth. Rigid systems force talent to choose between progress and stability. That’s a poor tradeoff and a loss for any company relying on complex problem solving.
Supporting this generation doesn’t mean making exceptions. It means architecting environments that align with where the workforce actually is, not where companies assume it should be. These employees are being stretched. Improve the structure, and you recover performance and loyalty.
Data reinforces this shift. According to a 2023 AARP report, the average sandwich caregiver is 44. A New York Life survey released in 2023 revealed that roughly one-third of sandwich generation caregivers are millennials or Gen Z, and 75% work full-time or part-time. This is a mainstream condition affecting talent ecosystems across industries. Let’s stop treating it like a marginal issue.
Compounded professional challenges at critical career stages
Career growth in tech follows a known trajectory, developers move from junior execution to senior strategic roles during their 30s and 40s. That requires deep work, time investment, and the ability to think ahead. But this same timeframe is also when sandwich generation responsibilities peak. Developers are investing attention simultaneously in elderly caregivers and young dependents. What’s left is a shrinking reserve of time and mental availability for professional development, and that affects everything from velocity in project delivery to long-term leadership cultivation.
More time at work doesn’t create better outcomes if the cognitive load is already maxed out by personal pressures. Developers in this situation start making trade-offs, turning down large projects, sticking with lateral roles rather than advancing, or opting out of mentoring because there simply isn’t room. These are the people with the experience required to shape product architecture, roadmap planning, or team development. When they’re unable to engage at full capacity, organizations lose speed, insight, and cohesion across teams.
This isn’t about burnout at the fringes. This is happening in your most strategically valuable talent pool. If rising engineers feel their only options are to stagnate in place or walk away from caregiving, you’re going to see quiet exits or disengagement internally. And when leadership roles stay open, or inexperienced staff are pressed into gaps without adequate support, systemic inefficiencies multiply. This trend affects product outcomes and team resilience.
There’s also meaningful reputational risk. Companies that fail to acknowledge real-life constraints through modern workforce policies will lose their ability to attract high-skill staff in an increasingly outcomes-driven job market.
Mentioned Individuals: One senior software engineer at Stack Overflow, who balanced full-time work while managing his mother’s care and parenting his school-age child, highlighted the mental toll of constantly weighing every interaction between his two dependents. He wasn’t only managing time, he was managing emotional wellbeing on both fronts, while still producing value as an engineer. That’s what this looks like on the ground.
Leadership needs to stop asking who’s struggling and start asking why. These are systemic design gaps. Address them, and you get back the time, focus, and innovation your company depends on. Ignore them, and productivity quietly falls through the cracks.
Elder care increasingly includes tech support and cybersecurity
Developers today are doing far more than shipping code. Many are running part-time IT departments inside their homes to support aging parents. That means configuring devices, managing passwords, troubleshooting routers, and educating family members on safe digital behavior. On top of that, they’re defending against real cybersecurity risks, phishing, fraud, and scams uniquely targeting older adults. These are ongoing responsibilities that require attention and expertise.
This strain is pronounced in cases of cognitive decline. When a parent has conditions such as Alzheimer’s, routine tech mistakes can open doors for fraudulent activity or data theft. Developers often find themselves trying to recover from security breaches or prevent them entirely, on systems they didn’t build, but are now responsible for. The mental load adds up quickly, especially when combined with their actual job, where deep focus and problem-solving are required daily.
The effects of elder fraud are extensive. When a parent falls victim to a scam, the damage is financial and emotional, and usually invisible to outsiders. Many older adults don’t report incidents due to shame, confusion, or lack of understanding. That leaves the burden of discovery, damage control, and prevention directly on family members. For developers with technical knowledge, the expectation becomes implicit: handle it.
For companies employing these developers, this burden is more than a personal inconvenience. Every hour spent navigating elder tech crises is an hour redirected from engineering, shipping, or scaling. And the psychological fatigue caused by constant vigilance in two domains—professional and personal tech defense, diminishes long-term engagement.
Relevant Data or Research: Survey data shows that 100% of sandwich generation caregivers provide tech support to their parents, and 87% worry about their parents being targeted by data breaches or other cyber threats. Comparatively, this concern is shared by only 74% of the general adult population. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported over 101,000 fraud complaints from adults over 60 in 2023, a 14% increase from 2022. Reported financial losses reached $3.4 billion, with an average victim losing nearly $34,000.
