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Being ambitious and being a dad

nicholascharriere.com

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Re: Being ambitious and being a dad

#161

Post by sacul »

tedggh wrote: post #139
reillyse wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it funny that I spent my 20s and 30s doing everything in my power to avoid having kids and at this stage in my life I’m doing everything to have kids. I do feel that 30 year old me would definitely be in better shape to chase kids around.

There’s never a right time to have kids. But having them older has its perks. You are much more calmed, patient, you are wiser and likely financially stable. Throwing money at problems definitely makes life 10X easier when you have kids, something most people can’t do in their 20s or even 30s.

I disagree. As a father of nine children, I submit that the best time to have children is when you’re young. The next best time is now.

Sure, you’ll be poor, and you’ll make lots of mistakes. But how do you know you’ll be able to have children later? And what’s so important now that makes it worth putting off children?

Re: Being ambitious and being a dad

#162

Post by throwaway4916 »

I grew up in a huge family with a dad who wasn't particularly successful but spent all his time working anyway, with little attention to either the household or to building relationships with his kids.

I think this was mostly a matter of temperament; he liked to work and he didn't really care much about the operation he was funding, which is unfortunately why he has no contact with most of his adult children today.

All that to say, I didn't mind that he worked a lot, but it was pretty damaging that he almost never spoke to me other than for urgent logistical or disciplinary reasons. Just, you know, don't do that.

Re: Being ambitious and being a dad

#163

Post by qwerpy »

dyauspitr wrote: post #154
wat10000 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, creepy weirdos care about “genetic legacy.” Normal people have no problem with adoption or stepkids or whatever.

Yeah, you’re the normal one and most of the world is creepy weirdos

The “reality has a liberal bias” crowd gets pretty quiet when biology comes up.

Re: Being ambitious and being a dad

#164

Post by gkamal »

It is not just the time. Having kids (dependents) consciously or subconsciously lowers your risk threshold. Makes you less flexible in a lot of aspects. All these little things will lead to tempering your ambitions or take on additional stress to keep it up..

Re: Being ambitious and being a dad

#165

Post by funnygiraffe »

Xcelerate wrote: post #55

Having extreme career success (like the kind referred to in the article) is basically a lottery ticket. I spend a lot of time with my kids, because I figure even if I halve my chances of winning the lottery, well, the odds haven’t changed that much, all considered.

Exactly this! When I had my first two kids only a year apart and early in my career, I thought I'm giving something up because I could no longer invest as much time and effort into my projects and research ideas as before. But in retrospect, looking at how the field has evolved since etc., those ideas, which I had regretted I couldn't push harder, anyway had only a small chance for some grand success (beyond the low-medium success of the low-medium effort versions I managed to put together).

Re: Being ambitious and being a dad

#166

Post by computerdork »

dyauspitr wrote: post #134
wat10000 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gives a crap about "genetic legacy"? How about mind your own business.

Most people.

It was interesting of you to make the remark considering it’d clearly be unpopular, but agree with others, don’t really care about my genetic legacy. Am going to be dead so it’s meaningless to me.

And actually, a non-genetic child might be nice, especially if you get one at the right age. You don’t have the intense burden of raising a baby or when they’re a young child, but still get to the joy of raising a child (as long as they like you, which is of course the biggest downside. Probably less of a tendency for them to attach strongly to you).

Re: Being ambitious and being a dad

#167

Post by ColdStream »

handedness wrote: post #17
mholt wrote: post #5

"Be ambitious enough to be an ambitious dad." - agreed! Being an ambitious dad IS exhausting. And the successful people telling you that you can't be a present, ambitious dad and be successful -- that you have to trade successful fatherhood for professional success -- are weak. They are not heroes. The real heroes are the ones ambitiously raising the next generation while changing the world right now. That's what I a…

I would also add that, at least in my experience, those who are professionally ambitious and maximizing professional success, while being highly confident they are also succeeding at home, often have an inaccurate view of their home life. It's not until the kids are grown and openly fighting their demons that they realize the bargain that they made. It's that old adage of, anyone who thinks they're a great parent, pr…

A good example is the crushing stories of Frank Zappa's kids. Here is the guy touring the world making millions of dollars, releasing albums non-stop. His kids, barely saw him. For instance, his daughter Moonunit said the most time ever spent with him was recording lines for the song Valley Girl, beyond that he was fairly absent.

I have heard similar stories from many you wouldn't know, they say the same thing about their partner or parents. The desire to have it all ends up trading one thing over the other.

Re: Being ambitious and being a dad

#168

Post by ColdStream »

xp84 wrote: post #87

I have a good friend who has a special needs kid and we've discussed his struggles at length - suffice it to say that it takes an order of magnitude more time and attention than what's described here. The thing is, you of course don't get tipped off that you've been selected for that particular curse (and yes, I'd say it's a curse. It's not some inspiring after-school special thing, it's unfair as f*k to all involved…

> And I say this as someone who is very in favor of having kids and who worries about the looming population collapse in all developed countries.

Complete aside, I hope that this happens via the demographic collapse and not due to resource/environmental blow back. It would be the smoothest path down. In the same way that inflation is a smoother way to grow a pool of poverty.

Re: Being ambitious and being a dad

#169

Post by _AzMoo »

One of the biggest challenges I have as an ambitious engineer and a father of two, is that I do actually have plenty of time to be a high achiever in both facets of my life, but only if I'm working in isolation.

My kids are active in about 12-13 hour period between 6.30am and 7.30pm. The rest of the time they're asleep. On school days, window of time in which I can actually be present with them narrows right down to two blocks: 6.30-8.30, and 3.30-7.30. That's only 6 hours in a business day in which I can be active and present with them, leaving me with 18 hours to get everything else done.

There's obviously more to being a dad than just being actively engaged with your children when they're at home and awake. There's all this supplemental work that needs to happen to support them as well. But it's not _that_ much.

The problem is that this I spend with my children actively overlaps the time in which my peers and co-workers are working. Not being available to my teams for synchronous communication slows down their execution, and not having my team available to me while I'm working slows down my own execution. When my team or I need answers or collaboration to unblock us, communicating asynchronously means we can potentially be blocking for half a day or more on a task.

At that point you can either just wait and be unproductive, or start/continue a different task, maintaining multiple active work streams. The latter is problematic for a number of reasons, such as the increased cognitive load of regular context switching, an inability to work on dependent tasks, etc.

So ultimately for me, I don't think the issue is that there's not enough time to do both, it's just that both work and family generally need you at the same time.

Re: Being ambitious and being a dad

#170

Post by ColdStream »

archeantus wrote: post #138

I felt very conflicted about this topic when I was young and working for Apple. I decided the Valley commute and rat race wasn’t very family conducive so I took a remote job and moved a few states over and it’s been great. I’ve been fully remote for 12+ years now, and I’ve had a very successful career in engineering and engineering leadership. I also have eight kids that I get to spend a ton of time with. There’s a r…

8 kids! Well if anyone wants to ask for parenting advice, they can go to you as you are a lone human data set.
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