
Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up? - fatherofone
I recently had one of my colleagues comment on my GitHub account graph - &#x27;There won&#x27;t be many green boxes in your account once you have a kid&#x27;. This was in response to my suggestions on how we should all keep learning.<p>I argued many good programmers have family with kids and still manage to keep up. They brushed me off saying it&#x27;s just not possible or they don&#x27;t look after their kids.<p>When i look up the internet I find people doing full time job delivering products while having a family and some still find plenty of time to blog or write books. How is this possible? Are these people super-human?
How are you all doing or managing if you have kids&#x2F;family?
======
rachelandrew
My daughter turns 20 this year. I learned Perl as a young, soon to be single,
mother. I had no computer science background, I just wanted to learn to do
more than the basic HTML I had already taught myself. That learning gave me a
career.

I've only ever done this with a child to take care of, and I've done it by
simply working every possible moment I could, and being organised and focused
with my time. However being able to provide for her, made that worthwhile. I
started my own business when she was still only at school half days, and we
talked about work, and why I needed to work, and that work was where money
came from. The money to eat, have a home, and do nice things together.

I count myself lucky that I get to do things I enjoy. However it is amazing
what can be achieved with hard work and focus, and a purpose.

~~~
noir_lord
The internet is such a small world, I watched one of your videos last week[1],
you are an excellent conference speaker.

[1] [https://vimeo.com/133642780](https://vimeo.com/133642780)

~~~
collinmanderson
I know her from all of her "A List Apart" articles.

[https://alistapart.com/author/rachelandrew](https://alistapart.com/author/rachelandrew)

------
pendu
I 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.

~~~
manyxcxi
We've got 3: 4,2, and 9 months. Thank goodness they all sleep (relatively)
well.

The baby goes down at 6 and the older ones go down at 7:30 (really, we start
the process at like 7, targeting 7:30). We're also incredibly lucky that
bedtime isn't much of a fight, it goes pretty smoothly so we're not all ragged
for the rest of the night.

I usually don't count on doing anything beyond trivial at all after they go to
bed- it's full on cleanup and relax time unless there's an actual work
emergency. Or, usually a couple times a week when it's above 30 degrees in the
garage, I'll be out there doing some woodworking or wrenching on the
motorcycles.

We've started watching a lot of Netflix stand up specials because a) we just
wrapped up a day in the life of three kids under five and two startups and b)
they're just long enough to watch one and decide to call it an early night.

I don't even try and squeeze in code or learning during the weekend when the
kids are awake because I'll spend the entire time stressing about when they're
going to interrupt me, that they did interrupt me, or that I should be playing
with them instead of [whatever].

I get up early just about every single morning, usually before 5, and I get my
time in then. On the weekdays that buys me around 4 hours every morning before
I have to start my 'real work', on the weekends it gives me a couple hours. I
try to make my hay during the week as I've got my own office outside the
house, and I get a lot more done a lot faster there.

What has been helpful, though I'm certainly not over it yet, has been to just
not try and cram things in during the day between naps for the kids. It just
wound up with a lot of anxiety and clock watching. Instead, when I'm at home
I'm trying to be present, trying to stay off the phone or computer, and just
trying to quiet my mind by being busy with the family until bed time. Once
they're asleep then I can do whatever I want with whatever energy I have left.

~~~
Aeolun
I was wondering how you'd end up with kids 2, 4 and 9 months old there for a
moment.

~~~
magic_beans
Harem style.

------
daxfohl
All 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 to teach them things.
But in the back of my head most of that time I'm still lamenting the things
that I'm not able to do and that I'll probably never be able to accomplish,
wondering if this was the right decision. But it seems almost heretical these
days to admit that. I can't be the only one, right?

~~~
meesles
I think a lot of people can sympathize, but as you said, it's kinda taboo to
say you wish you didn't have kids! I think you get the same feeling, a loss of
freedoms, from any significant evolution in life.

Leaving college: "I wish I could still go out drinking every other day and
perform the best in my peer-circle"

Getting to a more serious romantic stage in your relationship: "I wish I could
still play video games all weekend and not have to think about another
person's feelings"

And in my case, getting a puppy: "I wish I could leave the house for more than
a day without having to worry about the living being I'm responsible for"

And then having kids, and then getting old enough that you can't be as active
as you want, and then just being an actual grandpa.

I think it's just important to put things in context and look at the sum of
the joys in your life. I was pretty stoked in college because I could do
whatever I wanted, but I also couldn't afford nice vacations, casual plane
trips to see friends, quality (expensive) food, etc.

~~~
pm90
> it's kinda taboo to say you wish you didn't have kids! I think you get the
> same feeling, a loss of freedoms, from any significant evolution in life.

I think any society that has thrived has had some variation of this cultural
trait. Its easy to see why: without lots of children the society would simply
die out.

This is a very nuanced point though. As a young, somewhat single developer,
I'm incredibly grateful to work a job that I enjoy that pays great. Love the
freedom to go on vacation anywhere, to afford nice restaurants and such. I
can't see why I would give up all that freedom to "settle down" as my parents
keep reminding me of. Although I've had many great relationships, at some
point, its always: "I just want to not have to plan out every weekend
together!".

Perhaps I'm an outlier that just puts way too much emphasis on independence.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> > _it 's kinda taboo to say you wish you didn't have kids!_

> _I think any society that has thrived has had some variation of this
> cultural trait._

I think in a lot of societies, having kids doesn't quite restrict your options
as much as modern American society - prior to this century, you'd likely still
live surrounded by family and a community who could help you with a lot of the
childcare.

You could drop the kids off at granddad's on the way to work, and not spend a
significant portion of your income on daycare; in-laws could come and stay
with you for awhile to help you get some sleep during those first few months;
if you needed to do something during a weekend that you couldn't bring a kid
to, you could drop the kid off at the neighbors'.

