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Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?

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Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?

#101

Post by emperorcezar »

kemiller2002 wrote: post #18

Having kids taught me how to use every spare minute I have. I'm a single parent with 2 kids, so I have no back up to take care of them if I am busy with something else. Half of my free time is spent with my kids, so I have to make everything else count. My process looks a little chaotic, but I carefully plan out what I'm going to do, and when I need to do it by. My entire day is on a mental schedule. Unless I deliber…

I really like the idea of demanding a schedule and being ruthless about the worth of the meeting.

Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?

#102

Post by jlebrech »

vbsteven wrote: post #4

Try to get rid of the commute. That's two wasted hours every day. I have a similar 1hour commute but I only need to be in the office 1 day a week. On the other 4 days I get up at the same time (5:30-6:00am) and I work on my side projects until 8am when I bring my daughter to school and my home-work day starts.

I turned my commute time into cycling time.

Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?

#103

Post by ryanwaggoner »

Being self employed has made things a lot easier for me, but two years into having kids, I'm still trying to break the bad habit of thinking "I'll get it done tonight / this weekend."

My wife and I do split things up in ways that make it easier. So we each have a morning off, a weeknight off, and we split the weekends so we each get 1-2 blocks of 4 hours. This is obviously a luxury that is easier with two parents, one kid, etc.

As my daughter turns two, I'm amazed at how quickly her personality is emerging and developing. I've spent a lot of time thinking abou a blog post I read years ago by some founder or investor who pointed out that you really only get about a decade with your kids. From toddler to early teen years where their lives start to diverge and they have their own need for independence. That really drove home the point that this is an incredibly fleeting time, and I have to pay attention and be present, because once it's gone, it's gone forever.

Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?

#104

Post by roryisok »

johngorse wrote: post #21
nicostouch wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a self-driving car and just do the side-projects during the commute.

LOL, I'm waiting for that day man, it will be the happiest day of my life ;)

Imagine taking a nap in your car while it drives you to work. That's the dream

Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?

#105

Post by vanderreeah »

ashark wrote: post #52
linkregister wrote: post #17

As your kids get older, and especially when they enter school, a large part of the evening will be spent by them doing homework. Their weekends will be spent more with friends and doing activities (organized sports, etc). You'll have more time to yourself. In the meantime, enjoy your family time because your kids won't always want to spend all their free time with you (they'll have friends and hobbies to compete with…

Note that 30 minutes/day is a much bigger commitment for a parent of young kids than other people. I've run the numbers in posts on here before, but the TL;DR is that you've got ~28 hrs of kid-free (and non-work/commute) time a week without cutting into sleep, but before taking out unavoidable activities (prepping for the next day, cleaning, spouse time) that's likely to eat at least half of it. So 30min/day is like…

Agree. Have a job, kid, and a need to eat, relax at least for an hour in the evening, and sleep. 30 mins exercise a day (which incl. prep and travel to place of exercise could easily turn to an hour) seems as luxurious to me as having a private chauffeur.

Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?

#106

Post by wj »

ryandrake wrote: post #70
kemiller2002 wrote: post #18

Having kids taught me how to use every spare minute I have. I'm a single parent with 2 kids, so I have no back up to take care of them if I am busy with something else. Half of my free time is spent with my kids, so I have to make everything else count. My process looks a little chaotic, but I carefully plan out what I'm going to do, and when I need to do it by. My entire day is on a mental schedule. Unless I deliber…

Yes, it teaches you to manage your precious time to the second, but it also teaches you how to effectively get things done when you only have sparse 15-30 minute chunks rather than long stretches of time to concentrate. It used to take me 30 minutes just to "get in the zone." Keep that up and you'll never get anything done as a parent. You need to be able to snap yourself into the zone in 30 seconds, get something ac…

I still struggle with this. Anything for me that needs creativity or critical thinking (programming and writing mostly) really suffers with the interruptions.

Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?

#107

Post by unfocused »

achou wrote: post #51

I'm a founder looking for ways to make my next startup family-friendly. I'm a parent of two sons in SF so I know what it's like. A grab bag of ideas so far: - Allow parents to bring babies to work (0-6mo) - Locate in suburbs where parents live instead of in the city - Hire remote employees who work from home - Establish a culture of taking an office break around 4-5pm then resume at 8pm for a couple hours - Do social…

I like your idea of:

"Establish a culture of taking an office break around 4-5pm then resume at 8pm for a couple hours"

as it is similar to what someone does at my work and it really helps them out.

We have one person that lives far away (45m to 1hr) and she leaves early, around 3:30pm so she can be at home waiting for the kids when the bus drops them off. Then she puts in another hour of work sometime that evening.

Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?

#108

Post by kemiller2002 »

wj wrote: post #106
ryandrake wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it teaches you to manage your precious time to the second, but it also teaches you how to effectively get things done when you only have sparse 15-30 minute chunks rather than long stretches of time to concentrate. It used to take me 30 minutes just to "get in the zone." Keep that up and you'll never get anything done as a parent. You need to be able to snap yourself into the zone in 30 seconds, get something ac…

I still struggle with this. Anything for me that needs creativity or critical thinking (programming and writing mostly) really suffers with the interruptions.

Steven King wrote something that really made me focus on changing this. He essentially said that the difference between an amateur and a professional writer is that the professional write even when not in the mood. That made me think a lot about how I write code etc. and how I can use my free time even when I don't want to when I have to absolutely get something done.

Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?

#109

Post by DharmaSoldat »

I'm a newish dad and full stack dev. I've found that what's been most effective for me, aside from spending (admittedly, far too much) time coding in the evenings before sleep, is making a concerted effort to share whole-day responsibility of the kids on weekends. I'll take the kids on one day, my wife will take the kids on another day. We trade off during the week too so we can both have large stretches of uninterrupted time.

Exercise (and for me, meditation) are important balancers too - don't neglect them for the sake of coding, you'll find that you just get burnt out.

Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?

#110

Post by thatwebdude »

Before I had kids my time management was absolute crap; so getting this together was key, and nearly made my days 25 or 26 hours long.

Your schedule seems about right. There's definitely worse ones out there. Assuming you have young kids, they will become more independent with time to allow you to have time back for yourself.

My schedule is nearly identical; although I do have to admit I'm about an hour later than you for everything.

To become a semi-successful parent (is that even a thing? We'll see in 18 years) who still gets shit done I've learned to simply utilize every idle moment. It allows me about an hour of extra time for something during the weekdays, and makes my weekends more efficient. I tend to sacrifice my own sleep when I really need more time for something and it usually works out okay, as long as I don't make it a habit for the week (or I'll feel sick, tired, or just unwilling to over-perform).

Right now, I'm going through a home renovation, so the process is slow but it's considered my "side-project". The nice thing about it is that I can involve my kids in it to keep them occupied and still get a little bit of something done.

For keeping up with tech, my pace at work is slow enough that I can continuously evolve the software I write with new technologies and best practices. Before I started where I'm at, I was at a much more fast-pace place which was fun and exciting; but absolutely damning to my home life because of all the other stuff I've got going on. (And nothing angers Mrs. and Kids more than coming home at 8 or 9pm frequently).

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