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Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

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Re: Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

#71

Post by basseq »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #50
basseq wrote: post #12

Kids—I have 3—reinforce attributes that should be valuable in the workforce. * I ruthlessly prioritize — you have to when you're balancing a family. * I don't dwell on mistakes – milk, quite literally, is spilled on a daily basis. * I'm a better manager – kids teach you to be clear and immediate in your feedback, not to mention more empathetic * I speak better – reading bedtime stories means you practice public speak…

> If you're struggling to find a balance, know first that you're not alone. But recognize quickly that your employment environment may be incompatible with family life, and so what's "slowing your career down" is your management... not your kids or your own performance. This may come from an already privileged position (I'm doing "well" by most standards and haven't lost my job due to the pandemic), but your relation…

One of the hardest things for me pre-kids was standing up for myself. Unrealistic expectations, people with no respect for your time, meetings that stretched well past 5pm with no good reason.

Kids don't make that easier—and in fact, make it harder because you simply can't roll over and let people walk all over you. That transition was painful. And, if I'm being honest, is still hard for me.

The first time our CEO suggested we meet at 6:30pm, and I said, "Nope, I have to cook dinner and put the kids in the bath" was... terrifying.

While there are still times where my family gets the short end of the stick, I've found it to be empowering, and I think begets respect.

No one respects a doormat—kids or no, don't be one.

Re: Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

#73

Post by basseq »

new_realist wrote: post #70
basseq wrote: post #12

Kids—I have 3—reinforce attributes that should be valuable in the workforce. * I ruthlessly prioritize — you have to when you're balancing a family. * I don't dwell on mistakes – milk, quite literally, is spilled on a daily basis. * I'm a better manager – kids teach you to be clear and immediate in your feedback, not to mention more empathetic * I speak better – reading bedtime stories means you practice public speak…

If you have all of these attributes and have kids, you will not progress as fast as someone who has all of these attributes and no kids: they have more time, more energy, more sleep, and more money. They can afford to take more risks. Finally, they probably have an aching void in their personal life which they will try to fill with career ambition. This is all reflected in women’s pay statistics: those who wait to ha…

My point is that having kids massively strengthened those attributes in me—and others I've spoken with. I wouldn't have been in the same position otherwise.

All this is to say... it's not about fast or slow. It's about different and finding what works.

And there are counter-examples, too. I worked with a guy who ran a global business unit—a couple billion dollars, probably—and had 5 kids. Might he have been even more successful had he remained childless? Maybe... who knows. He was good either way.

I volunteered with a woman who is now the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. She brought her daughter with her, and doing social good as a family was an important part of her personal and. professional life.

If you're good and driven, it doesn't matter.

Re: Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

#74

Post by mikekchar »

I'm over 50 and don't have kids. It is incredibly unlikely that I ever will have kids ;-) Has it helped my career significantly? I don't think so. I know lots of people who are more successful than me in objective terms that do have kids.

Not having kids means that you get to be selfish. That's pretty much it. If you want to devote yourself completely to your job, you can. I did that for some time. It was fun for some time :-) If you want you can travel a lot. I did that too. If you want you can quit your job and live in a shack by the ocean and teach English. I did that too.

Having children is always going to be a tradeoff. It requires time, energy, focus, and huge amounts of money. It requires you to be responsible, to prioritise and above all to be selfless.

On the other hand, based on virtually everybody I know who has kids (and doesn't have other significant problems in their life), there is a pretty significant payback. If you have a child, I assume you understand that payback.

I realise that it's tempting to want it all. It seems unfair that people who prioritised other things got advantages that you don't have. Trust me, I understand that. I've lived all around the world. I've worked in many super interesting jobs. I've been able to literally say "Fuck it" and forget about money and just do what I want. But I'm never going to be able to go home and give my child a hug. Trade offs.

Re: Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

#75

Post by friendlybus »

loxists_locusts wrote: post #65
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very difficult to see the other side of the fence. It's nigh-on impossible to see what parent-life is like for someone without kids given how hard it is for parents to picture life without them even having lived it for a number of years. That feeling of having a child is impossible to impart to someone without. The vileness of the question is directly resultant from that fundamental intrinsic change that comes f…

It seems to be a recent cultural development though. It wasn't that long ago that a man or woman would not be seen to have truly come of age until having a family of their own, or at least marriage. Tune into any popular media today though and it's all bumbling dad and overworked mum tropes demonizing healthy happy families while our rates of depression and mental illness soar. Funny, that. While the pro-family minds…

It's terribly degrading to blame personal life choices on the media, as if there were no other cause.

>it has become taboo to acknowledge it openly

Do you want to discuss it openly? The politics behind that has immense potential for debate. Fathers and mothers will endlessly tell other adults how to behave and give their own children excuses for not performing to those standards. There are some very famous examples of this.