~~~
pm90
I agree completely. And I imagine, before the internet, having an extended
family would have a lot of "tribal knowledge" about all the little
idiosyncrasies of raising children as well.

~~~
pavel_lishin
That can be both good and bad, though; I was talking to my stepbrother - who
is 30 years my senior - and when he was raising his kids, who are my age,
putting them on their stomach to sleep was the medically advised strategy.
Today, that's considered a risk for SIDS.

I'd say that 90% of the benefit of the extended family would be people who
would come and be a warm body to sit with the kid, or bring you food, at least
for the first year.

------
jcpst
At 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 with my wife, work on mixing records for clients
(I'm also an audio engineer), compose music, rehearse with my band, research
interesting things, etc.

If you are with a partner, try offering to watch the kids and suggest they do
something enjoyable for themselves. This not only gives some quality time with
the kids, it also makes it a lot easier to ask for time to do the things you
want, or even have your partner reciprocate.

~~~
danieldk
_At 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._

Interesting... My experience has been the opposite, the first ~6 months they
sleep so much that there is plenty of time to do things. Then you get a phase
where they start to crawl and then walk around. In that phase, you have to be
attentive all the time to ensure that they don't harm themselves or break
stuff :). That really changed when our daughter was ~2, when she knew what she
can and cannot do and they can basically play more by themselves. She is now
~3, sometimes she plays alone (she likes Duplo) and sometimes we play
together. Since she usually goes to bed at 19:00 and is a good sleeper, we
usually have a couple of hours every night for ourselves.

What I learned: your time does get reduced drastically, but you spend the
remaining time with more focus/direction. Also, you use your time smarter.
E.g., I used to do sports (indoor climbing), but now I just cycle every day
from/to work (~1 hour) to stay fit. It takes approximately the same time as
going by train or car.

~~~
mahyarm
There are various phases that I've observed:

1\. They can't move stage. Depending on their sleep schedule, this is easy, or
it's still tiring.

2\. They can move. They still have the baby sleep schedule. No sleep, no time.

3\. They have a normal sleep schedule. You can sleep.

4\. They can play with other kids. A chance to save time, if you can use it!

5\. They go school. You have time.

6\. They are teenagers. You wish they spent more time with you.

7\. They move out. You miss them a lot.

8\. They move far away. You miss them even more.

~~~
roryisok
> 3\. They have a normal sleep schedule. You can sleep.

For all you new parents out there, this bit might seem like it will never
happen, but it will, eventually. It might take longer than your friends kids,
it might take longer than the books say, but don't despair - you'll get there

> 6\. They are teenagers. You wish they spent more time with you.

My kids are only 1 & 3, but I'm very conscious of having learned the lesson of
others on this. I believe spending time with your kids while they're happy to
spend time with you is far more important than putting in extra hours at work
or fixing bugs in your hobby projects

------
laoba
27 - Father of a 4 1/2 year old and a 7 month old. I really don't have time to
program in the evenings much, but guess what? That's ok! You'll come to learn
that there are more to life than "skilling up." I'm enjoying taking my oldest
to after school activities and teaching her math a few years ahead of her age.

Programming couldn't bring me any of the happiness that being with my children
could.

~~~
rev_bird
I appreciate the sentiment here, but for a lot of people I suspect it _wouldn
't_ actually be ok to stop learning outside of work. I know there's a lot of
pushback on this idea for very good reasons, but if you have a job and want a
different one, sometimes evenings and weekends are the times you need to teach
yourself the skills you need.

I also want to push back a little bit on the idea that "programming couldn't
bring me any of the happiness that being with my children could." I see what
you mean—that you enjoy time with your kids more than time with code. However,
I can't help thinking that programming _enables_ that free time. It's because
of the programming that you can be with your children instead of working a
second job to make ends meet. That's why "skilling up" is so vital. If you're
already skilled enough to get the jobs you want, then yeah, maybe you're all
set.

~~~
ern
I agree with you about the need to remain buzzword compliant for jobs, but are
we "skilling up" or spinning our wheels? There is some worthwhile learning,
but a lot of it is just BS status signaling. Learning another SPA framework
that solves the problems of the last framework, while introducing new
problems? Learning yet another way to bundle your web content? A new
transpiled language to patch the holes in JavaScript?

A lot of what we regard as "skilling up" is just a product of our immature dev
culture-learning stuff for the sake of buzzword compliance that doesn't
improve anything in the long run. And the high failure rate of software
projects shows that we aren't gaining a lot from this culture anyway.

