Glassdoor CEO joins work-life debate, shares how he juggles being a dad and boss to 500 staff

Glassdoor CEO Christian Sutherland-Wong joined the jobs website as vice president of product in 2015 and became the CEO in 2020. (Image credit: Glassdoor)

For Glassdoor CEO Christian Sutherland-Wong, work-life balance is a key to his success and what enables him to maintain that balance is flexible work hours. Boss to 500 employees and father to two young kids, Sutherland-Wong told CNBC Make It that he works five days a week remotely and tries to limit his work during off-hours — especially in front of his children.

“With [my] children, I want to lead by not having digital products all around, or being distracted by my email and text messages all the time,” the 44-year-old told the publication. He said he does his best to keep “space” between his roles as CEO and father. Sutherland-Wong uses the flexibility his remote job offers “to be there when my kids come home from school, to be able to get offline, spend quality time with them, put them to bed and then get back online.”

In case something urgent comes up, the Glassdoor CEO makes a point of going to his home office to handle it rather than do it in front of his children. “I’ve done that before [and] the kids pick up on that,” he said.

With this, Sutherland-Wong joined a growing list of business leaders who have been advocating making time for family and loved ones amid a raging debate about working long hours at the office. For several other business leaders, however, work-life balance is a myth.

Closer home, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy--who triggered the debate last year after suggesting that youth in India should work 70 hours a week for the development of the country--expressed regret over India’s shift from a six-day to a five-day workweek in 1986, a decision he has long criticised and refused to embrace. Recently, reflecting on his own career, he said that working long hours was also his decision. “I used to get to the office at 6.30 am and leave at 8.30 pm. I’ve done it for 40-odd years. That’s a fact," Business Today quoted him as saying. “These are not matters for debate. They are deeply personal decisions. No one can say, ‘You should or shouldn’t do it.’”