At Apple, says Smith, “there’s this weird culture where you’re not allowed to say ‘no’ to things.” But he does, openly — especially when it comes to scheduling meetings that conflict with family obligations. And in his lab, Smith says, “we do accomplish more while spending significantly fewer hours in the office.” (Smith has little patience for others in the Valley who claim to work 100-hour weeks but spend many of those hours playing in-office foosball.) He recently told a friend at work that he should take paternity leave, and “take it all, and take a lot.” Fatherhood is the ultimate perspective-maker, it seems, for some former workaholics.

Ho aims to inject his department at Twitter with the warm, family-friendly experience he got back in the day at his start-up. “I think it’s really important, as an engineering leader, to take leave and to perpetuate a culture where we value everybody’s personal time and their families,” he says. And, he adds, that requires taking concrete actions, like going on parental leave and using vacation time. “You can have a leader who says it’s great to take family vacation and unplug, but then they have to actually take vacation themselves, for everyone else to feel like they can, too.”

In talking about balance and leave — with their colleagues, and here, with me — these men are waving their father flags in the face of an industry that, as Boodman puts it, “is just a bunch of really competitive people constantly upping their game.”

Dave Cohen — who, after his second child, took his full leave from his job at Google as a technical lead and engineering manager — has a more rosy explanation for the hesitation many men who work in tech experience about taking full paternity leaves: “I think a lot of people feel like they’re just so lucky to have a job at Google to begin with. You know, Google is so good to people.” So, take the company up on that goodness, he implores: Use your leave.

Soon after his return, Cohen did that thing that women have been maligned for since maternity leave was invented: He came back and quit. Cohen says he left, in part, because of a reorganization that had happened in his absence. But mostly, he just didn’t want to miss the milestones he’d been unable to witness with his first daughter. “I earned this time, and I realize how special it is,” he says. “When I started at Google, a lot of us were twentysomething kids. Right now, it’s a time when a lot of people in this field are maturing, having families, and realizing just how important that is.” Some former colleagues have told him that they’re jealous of the leap he took. “They say, ‘I wish I were strong enough to do that,’” he says.

Cohen left Google with no set work plan but was soon offered a new role at Facebook. He negotiated for a start date in early 2016. Facebook was willing to wait all those months. “Well, at first they weren’t excited, but I said I wanted to spend time with my family, and they seemed to understand,” Cohen says. “They’ve been super accommodating.” It’s a long game, career and fatherhood, even in a world as fast as tech. (Cohen adds, “the recruiter I was working with was pregnant. She just took her maternity leave, actually.”)

As I was writing this story on one of the last gorgeous days of summer, my son, now seven, ran up to me on the beach and stood over my laptop, raining down sand. “What are you working on?” he asked me. I cringed, trying not to fuss at him, caught mid-paragraph, but also wanting to explain to him the importance of paternity leave and involved fathers and how I truly hope we’re at a watershed moment right now that will change all of this for him when he’s a new dad one day. But I didn’t have to.

“Hey big guy, Mommy’s working,” my husband called to him, rescuing me. “Come on, let’s go jump in the waves together... Right now, it’s Daddy’s turn.”