Buzzword compliance is the tech world equivalent of sexual signaling that led
to peacocks getting extravagant tails. Developers are stuck in a feedback loop
with employers...the more pointless garbage they learn, the more employers
value the pointless garbage, and the more developers are forced to learn more
pointless garbage. Until they break down, and leave the field to younger men,
who perpetuate the cycle.

Fundamental good practices should be learned early on, and honed at work. For
the rest, we should work to break the cycle.

~~~
cholantesh
>Learning another SPA framework that solves the problems of the last
framework, while introducing new problems? Learning yet another way to bundle
your web content? A new transpiled language to patch the holes in JavaScript?

I understand that HN is (probably?) pretty web-centric, but this portion of
your comment makes me wonder if it's just the web that's fucked. I'm not
hearing a ton of complaints re: burnout or being left behind from the server-
side, database, BI, or embedded spaces. Or maybe I'm not listening.

~~~
geebee
Every now and then, things go haywire in the web world.

The last time I recall feeling this way was 2005-ish, when Java frameworks
took off. Previously, small to medium sized java apps used servlets, jsp,
jdbc, and something along the lines of the "java cookbook."

It was, in fact, inefficient, with lots of typing, and it was difficult to
manage dependencies. I think the work that went into dependency injection,
ORMs, MVC frameworks, and so forth was undertaken by smart people.

The result, unfortunately, was close to fatal for java as a language for small
to medium sized web applications. Spring, Pico, Struts, Struts 2, Spring MVC,
iBatis, Hibernate, Spring JPA, Wicket, Stripes, Tapestry... just to be clear,
I understand that Java frameworks are no longer this chaotic, so I don't mean
fatal in the sense that it never worked. I mean fatal in that this was the
moment that I, and a lot of people who quietly enjoyed java and felt
embarrassed when people made fun of java devs (blub programmers) here on HN
reluctantly joined the chorus and gave up on it, never to return.

People complain about the complainers, asking why choice is such a bad thing.
The problem was, getting _any_ of the choices to work nicely together was a
challenging. All of a sudden, something as simple as a crud front end became
extremely challenging. I lost a lot of time and become, not exaggerating, very
unhappy during this time. It made me not want to be a developer anymore.

I believe we are now in a similar time with javascript frameworks. It's not
that these frameworks aren't addressing an important problem, intelligently.
It's simply getting a basic crud app up and running is tough, and making the
inevitable modifications to test, alter, implement business logic, and so
fort, is _vastly_ more complicated in SPA frameworks with some other backend
than it is in, say, Rails. That doesn't mean these frameworks are the product
of poor design or bad developers, it's the opposite. These are the product of
exceptional people working on hard problems. But if you don't need it, you're
putting yourself in the path of tremendous complexity and churn, for very
little benefit.

If I learned one lesson from 2005, it's to have the conviction to stick with
old, outdated technology, for longer, even when people are telling you it's
wrong and out of date. I knew in 2005 that writing your own jdbc and routing
around through Servlets wasn't going to be the right way to do it for much
longer, but that doesn't mean you have to use the first round of frameworks
that addresses this! Eventually I hopped over to Rails (a lot of people here
on HN think rails developers picked it because they were magpie developers,
I'm not sure how many people realize a lot of us picked it reluctantly, only
after it really became clear that the time invested in a new framework would
pay off).

And that would be my advice now, if you're free to make this choice. Stick
with integrated systems, and pick one that is clear and well researched. If
this isn't a possibility for you because of your requirements, then yes, by
all means, do use (what I heard Ember described as) a rapidly evolving hack
pad for brilliant developers working on extremely difficult problems.

Otherwise, watch, observe, try things out, but I'd stick with a better
researched and integrated system like Rails, add javascript as needed but
sparingly, Just because you know you won't be doing it like this forever
doesn't mean you have to stop doing it like this right this moment!

And be aware, the solution to the java churn for many of us (myself included)
wasn't that a winner emerged, it was that with a loud crashing noise, a
different solution that addressed these problems swept them off the table.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if something like that happens here. The
existing MVC approach is still a bit deficient with highly synchronized apps.
Current advances in Rails 5 make it possible to do some of this... but (and
now I'm really making guesses), I think that non javascript languages,
transpiled to isomorphic javascript, may lead to highly productive integrated
frameworks that finally tip the reluctant ones, like me, to give up on our
older ways of doing things and finally make the plunge.

This may turn out to be so effective that people take a look at tons of
javascript code, written in framework specific ways, and start wondering how
to get it back over to ruby, or python, or many of the other wonderful
languages that have been temporarily sidelined. You may, in fact, be better
off having a code base in an older, more dated framework, that gives better
clarity than the current, more modern javascript version would give you.

~~~
cholantesh
Hey, thanks for this in-depth response. I've generally felt that thinking
high-level and not getting bogged down in implementation details is a great
idea, but I do try to keep up, only really investing in a technology when it
seems established (for instance, Angular a couple years ago, and VueJS now).
Occasionally I get restless, and I do feel that tying myself as much as I have
to .NET has limited me in some ways, but I guess there's a balance to be
sought.

------
jonaf
I'm the father of 2, ages 3 and 2. My wife is due with number 3 in May. My son
(3) was diagnosed about 18 months ago with level 3 ASD. I have a beautiful
family that I adore. I'm a software engineer, and I was just promoted a couple
months ago. I'm definitely not superhuman. I have several unpublished blogs,
but haven't been able to get to them lately. I open source more projects than
contributing to existing ones, and most of my contributions are in some way
work related.

It's very challenging, but at the same time, much more fulfilling. I find
myself more focused and therefore more efficient with my time. I learn but
don't spend time going down rabbit holes. I ponder philosophy as I play with
my children, and I often learn so much from them. And, their bed time is 2-3
hours before mine, so naturally I'm able to spend quality time with my wife,
enjoy a hobby (I'm a guitarist, thinking of picking up piano), or get in some
extra work or side projects.