This problem isn’t abstract. It’s measurable and escalating. Companies need to understand that caregiving now includes cybersecurity. It’s time to integrate real support into benefit systems, start by acknowledging that the boundaries between home and work tech responsibilities have fully disappeared for a significant portion of your workforce.
The administrative burden of eldercare
Caring for an aging parent doesn’t stop with daily routines. Developers in the sandwich generation are also responsible for navigating complex legal, financial, and healthcare systems. This includes managing powers of attorney, setting up advance directives, understanding and coordinating long-term insurance coverage, and creating or maintaining estate plans. When the parent passes away, the administrative work continues, funeral preparations, probate court, asset disbursement, and often, legal disputes.
These tasks aren’t optional. They’re time-sensitive, emotionally charged, and require a level of precision that doesn’t easily coexist with a demanding job. And frankly, most people aren’t trained to deal with this type of logistical and regulatory load. It’s a second job with significant consequences if mismanaged, missed filings, delays in care access, or irreversible financial impacts.
Developers who are mid-career often find themselves right in the middle of this. On one hand, managing aging parents’ daily needs. On the other, negotiating with hospitals, insurers, estate lawyers, and eldercare facilities. If there’s no support, for example, if the employer doesn’t offer legal advisory access, systemized care leave, or even informational resources, the stress compounds fast.
This is the kind of invisible work that doesn’t show up in performance reviews but has a direct effect on time, focus, and fatigue. These administrative duties demand clarity, discretion, and persistence, skills that are already at full use in their professional responsibilities. When companies don’t acknowledge the bandwidth it takes to handle this load, they’re not accounting for reality.
Executives need to fix that gap, not just out of social obligation, but because ignoring it means potential productivity loss, project delays, and higher turnover risk. The developers doing this backend life management are overwhelmed with a system that doesn’t accommodate high-functioning employees with real-world responsibility.
Solutions don’t require massive overhaul. Start with flexible scheduling and legal resource access. Recognize the burden as real, then engineer around it. The workforce has changed. Policy needs to follow.
Financial and lifestyle adjustments
Developers balancing care for children and aging parents are routinely forced to make financial trade-offs. These affect long-term plans and future stability. Many reduce or pause retirement savings. Some accumulate debt. Others scale back on key expenses like healthcare, housing upgrades, or education plans. This reallocation of resources happens not because of lack of planning, but because the cost of caregiving, especially in the U.S., is consistently underestimated and often unsupported.
These shifts have downstream effects. Over time, they reduce household resilience to unexpected events. They also delay or limit future career investments, like advanced education or relocation for better roles. And when financial stress increases, productivity and focus drop, especially in roles that require prolonged mental focus, like software development.
Companies that don’t recognize this reality miss a fundamental change in workforce economics. People aren’t just navigating burnout. They’re rebuilding monthly budgets and altering career plans to offset caregiving demands. Employers can’t control inflation or healthcare costs, but they can adjust benefits offerings, provide flexible compensation tools, or integrate financial wellness programs that address scenarios employees are clearly facing.
This is more than a retention issue. It’s about maintaining operational consistency across teams. Developers burdened with financial strain aren’t operating at full capacity, and if the workplace shows no understanding or support, attrition isn’t just possible, it’s likely. This is especially true in tech, where recruiters can easily target talent with better flexibility or cash compensation.
Relevant Data or Research: According to the 2023 New York Life survey, 90% of sandwich generation adults reported making changes to their financial or lifestyle plans because of dual caregiving responsibilities. More than 50% said they’d sacrificed their own financial security. Specifically, 33% reduced other expenses, 26% contributed less or nothing to savings, and 26% took on more personal debt.
The expectation that developers can simply absorb this pressure and continue to scale their careers is outdated. Leaders who understand the real numbers, and build structural solutions around them, will retain talent. Those who don’t will pay for it—either through lost expertise or stalled momentum.
The dual demands of eldercare and parenting
Developers in the sandwich generation are managing schedules and caregiving responsibilities, while dealing with a persistent emotional load that comes from trying to meet the needs of two vulnerable groups at once. This strain shows up in sleep disruption, reduced cognitive energy, and ongoing guilt from never being fully present in either context. When developers are splitting their attention between their children’s growth and a parent’s decline, the psychological toll is substantial.
