effective time management is the key.
I get up at 5:00am - until 7:00am is learning time.
add another 2 hours of daily train commute, plus last hour of day in the office, and I squeeze in 25 hours of computer science learning during weekdays, while still having breakfast time and evenings with family. And then there's the weekends :)
Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
51–60 of 530 posts
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#52#1: None of this development shit matters. Your kids matter. Your own mental health matters.
#2: Carve out a bit of off limits time for efficient learning, say mondays 8-9AM. Guard it jealously and make yourself intensely look through the new stuff out there, picking a few things a month to deep dive on. Be picky, most of the new technology out there is shit.
#3: see #1
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#53Kids have a great property, they have a bed time. I structure my day so that I come home from work at the same time every day and spend time with the family. My skill building happens when they go to sleep. You can get a good 2-3 hours in a day this way if you need to.
Sometimes. My kids bedtime is also my bedtime. My 4 yr old sleeps for 9 hrs as do I!
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#54I have given up now. With fatigue and kids I don't have the desire to do coding in my spare time. Any other work I do in my spare time needs to be geared to investment or making money.
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#55Father of a nine months old. I do as much task at work and try learning up at work. When I come home, I try to spend as much time as I can with my boy. Even though I want to go open up my machine, whether it's for work or for blog posts, his cute smile hooks me in. My wife and I love to spend time with the baby. We appreciate how hard it must have been to our parents to raise us, and since they made it, we believe we can too. So cheers to all the parents and the babies and the diapers.
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#56At first, it will be hard. You may not have any spare time. After the newborn phase, the amount of spare time you have will slowly start to go back up again. Enjoy it, they aren't little babies for long. You will be well aware of how precious that time is, in a way that your pre-parent self could not comprehend. I usually have about 4-5 hours of time after the kids go to bed. During this time I either program, talk w…
3 under 5 here; evenings and random hours here and there on a weekend. Also, one of my hobbies is hacking on random software and hardware things... strangely I find it's a way to de-stress. I put all my random side projects on GitHub. Every once in a while one gets FP'ed on HN, even! But I only maintain a few of the projects I set up.
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#57Pick your day job carefully and tend the garden that is your career.
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#58It's tough, I won't lie to you about that. But it can be better if you have a supportive partner who understands, and is willing to give you decent blocks of time to code or study.
That is really the secret - reduce constant interruptions, so it may mean trading time between you and your life partner and other kids etc. Basically take up extra load with baby duties so they can get sleep/work etc., and in return, arrange for 2 to 4 hour blocks of time where you can cut code or learn new techniques uninterrupted.
Good Luck. Oh, and it does get better years later when your kids show an interest in your work and ask you to teach them! :)
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#59I have 2 kids - 4 year old & a 3 month old.
I am writing this (comment), as I put my son to sleep. He is almost 4 & wants me to be in the room as he drifts to sleep. So i am sitting beside his bed (after an evening full of quality time with him), checking up on left over work for the day (& hackernews)
We just had the second one - who is 3 months old now. So it's still adjusting phase for all of us at home. Sometimes, I just wonder, how people have/manage time with 3 or 4 kids. I seem to be struggling with 2.
Let me write down, what works for me/us:
1. Early dinner & 8 pm bed time for kids gives me 2-3 hours every night. Sometimes, I choose to work on side projects/hobbies. Sometimes, I just binge watch netflix with my wife. Sometimes, I make my kids bedtime my own & wake up early next morning. It depends.
2. On weekends, afternoons - I can easily get a couple of hours - when kids go to nap. Of course, this is not working out recently, as our new born colludes with the elder one - and they nap at different times.
3. What really would help me - and i struggle with this - if i have clear priorities in my head - what I want to achieve in the 'extra time' that I have got. The clearer the goal, better the results.
Ultimately, I have realized, kids give me far more joy than anything work related can. However, hats off to all of us parents - who are juggling of priorities - work - life & trying to do the best we can.
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#60It's a great question.
Get clear on the myths you develop after having kids. The biggest for me is: I only have ten minutes here, fifteen minutes there. I need focused hours of time to build something. That is just a story.
When my first child was born, I used the time to write an app late at night while I was getting my wife some sleep. I called it the one handed blogging tool, because I needed a way to blog with one hand while I was holding my sleeping son: http://blog.teddyhyde.com/2013/04/03/teddy-hyde-the-no-compr...
When my daughter was born two years later, my wife was so exhausted she would go to bed at 8. I'd get my son to sleep and then promised myself I would write for just fifteen minutes before bed. That usually turned into an hour or two and three years later I had written a book for O'Reilly: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/mobile/0636920043027.do
My third child was born three months ago. I wonder what myths I'll make up and will stop me and which I'll wake up to and empower myself through.
I'm not the greatest developer, I struggled with the Google interview I got. But, success is 90% perspiration and 10% ingenuity. Who cares if you are sweating because you are exhausted and sleep deprived caring for infants as compared to pulling all night coding sessions?
And, I'd never trade any accomplishment, no matter what, for the connection I have with my kids. Nothing. I cry a little every day when I look at them and think I could have missed this if I gave in to my arrogance and fear about relationships.