~~~
fatherofone
And a guitarist too.....jeez....what a legend ! Hope to read your blogs some
day, can you provide a link?

~~~
jonaf
Ha, not really. I don't play gigs or anything like that. :)

My blog's in my profile, although I converted to a static hosted blog on
github recently and haven't written anything since (classic!). I'm working on
open sourcing something I think is pretty cool that I did at work, but it's
pretty in-depth (mid-tier load balancing algorithm and design), so writing it
up takes a bit of time!

------
xrd
It'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...](http://blog.teddyhyde.com/2013/04/03/teddy-hyde-the-no-compromise-
extensible-one-handed-jekyll-blog-editor-for-android)

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](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.

~~~
stedaniels
One handed typing? That's great, I'm glad it works for you. All babies and
people are built differently. To call (what I imagine to be the majority)
those babies that require attention, and those people who can't coherently
code when giving their baby their attention, a myth. Sheesh. I wish you all
the best.

~~~
moron4hire
No, you're missing the point. Most of what we think of as being "too busy" for
any particular thing is a cognitive bias for forgetting just how much time we
waste.

~~~
xrd
Exactly. There are so many times I'm exhausted after getting the kids to bed
and I just browse the Internet. If I was really intentional about my time,
even that fifteen minutes could be used to work towards my goals. But, there
is a powerful story telling me that it won't make a difference if I just waste
that time.

------
mempko
Kids 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.

~~~
Beacon11
This. Although how dedicated you want to be with this is up to you, e.g. you
didn't mention this, but I assume your relationship with your spouse is
important as well. This is what works for me for my relationship with my kids
as well as my wife:

\- Evenings after work is family time. Focusing on kids if necessary.

\- Wednesday evening after kids go to bed, as well as early Saturday morning,
is skill building time for me.

\- Every other evening after kids go to bed is time spent with my wife.

This tends to be a good mix that keeps everyone happy.

~~~
jordanmoconnor
I've been battling with this exact sentiment. I want to spend time skill-
building, but my wife is a definite priority.

You're right, 3 hours on Wednesday, and getting up early on a Saturday morning
is plenty of time to learn something new, or apply the skills you have to a
side-project.

------
brightball
You have to let your interests drive you. I've got 2 kids who are 8 and 6
years old respectively. Prior to having kids, I had my own contracting
business, all nighters were a part of my nightly routine and I obsessed about
every new technology that came out. I tried to keep this up almost through the
birth of my second child before I put myself in the hospital.

That'll put things in perspective.

Now I'm a lot more selective about what I devote my time to learning. I'm
skeptical of new language offerings. If a language doesn't give me a reason
other than being a different flavor of C for using it, it doesn't even cross
my radar. I'm more of a server side, devops, database guy for the most part so
I've largely avoided the framework a week craziness in javascript world.

You pick your battles. Something looks cool...great. Does it really add any
value beyond my current tools...?

Since getting back into a full time job about 4 years ago there are 2
technologies that have sufficiently captured my interest that I make time for
them. Those are PostgreSQL and Elixir.

As it turns out, because of the two of those there's very little that comes on
my radar that makes me say...I need to learn that. Most new tech that comes
out seems to live in the land of edge cases that I may need one day, but don't
have a reason to dive into.

IBM's Watson API's are probably the only thing I could see really grabbing my
attention in the last year or so. You pick your battles.

~~~
ryandrake
This is a great point. You really need to get pickier about what you invest
your time into, because your free time becomes so much more rare and precious.
It no longer makes sense to "skill up" on every framework-of-the-month that
makes #1 on HN. "You pick your battles" really sums it up.

------
patgenzler
The nice thing about having kids is that it forces you to think about _time
management_. Think about how much time you waste chit chatting, eating lunch,
watching TV, surfing the Internet, etc. After kids, you'll want to rethink how
you spend time and cut down on non-productive activities. That's exactly what
I did - I reconfigured my time around productive work and kids. On week days,
I allocate 7-8 hours for my day job, 2-3 hours for kids and family, and 2-3
hours for _myself_ \- blogging, writing, learning, etc. Weekends is more
flexible. So think hard about how you spend your time and cut down on things
that aren't important for you - you'll find more time than you think you had.

~~~
brlewis
This. Part of the adjustment is working in pockets of time rather than decent
stretches with time to get into "the zone". I did well during the young kids
era by keeping a text file of exactly what I wanted to do next. At the time I
was using a paren-prefix language (Scheme) that made it easy to come back to
half-finished code and see where I was going with it. In other languages you
might want to write a bunch of one-line comments describing what the code is
going to do, then fill in the code under the comments.

------
samlittlewood
For me:

Don't use the computer to waste time - if I need decompression time, try and
make it doing something w/ kids (LEGO!)

