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Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?

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Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?

#521

Post by rev_bird »

ern wrote: post #124
rev_bird wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the sentiment here, but for a lot of people I suspect it wouldn't actually be ok to stop learning outside of work. I know there's a lot of pushback on this idea for very good reasons, but if you have a job and want a different one, sometimes evenings and weekends are the times you need to teach yourself the skills you need. I also want to push back a little bit on the idea that "programming couldn't brin…

I agree with you about the need to remain buzzword compliant for jobs, but are we "skilling up" or spinning our wheels? There is some worthwhile learning, but a lot of it is just BS status signaling. Learning another SPA framework that solves the problems of the last framework, while introducing new problems? Learning yet another way to bundle your web content? A new transpiled language to patch the holes in JavaScri…

I'm way late to your response, but just wanted to thank you for taking the time to write this out. It's probably the most convincing argument against "BS status signaling" I can remember reading.

Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?

#522

Post by knorker »

ceautery wrote: post #181
knorker wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is "you don't. People with children will not be as good". Great. That means I should not feel bad about any hypothetical statistics that show parents paid less than non-parents. You're saying parents are, on average, statistically, not as useful as non-parents to a company.

What kind of trolling nonsense is this? The senior engineers I know all have spouses and children, and our employers find us quite desirable to have around. If you're focusing on learning each new whizbang whatsit that comes out, you'll never learn how to lead a team. You'll teach your employer that you can be abused, because you are desperate to impress them. Giving up a family to stay ahead will leave you a lonely,…

> What kind of trolling nonsense is this? The senior engineers I know all have spouses and children

Please read what was written, and what I replied.

> If you're[…]

I'm not. Your comment is completely disconnected from what I said.

> learning each new whizbang whatsit that comes out

Is that the only way you know how to improve yourself professionally? If so then I think you're doing it wrong.

If you're a developer doing network stuff, then given a few years you could get a CCIE or something, and learn tonnes of stuff and be a more valuable employee. You don't have to try to stay on top of the latest developments in SDN. That'd probably be a waste of time.

Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?

#523

Post by knorker »

daxfohl wrote: post #259
knorker wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is "you don't. People with children will not be as good". Great. That means I should not feel bad about any hypothetical statistics that show parents paid less than non-parents. You're saying parents are, on average, statistically, not as useful as non-parents to a company.

Sure. From a certain perspective that's correct. If you're a non-parent and work/study productively 16 hours per day 7 days a week without time off and can maintain that, then, from some perspective, you're better. Thing is, in most cases, your value as a software engineer is very marginally related to your ability to keep up with the latest and greatest of everything. In fact an obsession with bleeding-edge technolo…

> your ability to keep up with the latest and greatest of everything

This hypothetical person spending 16 hours a day doesn't have to spend it on latest and greatest, which you and many other comments seem to assume.

Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?

#524

Post by knorker »

daxfohl wrote: post #493
knorker wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is "you don't. People with children will not be as good". Great. That means I should not feel bad about any hypothetical statistics that show parents paid less than non-parents. You're saying parents are, on average, statistically, not as useful as non-parents to a company.

Ha, you decide: "Dude we totally have to use this new technology I read about on HN at 2:00 in the morning. It looks so cool!" "Let's use the technology we always use because we know it works for what the client needs and I'll still be able to pick up my kids at 5:30." Who are you giving your money to?

Why do you think that the ONLY way to spend extra time on is on that new thing from HN 2 AM?

I'm not following this huge leap that you and other commenters are making.

How about choosing between the people who have twice as much experience with managing this Oracle cluster you have. Do you want the one with 10 years experience, or the one with 20 years and is credited in Oracle documentation?

(all else being equal)

Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?

#525

Post by knorker »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #231
knorker wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is "you don't. People with children will not be as good". Great. That means I should not feel bad about any hypothetical statistics that show parents paid less than non-parents. You're saying parents are, on average, statistically, not as useful as non-parents to a company.

No he's saying the definition of "being good" is not obsessively adopting "new technology" but realizing that the core foundations of CS are the core foundations of CS, and doing your job 8 hours a day and learning your core skill set and iterating and practicing on it is in fact all that is needed to produce a good programmer. Frankly I think those of us who have been in the industry over 15 or 20 years know that ad…

Why are you assuming all learning is about "new tech"?

How about just taking an online class in old traffic theory, to improve your network coding skills?

Your whole comment is attacking some straw man.

Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?

#526

Post by jonaf »

fatherofone wrote: post #29
jonaf wrote: post #22

I'm the father of 2, ages 3 and 2. My wife is due with number 3 in May. My son (3) was diagnosed about 18 months ago with level 3 ASD. I have a beautiful family that I adore. I'm a software engineer, and I was just promoted a couple months ago. I'm definitely not superhuman. I have several unpublished blogs, but haven't been able to get to them lately. I open source more projects than contributing to existing ones, a…

And a guitarist too.....jeez....what a legend ! Hope to read your blogs some day, can you provide a link?

