Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

It seems that since I had a kid my career is in decline. I am currently working from home, but prior to this I would need to be home at a specific time to watch the kid. This obviously means I have less time to spend at work. Less hours means less dedication in the eyes of management.

On a side note, I took parental leave last year and was basically told by a manager friend that it means a lower rating.

What is your experience?

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 coding instead of 40 and it's just JIRA tasks adding feature X Y Z then those extra 20 hours don't help your career at all, but if you did a 40 hour job and spent 10 hours learning carefully selected skills in your spare time that would help your career a lot over time.

I have a 1yr old and a 2yr old. I definitely struggle to find a balance some days because the kids are super needy and I always want to go heads down at my job. Perhaps if I worked out of the house I may be writing something different now.

Yes. Without question.

It's worth it. It forces you to shift what you care about, and career path is one of those things you have to think differently about. That's also worthy of having kids.

To get where you want to go you often have to go where you don't want to go.

  Ever since i have had a kid, I have started asking the reverse question; Is my career dragging my parenting down?

I always wanted be a good dad, whatever that means to each one of us, my career choices started showing up in conflict. I had to make choices. Overall, over the past few years having a kid really made me think about my priorities. It made me focus and plan more and improved my ability to do more in less time. The first few years are hard and you will not be able to give as much time to your career if you want to spend that time with your child and spouse in constructive ways. Which is fine because the career is 40 yrs long. My conclusion is that I chose to have kids and now I will work on maintaining that relationship because at end of the day you can change jobs, go to a place that recognises people have lives, do something else in your life apart from your current career (you never know), but your kid is your kid and not someone else's and the early years will not come back again. As for my experience with my manager - As long as i get the work done, my place of work doesn't care about being seated in office. With Work From Home now taking off there are plans of making this semi permanent even if things go back to normal. Edit: formatting