A solid dev. environment where you can walk up, crank an iteration, and walk
away. (Like in the time it takes a kettle to boil)

Learning to code in my head - basically planning the path of changes/tests I
will make next time I am back at my machine. It feels to me somewhat like the
'method of loci' \- a definite journey. Often times, the plan goes awry, but
the successes make it worth it. After 12 years of reading to the kids, I can
do this whilst reading a story to them :).

------
johnwheeler
I'm 38 with three kids: 2 year old twins and a 5 year old. During that time,
I've done a lot on my own, and I feel I've had more than enough time to
accomplish more.

I've taught myself Swift and Cocoa:

[https://github.com/johnwheeler/CocoaProgramming](https://github.com/johnwheeler/CocoaProgramming)

released open source frameworks:

[https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-
ask](https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-ask)

[https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-live-
starter](https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-live-starter)

and have had plenty of time to pursue interesting side projects:

[https://oldgeekjobs.com](https://oldgeekjobs.com)

[https://alexatutorial.com](https://alexatutorial.com)

I also spend plenty of meaningful time with my kids reading them books, going
to the park, playing with toys, and day dreaming. Stop watching T.V., playing
video games, and making BS excuses for being distracted from life.

It's not a tradeoff--you don't have to choose one over the other. _No one_ is
so busy they don't have a few hours of down time a week. It's how you choose
to spend it.

Incidentally for myself, with kids, a full workload, and pursuit of projects
that interest me, I still find myself with _too much_ time to know what to do
with and squander a good portion of it.

The best thing you can do for your kids is teach by example. If you spend all
your free time with them and grow up bitter that you didn't accomplish what
you wish you would have, you're creating a shitty template for them mold
themselves against. Let them watch you reading books, building things,
crashing and burning, and chasing your dreams instead.

~~~
webmaven
What is your perspective on having kids a bit later in life than most?

~~~
johnwheeler
I think about that a lot. I don't know if the events in my life would have
unfolded the same, but all things equal, I would've had them earlier just so
their mom and I would be in their lives 10-15 years longer. Also, just pushing
40 health starts becoming a real issue vs. thirty, so that can be a bit of a
stressor, but I try to manage with diet, exercise.

------
bsvalley
Here is a tip - when you have kids it's usually time for you to switch gears
and start looking for jobs where you don't code anymore. It's time for you to
take more responsibilities at work. Manager, project/product manager, etc.
What?? More responsibilities means less free time right?? Think this way -
this will put you in a different spot where you will need time to execute a
bunch of tasks rahter than having to utilize your brain too much.

It sounds pretty bad but as a parent that's what you do everyday, which makes
it easier for you to switch between work and personal life. You reuse the same
pattern and it's all about time management rather than trying to fit a task
that requires deep thinking, in your busy schedule. For me reaching that quiet
moment where my brain is fully awake is way too unpredictable.

So you have to take control of your time by not relying on your brain power
too much. Then if you happen to get a quiet moment at home ready to think,
nothing stops you from coding or learning new things. The rest is all about
teaching your kids rather than staying up to date with the latest framework or
programming language. Young people will do it faster and better than you, it
will be too hard for you to compete. Let's face it, this industry is all about
performance, competition, bonuses. You don't want to be in this position.

------
madhadron
There are two things going on: one is that many of them have spouses whose
full time labor is taking care of the kids. I remember that being the
strongest predictor of getting tenure for university professors, too.

The other is that you realize that you can accomplish significant things by
stringing together scraps of time and making sure you don't obsess over
minutiae. Or, more directly, when you've got twenty minutes to write, you're
not going to concern yourself with the font.

------
nscalf
Just to note, I'm 23 and have no kids.

I've heard comments like this in every possible form before---"Once you get
out of college and get a job, you won't have time to...", "Once you're at a
startup, you won't have time to...", "Once you start volunteering after work,
you won't have time for...".

It's nonsense, you make time for what you think is important. I wake up at
5:30 am to train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I read when I'm commuting, I work hard
at my startup, I teach a few nights a week. I plan things out ahead of time
and stick to my plans. I don't have kids, but when I do I'll adjust my
schedule to make sure I can keep doing what I think is important (kids Jiu-
Jitsu starts at 5 years old).

I never found the argument that you won't have time to be very compelling.
People who complain about not having time seem to usually be the person who is
caught up on every tv show and wake up at 9 to get to work at 9:30.

I think the easiest way to build these habits is to make a plan and stick to
it. You want to go to the gym? Get up before work and go. Period. If you
aren't getting up 40 minutes early to exercise, you're not busy, you're lazy.
Being a good parent definitely takes up a chunk of time, but you can always
find time.

~~~
pavel_lishin
For what it's worth, planning when you have kids is much harder than without.

You plan on going to bed at 10pm and getting up at 5:30 to train? Cool, but
are you going to be in any shape to train when you're back awake at 11:30,
1:30, 2:00, 2:15, 4:30, and 5:15? Are you going to be in any shape to study
and retain that knowledge when you spent four hours of your night walking
around so your kid could sleep?

That gets better as they get older, but if you told me that "it just takes
planning!" after I'd gotten two hours of sleep, you might have had to
demonstrate some Jiu-Jitsu, because I'd very badly want to slap you.

