Yep, your friends are pretty much completely right. After you have kids, particularity when they're going, you'll lack the time and energy so skill up at anything. It's a challenging, frustrating, rewarding, and super meaningful. That said, you'll have a couple hours a day of "free time," but you may find it difficult to be productive in that time when you're exhausted. Good luck! It's a hell of a ride!
Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
331–340 of 530 posts
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reality of many people who work from home is that this is the case anyway - the children are around and make some noise, because they live. Making this transparent and show who the kid is I think makes it actually easier for the other people in the call to feel empathy. If that is unprofessional, then so is working from home, I guess.
I agree they make some noise, but having them in your lap during a conference call is over the line imo. If you have kids in the house then you need an office with a door. I've worked from home for 3 years now with 2 kids aged 0-5 and they understand that when the door is closed, Dad is at work and they don't come in.
Wait, so what happens to the kids, or what are they doing, while your door is closed (and for how long)?
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
My two year old is super chill and rarely makes a sound. If he does, I give him a clicky pen and he's set for another 5-10 minutes. If I open a cartoon on Youtube (muted), it buys me another 5-10 minutes. I get your concern but it's a non-issue here. Edit: Thinking more about this.. If my team was deeply offended by this, I don't want to work there. My boys are important to me and if they're not willing to accept tha…
You are distracted every five to ten minutes. If everyone on your team did this, nothing would get done. You are being extremely selfish and very inconsiderate of other people's time.
Please tell me you do not have kids.
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
My two year old is super chill and rarely makes a sound. If he does, I give him a clicky pen and he's set for another 5-10 minutes. If I open a cartoon on Youtube (muted), it buys me another 5-10 minutes. I get your concern but it's a non-issue here. Edit: Thinking more about this.. If my team was deeply offended by this, I don't want to work there. My boys are important to me and if they're not willing to accept tha…
Your boys will feel fucked up and unloved because you don't invite them on to your teleconferences?
Umm, I guess you have never given this thought in the first person, i.e. placing yourself in the shoes of the parent or the child?
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#335This thread is slowly filling up with stories of enthusiastic workaholic parents who are disciplined and fit enough to take every single 15 minute break to sit down and get some code out. If you're able to code up a blog engine with one hand while holding your baby in the other, I envy you. I wish I could muster up the energy and discipline to do something like that. But to other readers: for many people this is not…
> this usual HN moral
Please don't make up generalizations about HN for rhetorical purposes. There's no "usual HN moral". It's a large community.
The thread doesn't seem to me to fit your description, but even if it did, the OP asked specifically for helping about keeping his skills up. That's a perfectly legitimate question, and no one deserves to be slurred as a "workaholic" for caring about it or sharing their approach.
Questions about family are deeply emotional and tug on all our ideas about who we are. HN's civility rule requires us to respect each other's differences and not resort to blame or self-righteousness.
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#336Having kids prompts you to learn different skills than those you might have learned without them.
It also gives you the perspective to realize that chasing after business fads--especially startup culture business fads--is not "skilling up". It's just spinning a hamster wheel fast enough to grab the wire and do a 360.
The greatest skill, one that you learn right away, is how to clean up other people's isht when they are incapable of doing so. The next skill is being able to figure out what action you can take to most efficiently stop hysterical, incoherent whining and crying and turn it into blessed silence. And the best skill is learning how to value your own time--particularly the amount of it you can spend sleeping.
In general, you stop "skilling up" for the benefit of current or potential employers, and learn for the benefit of your own family.
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are distracted every five to ten minutes. If everyone on your team did this, nothing would get done. You are being extremely selfish and very inconsiderate of other people's time.
Please tell me you do not have kids.
I have 4.
You would be annoyed if you had to answer an email or phone call when you were trying to hang out with your kids. The rest of us are annoyed with the constant interruptions.
It is extremely selfish and others are too polite to tell you to knock it off. If everyone acted like OP, nothing would get done because there would always be a kid, cat, dog, whatever stealing focus. I need to get my work done so I can go home.
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#338All the responses here indicate the same "la dee da having kids is so wonderful that you don't even miss the other stuff." Fuck that. I have kids and I totally miss being able to stay up all night working on stuff and exploring new technologies, feeling like the world is going on without me. Don't get me wrong, I'm a passable dad, spend as much time with kids as possible, take them out to libraries and parks and try…
ahmen to that brother....
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#339All the responses here indicate the same "la dee da having kids is so wonderful that you don't even miss the other stuff." Fuck that. I have kids and I totally miss being able to stay up all night working on stuff and exploring new technologies, feeling like the world is going on without me. Don't get me wrong, I'm a passable dad, spend as much time with kids as possible, take them out to libraries and parks and try…
I have two daughters, 7 and 8. Both have clinically diagnosed ADHD and the eldest has ODD and was born with heart problems that required open heart surgery to fix. I love them both to death. On their good days they're amazing kids. On their bad days, I, like you just slog through it and keep my thoughts to myself wondering just how much longer I can keep going. It's hard. You don't want to ruin your kids by admitting your doubts. You don't want them to have any inkling that they were anything but the perfect decision to expand your loving family. But your computer at least does what you tell it to, even if it wasn't quite what you intended to tell it to do. If I have to tell my kids to put on their shoes one more time today I may jump off the roof. I won't lie, there's days I'm truly not even sure how I make it through the day, but somehow, by some grace of God, because it's not my own, that left long ago, I do. On the days where they snuggle into you and tell you you're the most amazing Daddy a little girl can have, that makes all the suffering and sacrifice melt away.
Re: Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
#340All the responses here indicate the same "la dee da having kids is so wonderful that you don't even miss the other stuff." Fuck that. I have kids and I totally miss being able to stay up all night working on stuff and exploring new technologies, feeling like the world is going on without me. Don't get me wrong, I'm a passable dad, spend as much time with kids as possible, take them out to libraries and parks and try…
This is quite common. Find a balance.