Ha, not really. I don't play gigs or anything like that. :)

My blog's in my profile, although I converted to a static hosted blog on github recently and haven't written anything since (classic!). I'm working on open sourcing something I think is pretty cool that I did at work, but it's pretty in-depth (mid-tier load balancing algorithm and design), so writing it up takes a bit of time!

Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?

#527

Post by WA »

geebee wrote: post #407
cholantesh wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Learning another SPA framework that solves the problems of the last framework, while introducing new problems? Learning yet another way to bundle your web content? A new transpiled language to patch the holes in JavaScript? I understand that HN is (probably?) pretty web-centric, but this portion of your comment makes me wonder if it's just the web that's fucked. I'm not hearing a ton of complaints re: burnout or bei…

Every now and then, things go haywire in the web world. The last time I recall feeling this way was 2005-ish, when Java frameworks took off. Previously, small to medium sized java apps used servlets, jsp, jdbc, and something along the lines of the "java cookbook." It was, in fact, inefficient, with lots of typing, and it was difficult to manage dependencies. I think the work that went into dependency injection, ORMs,…

This is such a great comment, I had to say thank you. I'm extremely reluctant right now to hop on the JS frameworks bandwagon. I played around with Ionic 2 for a bit and while its nice, they (and Angular 2 and TypeScript) release updates every few weeks. This results in me having to go through code all the time – or leave it untouched for a year. But if I do the latter, I'll run into almost unsolvable problems later.

I wrote my web app in a small self-made PHP framework 8 years ago and it's still running to this day, with only minor adjustments. The advantage is: I understand the entire "stack". In comparison, the current JS madness feels extremely fragile. I feel like it's impossible to write good code in it that'll be around for the next 8 years, when all of those dependencies are either updated to something entirely different – or simply disappeared.

Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?

#528

Post by webmaven »

royletron wrote: post #484
webmaven wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that nurses (both RNs and LPNs) have to have a certain number of Continuing Education credits[0] (which means not just learning something, but passing a test) every year in order to renew their license, without which they can't work as a nurse. And yes, they are expected to pay for these courses out of their own pocket, as well as do this studying and test-taking on their own time, even if they have a full-t…

Be mindful my statement was my opinion, not factual. I am completely aware there are people screwed over a lot more than software developers, and I know how fortunate we are to do what we do. I am just making the point that normalising the expectation of constant self learning is fairly unique in this industry as the defacto standard for employees.

"fairly unique" is one of those annoying phrases that parses to meaninglessness. Either something is unique or it isn't, there aren't degrees of uniqueness (unlike, "creative", "special", or "new"). For comparison, while "really unique" isn't meaningless, the "really" is pointless and so still quite annoying.

Perhaps you meant "fairly unusual"?

I suspect that the emphasis on self-teaching is due in part to the pace of change in information technologies, and also to "rockstar" culture.

The most useful and valuable technical skills are usually the ones for which there are no formal courses yet, and most businesses are reluctant to spend money (or employee time) on speculative investments which may not pay off (for the business or the employee).

Meanwhile, the most valuable employees often disdain spending time acquiring skills that do have some form of formal credential or certification available, as those are inevitably going to be much less interesting and shiny.

And so, non-rockstars (including junior folks) are left to fend for themselves (if they are lucky, a more experienced co-worker will point them in useful directions) even when formal learning options would be helpful to them.

Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?

#529

Post by webmaven »

randlet wrote: post #504
webmaven wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have a full time job, you need childcare whether you work in your home or out of it. I don't think that's particularly controversial. The need isn't particularly controversial, the availability and affordability is.

I guess I'm not sure what your argument is then. Yes childcare can be tough to find and it can be very expensive depending on where you live, but if you're saying its okay to hold a full time remote job and care for your child at the same time, I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I dont' think that would be fair to your child or your employer.

I am not saying it is "okay", I am saying that sometimes there is no other option. Life happens, people cope the best they can, and sometime the reasonable compromise is going to be to let the kid sit on their parent's lap for the duration of a conference call.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ojvk-4IcOE

Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?

#530

Post by webmaven »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #499
webmaven wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get especially happy, but why especially your own?

Being around other people's children can be annoying if they're not well behaved, being around my own children would imply a 20 year sentence of that. I did not mean to imply I've left a trail of abandoned kids across my history :)

Ah. So, it's the interminable aspect, rather than your particular kids being especially unbearable. Got it. Thank you for explaining.
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