~~~
CrowderSoup
This is my life. I have the best intentions but when my kids wake me up in the
night, or won't go to bed easily, or any number of things that don't go
according to "plan" all bets are off.

------
yawz
(I've a 6 year-old son, and I've been in software development for more than 20
years).

As a general principle, it's all about "priorities", and "how bad you want
it?".

Most of us have time for things other than work and family (unless, of course,
you're a single parent trying to juggle 2 jobs, etc.)

Instead of listening to music during commute, one can listen to professional
podcasts or talks (youtube to mp3 is great).

Instead of watching TV you can read a book or program.

Instead of spending time on sites like Hacker News (I'm not trying to be cute)
you can spend that time on your higher priorities.

I think we all have time for our top priorities. It's just a matter of
reordering that list.

~~~
Joeri
Regarding spending less time on HN: I did a 6 month blackout of HN because I
perceived that it was taking too much time that I could spend on side
projects. After the 6 months I came to the conclusion that I wasted that time
on other things. Turns out that I didn't actually want to be productive, and I
just want to waste time because my job and family life requires me to be
responsible and productive all day long, and it's nice to be slacking off
every now and then. So now I am back on HN to waste time :)

~~~
yawz
All joking aside :), checking HN is not time-wasting if it is useful for one's
priorities (professional, personal development, etc.).

I don't read everything on HN, but I can usually find here interesting
articles, and most of the time the discussion threads are even more
interesting than the articles.

------
unsigner
I'm significantly worse in my job than what I remember from before I had kids.
What I miss most was the "deep thinking" mode that I used to get into, when
you think about a problem for days on end, and solutions and ideas start
popping in your head while you're in the proverbial shower. This rarely
happens to me nowadays - the life I have outside of work scrubs my mind clean
like a metal brush the second I step into my home. Especially over weekends. I
frequently joke about it, but there's more than a grain of truth to it - on
Monday mornings I try to remember what was it that I'm working on.

I still think I made the right decision, mind you. I believe having kids and
taking care of them is the right thing to do, and will be the most important
thing I've done with my life in 10-20 years when a successfully delivered
build or a Metacritic point here or there wouldn't mean shit. I just don't
want to fool myself or anyone else that my job performance hasn't suffered.

~~~
duderific
> I'm significantly worse in my job than what I remember from before I had
> kids.

I'm not sure if I'm significantly worse in my job since I've had kids (I have
a two and a half year old boy), but what I'm not able to do is keep up with
"the kids" who get to work at 8:30 AM and leave at 7:00 PM, because they're
young and single and no one is waiting at home for them. I try to leave at
5:45 PM so I can get home in time to help out with dinner and putting him to
bed.

So many folks I work with get home after their kids go to bed. I just don't
want to miss all that time with my son. It's definitely affecting how I'm
perceived at work, because I'm seen as not as "dedicated" as the folks who
stay at work till all hours and are online late at night at home. It's
constantly striking a balance between the demands at home and the demands at
work.

~~~
magic_beans
My workplace is probably half parents/new parents (late-twenties and thirties)
and half single people. All the parents come in a little later and leave a
little early. Not one of them is judged for it.

Not all workplaces are so toxic.

------
cyberferret
It'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! :)

------
ghettoimp
My advice, fwiw.

Do whatever you decide you want to do to "keep up" with github, open source,
etc. But keep it absolutely as separate as possible from your family time.

When you have a day with the kid, make sure that you disconnect and get
yourself as fully as you can into the right mindset. "My job today is to enjoy
my time with my son/daughter, to be there for them, to be present with them."
Leave your phone at home when you go to the park. Disconnect.

If you find yourself thinking that your parenting time is an annoying
distraction from the coding problem you're trying to solve, you're in
dangerous territory and need to re-calibrate.

This is a hard lesson that I constantly try to re-learn. When I'm successful,
everything is much, much better.

~~~
OJFord
> _If you find yourself thinking that your parenting time is an annoying
> distraction from the coding problem you 're trying to solve, you're in
> dangerous territory and need to re-calibrate._

I'm not a parent, but surely this is a little off; either can be a distraction
from the other, the thing is to balance which the primary task is and when.

For example, say you get a phone call at work to inform you that your child's
got into some kind of trouble at school ( _for example_ \- I'm sure yours are
great and this will never happen!) and that you need to pick them up. This
could absolutely be a distraction from some coding/work problem you're trying
to solve, but you're hardly in 'dangerous territory'.

------
morbidhawk
I've found a curiosity-based learning approach to be effective for me. Rather
than trying to put X amount of time into programming like it's a chore (or a
prison sentence) I try to find things that spark my interest. Lately I've been
trying to figure out the inner workings of the single-page application
framework that we use at work and I'm slowly starting to create my own as
well.

Asking questions has helped me a lot questions like "how does this work?" has
motivated me to read code (which I think can be more useful than writing code
sometimes) and try to learn things as they really are rather than how I
assumed they were built (I've discovered some interesting patterns and came to
some interesting realizations this way).

I actually try to minimize my time spent reading blogs and books but sometimes
I find wikipedia to be very good at giving me really good information that
isn't as dogmatic or opinionated.

------
flurdy
With kids, my commute is my 'me time'. And nearly only me time. Once home I am
a human trampoline. :)

I hack away for an hour each way, especially on my home journeys. I actually
appreciate the long train journey. Thankfully it is all one journey without
changes. And train delays once I am on the train I don't actually mind. Though
I go first class so I have a guaranteed seat with table and comfort.
Otherwise, I'd be a miserable sod.

Though I also had to cut out all time wasting like tv watching, time sinks
like free newspapers on the train, and ban myself from any gaming before 11pm.

With one kid it felt like I hardly had any spare time for hacking or anything,
and I was so envious of my previous childless me with all that spare time I
had then. Now with two kids I am envious of all the spare time I had with just
one kid!