This situation affects more than personal wellbeing, it influences team performance. People under consistent emotional pressure are slower to engage in complex tasks, less likely to volunteer for high-impact initiatives, and gradually disconnect from organizational momentum. When companies focus only on performance data and ignore emotional capacity, they miss critical signals. One of the core functions of leadership is building systems that work for the reality employees are living, not the one we wish they had.
This emotional strain is also logistical. Every hour caregiving robs from presence at work, sleep, exercise, and rest doesn’t just disappear, it accumulates into stress, fatigue, and eventually disengagement. The underlying issue isn’t lack of ambition or skill; it’s carrying multiple, endless responsibilities with limited margin. As that pressure compounds, both work and personal life start to degrade in quality.
Executives who want to retain long-term contributors need to confront this directly. Recognizing emotional overload doesn’t mean lowering the bar, it means being intentional about what conditions enable peak performance. Building a work environment that leaves space for complex personal realities is not just empathy, it’s structural risk management.
The mounting caregiving responsibilities
Developers in the sandwich generation are entering a point of compression, pressure from caregiving demands, professional advancement expectations, and inflexible work policies intersecting at the same time. This demographic represents a critical layer of expertise and execution across engineering functions. If companies continue forcing full return-to-office mandates or rigid work structures, this group will shift out, either into remote-friendly companies or self-employment. And that’s already happening.
Organizations stood up flexible systems during the pandemic because they had no other choice. Now, many are reversing course without accounting for how their workforce has changed. Developers with significant caregiving demands aren’t choosing remote work for convenience, it’s operational necessity. Tight schedules, daily interruptions, and caretaking logistics don’t align with traditional 9–5 office windows. Many are willing to work long hours; they’re just not willing to sacrifice autonomy over how those hours are managed.
The fallout from ignoring this trend is visible: reduced retention among senior-level engineers, disrupted team continuity, and uneven mentorship pipelines. Less experienced developers don’t benefit from close daily interaction with mentors who are present but overextended. The danger is talent gaps widening just as dependency on productivity continues to increase in teams using AI and automation. If senior developers are unavailable, and juniors lean too heavily on generative tools without guidance, quality and knowledge-sharing decline.
If leadership misreads this as personal burnout rather than systemic misalignment, they’ll miss a larger trend. People are adjusting to a new model of survival, where caregiving is persistent and non-negotiable.
Leadership needs to make a strategic decision here. Build policy around reality, retain experience, and protect momentum. Or build rigid plans based on outdated assumptions, and manage the fallout when high-contribution talent walks away.
Developers are using their technical expertise for innovative solutions
Amid the demands of the sandwich generation, some developers are building. Instead of waiting for external solutions, they’re applying their technical skillsets to reduce pain points in hands-on caregiving. This includes creating tools to simplify digital interfaces for aging parents, developing task management systems tailored for cognitive decline, and automating repetitive daily functions.
This is a trend with momentum. Developers in this situation understand what’s missing in existing caregiving tools because they live the problem daily. What they’re creating is often more tailored, more efficient, and more intuitive than what’s available commercially. These projects range from simple automation tweaks to fully built hardware-software integrations for memory support or accessibility.
Companies need to pay attention. This type of independent initiative often signals where future enterprise tools will emerge. Instead of viewing these projects as distractions, leadership should explore how to enable and accelerate them. Create internal programs that allow engineers to present and scale these solutions.
Developers don’t stop creating when they leave work. If they’re solving critical problems at home, there’s alignment potential for organizations to back those solutions, build them into scalable offerings, or bring that mindset into internal product thinking.
The bottom line
This is a structural shift in how your mid-career talent lives, works, and supports the people around them. Developers in the sandwich generation are managing complexity every day without enough support.
If your company depends on experienced engineers to lead teams, build systems, and ship critical infrastructure, then ignoring the strain of dual caregiving is a short-sighted risk. You don’t build better output by burning out the people holding everything together.
The decisions you make now, about flexibility, benefits, leadership support, remote autonomy, will directly influence whether this part of your workforce sticks around, thrives, and contributes long-term. Or whether they check out early, quietly reassign themselves to companies prepared to operate in line with reality.