Western society is rapidly becoming more traditional as we eschew modern liberalism and embrace a classical perspective. There's going to be 40 years of cultural building towards the traditional center. Are you going to attribute all your decision making to a cultural movement that flies above you, or do you just reserve that judgement for others?

Re: Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

#76

Post by 00850 »

loxists_locusts wrote: post #37

What a vile question. Not that I'm suggesting malice on OP's part, but rather that this question is the manifestation of an all-too-common perverse mindset among many young adults in the West that disgusts me. They are victims of the relentless propaganda around empowerment and living one's 'best life' that inevitably leads to childless, lonely, bitter, empty, miserable 40-somethings with a gaping hole in their heart…

> What do these people even have to live for?

As someone that's childfree in his thirties and is planning to not have any children; I live for myself, my own aspirations, philosophy, love and exploration. Career certainly does not come first, but its not hard to see how having a family would stop me in my tracks of progress in life. Being around peers with children does bring me joy, but it would be a personal experience I could not handle. And I figure, for someone like me its probably best to embrace the child free life with my partner rather than put someone into this world and raise them as unhappy and unmotivated parents. What exactly is wrong with that?

> They are, in the truly biological sense of the term, drones.

Does it really matter what makes another happy?

> They are drones, by choice.

And you're not a drone by choice? Just another side of the same coin. You're not exactly coming of as happy and fulfilled either, more as a someone with a ingrained world view of kids being a necessity for ones happiness in life.

> I don't understand why they even bother without love and laughter to look forward to at the end of the day.

There's enough love and laughter in my life, I don't have a deficit of it at the end of my day. Instead there are other long term goals, career and non-career wise which are indeed very important to me, but which absolutely do not leave any room whatsoever for children.

Re: Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

#77

Post by webreac »

Thé weight of your family on your career dépends a lot of thé behaviour with the second parent. If thère are fights (even silent), kids will also be more difficult. Try to have a good split of the tasks and to be thankful and respectful.

Re: Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

#78

Post by friendlybus »

cephaslr wrote: post #39

I used to get really worked up early in my career trying to win the ratings game. When I got older I began to question the concept of the career, ironically when I finally started ‘winning’ at it. 1. Ratings and promotions within a job/company are boss personality and politically dependent and typically very unfair. Lots of hard work goes unrewarded. 2. Even if you do get lucky and get a promotion, your prize is 5-10…

I grew up with an inbuilt skepticism of hierarchy, authority and work structures. School required tremendous effort to stay on track despite the material being achievable.

Honestly can't say I'll ever enjoy a 'career' where one is plugged into a corporate tree. Been there, done that. I took a small business course a few years ago. The teachers there left a job they had been in for decades to start business, tried it and didn't like it. They then took a job (they call it a 'business') teaching others how to start small businesses. Found it very hard to take them seriously when they had little practical knowledge or experience, despite the reams of information they had collected from others. Some people just aren't wired to be separate from the great corporate tree.

I think too many people sign up to a career simply because it's safe and you don't have to think too much about long term goals. There are of course other virtues to those jobs, but people who are going to hate their job for the rest of their life and underachieve should probably move on out to the less-sheltered world.

Re: Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

#79

Post by quickthrower2 »

shostack wrote: post #64
quickthrower2 wrote: post #3

Your career isn't necessarily your job. If you work somewhere where they judge you for having kids then it might be best to move on. Do they judge people with hobbies, pets or drinking habits a similar way? The only time that is an issue is in industries where you genuinely need to work a lot of hours, which are few. Trading desk, pilot or surgeon springs to mind. Also if a company requires you to do 60 hours of codi…

>"If you work somewhere where they judge you for having kids then it might be best to move on." For many, this may be viewed as a fairly privileged statement. Particularly with Great Depression-level unemployment, simply "moving on" isn't really an option for many (most?).

True. I don't mean it to come out that way. However even if it is privileged, it is sage advice to keep yourself as employable as possible at all times, keep an eye on the market, what skills and interview questions you need to nail, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

#80

Post by peferron »

loxists_locusts wrote: post #63
willj wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go read /r/childfree. Plenty of people are happy living childless. I know some myself. Children might add purpose to some people’s lives, and might add unhappiness to others. We all go our own way.

I'd rather not. It's an infinite well of the misery, pointlessness, nihilism and bitterness I alluded to. It's one of the saddest places on the internet, especially because of the way they revel in their sadness and suffocate one another in it, rather than fighting against it towards a life of purpose, joy, respect and spiritual fulfilment that they will otherwise never know.

You have more in common with them than you think; both you and a portion of the r/childfree community try to validate their own choices by being demeaning and hateful towards people on the other side. It's hard for me to believe that someone genuinely happy and confident about their life choices would exhibit the vitriol that you, and some members of r/childfree, do.
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