~~~
flurdy
One thing with having kids and therefore very little spare time is that now I
really understand and appreciate the value of focus and doing things straight
away. No postponing and dragging things out in my private life as well.

I no longer add paragraphs to potential blog posts over a long time. Blogs
have to be published as a draft the day I get the idea. Otherwise, over time
my opinion changes and the post would be rewritten over and over again and
then inspirations dwindles to another mothballed blog idea.

The same goes for hobby projects though with a slightly longer time frame. I
force myself to concentrate on only one project and insist on reaching at
least some sort of basic MVP before I jump onto the next shiny thing. On my
[http://code.flurdy.com](http://code.flurdy.com) some projects have a demo
site, others where I lost focus do not.

Essentially these same principles are important at work as well :)

------
papac
Currently struggling as a father of three (12, 10,7) with how to up my game as
a developer. At the evening, when I get home, I'm just dead tired. I get no
further than eat diner, watch a documentary, read a little and sleep. Repeat.
Weekends are filled with chores and quality time with kids. All this leaves me
without the energy or drive to learn something new, while time flies by. So
I'm gonna read all the comments now, see what I can pick up. But it won't be
easy.

~~~
magic_beans
I'm not even a parent and I feel like this already.

:(

------
fred_is_fred
Nobody on their death bed will ever say "I wish I had more green boxes on my
github page". Enjoy spending time with your family.

------
ChicagoDave
Honestly I think learning new technologies comes out of a passion for learning
and has nothing to do with kids, wives, friends, social life, or work.

I have five kids (all teens now) and have managed to keep up with technology
throughout their early years and to today.

There is all kind of parenting advice I could offer, but it all depends on how
you personally wish to raise your kids. I'm old school. I think the more kids
play on their own, by themselves, the more they read....the better they'll be.
I'm highly aware of other parenting techniques, especially where there's some
weird expectation that we devote our lives to our kids every moment of the day
outside of work. I find that patently ridiculous.

When I've needed to carve out time for learning, I just tell the kids I have
to learn something. They ask me what it is and I explain as much as I can. I
ask them if it's okay that "this weekend" they focus on friends or read a
book. I get complaints on occasion and if I need to bend I bend. More often
than not, my kids respect my request. Even so, I still cook, clean, play board
games, take them to movies, and have discussions with them.

But the underlying aspect (to me) is passion to learn. If you don't have a
passion to learn new things _on your own_, I can't help you.

~~~
fatherofone
Absolutely, I've got passion for cricket, no matter how tired, hungry I am i
find time to play. But I don't code if I have free time, I'm too tired for
that.

------
pasta
Reddit [1] asked Bill Gates: "What is your idea of success?". His reply:
"Warren Buffett has always said the measure is whether the people close to you
are happy and love you."

As a father I also think this is the most important, no matter what. If it
means you will be an average programmer, so be it.

But I discovered that you can still keep up by keeping it simple. Because
simple saves time.

For example I wanted to learn more about creating web apps. So I took an
evening and checked out all kinds of Javascript frameworks like React,
Angular, and so on. And I after looking at the examples I ended up with VueJs.
Why? Because I could just download one Javascript file to get started. No need
to learn all about thousands of package managers, about NodeJs and what not.

I'm not trying to start a war about which Javascript framework is best, or
which other framework just works by downloading one file. But what I like to
point out, is that there are sometimes options that just work without you
having to learn a ton of other stuff.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/im_bill_gates_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/)

------
bbarn
It was never hard for me. I'm naturally a late night person, and my daughter
slept from 9pm to 5-6am pretty much weeks after coming home, and just got
lazier until she hit 18 :)

All that said, 9pm to midnight was always plenty of time for me to keep up on
anything involving a computer. For some, it might not be. The day light hours,
and time before she'd go to bed, were all about her. If you run around, do
homework with, cook dinner and play with your child all night long, it's much
easier to get them to sleep through the night! I consider myself lucky, but
many of my friends through bike racing, and other outdoor related activities
are similarly active people, and their kids are exposed to active, high energy
pursuits in the day time as well and - you guessed it - most of them sleep
pretty normally.

Also, admittedly, the day I worry about my github commit graph is the day I
think I need therapy. Life's more than contributing to code projects.

------
xenadu02
I almost entirely stopped watching TV and movies. I work after they go to
sleep, 2-3 nights per week.

Startup culture preaches move quickly, pivot when something doesn't work. I
apply that to my development. In the past I might hammer on a bad design for
two days until finally figuring out I was on the wrong path. I am much more
focused now. I'd say I'm a more productive developer than I was without kids
because I avoid a lot of dead ends and wasted time.

