Maybe this side project obsession we all have stems from most things being easy to us? Too many people trying to be Tony Stark?
Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?
121–130 of 136 posts
Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?
#122Having 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…
Watching videos at 1.5x or 2x helps.
Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?
#123IMO the silver bullet is to find a job that eliminates your need for side projects and studying new technologies. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's definitely not impossible.
Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?
#124A lot of parents really, really like having kids. The ROI on having children is, for them, so self-evident that they don't really think about it. But that's not true for everyone, esp. if you were old enough to be pretty fully-formed by the time you became a father. Kids come at a huge cost. You're exhausted from dealing with them, and in the meantime you're probably not exercising, and you're eating like crap, and,…
I bet the decision to have kids was your wife's. I'm glad you're coming to terms with it. Sorry, that was just a very passive-agressive read.
No, it was a joint decision. I just figured I'd be more-or-less like my dad, who loves being a dad. It never struck me that it might be something I really struggle with.
Overall, it was the right decision for us. But there are definitely valleys along with the peaks.
Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?
#125Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?
#126[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?
#127As a parent of 2 young children, I've learned that it is all about tradeoffs. You need to prioritize the things that are important to you and spend your time accordingly. And let me emphasize that these priorities are a very personal choice. For example, I see quite a few parents in this thread mentioning the very useful technique of splitting "who's looking after the kids" responsibilities during certain timeframes (e.g. weekends) such that the other parents can be productive working at something else. No doubt about it, this is a very useful technique, however, more often than not, we choose not to use this technique and spend our weekends all together, as a whole family. There is no "correct" choice and parenting and family values will be very diverse across families. We fully understand that we are less productive (in the tangible sense) than families who split their time more than us. Things that need to get done around the house take longer for us, I have less side-project or hobby time than perhaps I would like. However, we make this tradeoff knowingly, because we also value the family time and know that the time of our children being young is fleeting.
That said, I am fortunate that I was able to switch to 100% remote consulting from a 9-5 gig a few years ago. It's been a financial and time win and now if I need "side-project" time, I can schedule that into my work-week. This has enabled me to be a lot more comfortable with spending nearly 100% of non-working hours as family time. With a full-time job, I imagine I would need to more creative (and sacrifice some family time) to free up some "me-time".
Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?
#128Sorry for asking the pessimistic question, by no means do i intend to be a troll, but don't you think that it is irresponsible bringing children in to a world where you can't even take the free evenings after working 8+ hours and giving your best? (because you need to "stay competitive or something"). The developer culture of living to work (instead of the other way around) and being totally cool about it is somethin…
In my experience, if you're a good engineer, it is fairly straightforward to work to live. It is not particularly challenging.
The problem is that you are, over time, shown powerful tools and processes capable of perceptibly increasing the rate of human technological progress. For many people, pursuing this goal is irresistible, and this is when you transition to living to work -- when you know that you are personally capable of moving humanity forward.
Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?
#129Sorry for asking the pessimistic question, by no means do i intend to be a troll, but don't you think that it is irresponsible bringing children in to a world where you can't even take the free evenings after working 8+ hours and giving your best? (because you need to "stay competitive or something"). The developer culture of living to work (instead of the other way around) and being totally cool about it is somethin…
In my experience, if you're a good engineer, it is fairly straightforward to work to live. It is not particularly challenging. The problem is that you are, over time, shown powerful tools and processes capable of perceptibly increasing the rate of human technological progress. For many people, pursuing this goal is irresistible, and this is when you transition to living to work -- when you know that you are personall…
I can see the allure in that, but perhaps this is a false vision used to exploit people, similar to the "American Dream". Are you sure you're moving humanity forward? I can see those working in medicine, food, etc. helping people, but many of this technology is aimed at purposes that are detrimental to humans or at best conveniences that still contribute to climate change.
Re: Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Your schedule sounds more like mine. 28 hours of leisure per week? That's unreal!