My tolerance for friction and pointless bullshit is also much lower. The main
project is difficult to build and test due to lots of state? I create scripts
to automate or I spin up a test project, investing an hour up front because I
know it will pay off over time. In the past I wasted too much time doing
things manually because it felt like extra work to automate it. There is a
delicate balance here and it just takes experience to figure it out.

------
jvanloov
My kids (4 and 6) go to bed between 7 and 8PM (target = 7:30). They have to
get up at 6:30 AM so we can get them ready for school without too much of a
rush, so they go to bed early. They are both good sleepers; that helps of
course.

Subtracting time for household work, that leaves 1-2 hours each night for
leisure. Weekends can give a bit more leisure time, but not always. Sometimes
my girlfriend and I eat after kids-bedtime to have a chance to actually taste
our food (or go out, with a babysitter staying with our kids), once a week I
go to the local hackerspace, the rest is more or less for myself.

For me, I learned to ruthlessly prioritize in my list of things that I want to
do, and I got good at structuring my projects in result-oriented blocks of
work that can be done in one or a few time blocks.

I also don't watch TV; this went way down the priority list after the first
kid was born.

------
jaxn
I am a father of 6.

I could be a better father. I could be a better programmer. I'm doing a good
job of both. It is a full life.

6 hours of focused work is more than most people get done in a day. You want
to be a great dad and a great programmer? Cut out Hacker News ;)

edit: I guess we are listing ages. 15, 14, 12, 11, 10, 7.

~~~
thatwebdude
Add all aspects of social media to that, as well.

Congrats on maintaining six! I can appreciate what you're doing.

------
carsongross
#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

------
losteverything
For me, I skilled down.

I always told the people I supported, "You only get one chance to rear your
child."

And now decades after first birth I can easily say "there is nothing _more_
important than than your children"

I'm not in tech any longer because of my actual ambivalence of technology. I
was naturally good at it but hated the chase to keep up.

If you compare the outcome of effort in keeping up in tech to the effort in
rearing children then it's a easy answer. The better outcome is always
children.

~~~
thatwebdude
Oh my God, are you my future?!?!?!?!?

Quit two great jobs because they didn't value my value of children.

Programming came easy to me, never learned it anywhere but by myself - out of
necessity with a new family.

Now that I'm in a better position, I'm already planning my next career pivot;
away from cogs and trinkets and into an even better schedule, as well as my
real interest which I was too foolish to finish in school the first time.

------
sonabinu
Cut down on TV. Wake up super early on Saturdays and get about 3 hrs of skill
building time. Occasionally take a day off work to do a straight 8 hr skill
session for self. Find a friend at work to do a class with and make a plan
with your significant other for one hr a week to dedicate to the class. You
and your friend can keep each other motivated!

I feel this is a super important question. I've published it on LinkedIn with
my thoughts. Hopefully, you will get some feedback there as well!
[https://www.linkedin.com/post/edit/6245042931087007744](https://www.linkedin.com/post/edit/6245042931087007744)
Good luck!

~~~
fatherofone
doesn't look like a valid link !

~~~
sonabinu
Sorry! I think I goofed up [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/developers-kids-
how-do-you-sk...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/developers-kids-how-do-you-
skill-up-sona-maniyan)

------
Joky
No TV ever (except when it is about watching a movie _with_ my son, and he
choses what we watch), less hobbies (reading tech books instead of novels,
etc.), and especially optimizing my time around family: for example I'll drive
my son to his ice skating lesson and will watch a technical talk on youtube or
read a technical book during 1h while he practice. Another things is living
close to my work: little commute time means less waste and more time at home.
Biking during my commute (~20min) is also giving me my daily physical
exercise!

Also, some people have the ability to get into work and focus efficiently even
for a 10 min slot, which can happen multiple time during the day.

------
analog31
For me, some things are luck. I live 25 minutes from my workplace by bike. The
kids get themselves to school. I never worked more than 8 hour days, and have
a job where nobody really understands what I do (a unique skill area within
the company), so I actually spend work time on maintaining my skills. There
may be reasons why communities like mine, and less intense employers, are
magnets for people with kids.

A huge matter of luck has been my kids not needing things like exceptional
medical or behavioral care. That's just not predictable.

Having kids does sharpen your time management, and may cause you to set aside
some activities that no longer matter. I think that the mental stimulation --
or perhaps sheer terror -- made me more creative and energetic, even if I was
physically fatigued. In the weeks after my daughter was born, while she was
asleep, I actually developed and launched a new product for my side business.

Don't rule out changing jobs. I've read that something like 50% of workers
change jobs right after the birth of their first child. A repeated pattern
I've seen, over and over, is that new parents suddenly express an interest in
becoming managers.

~~~
shostack
How did you find the mental energy to come up with a new business idea and
what was your inspiration/idea?

~~~
analog31
It wasn't profound -- an improvement for an existing product. The idea came
from suggestions made by users on a web forum. Since it's an electronic gadget
that means a new design. It's a fairly specialized audio related device. What
I needed to do was a circuit board design spin and prototyping stage, then a
bunch of testing.

One good thing was that the effort could be broken into chunks, and
interrupted. I didn't need the kind of "flow" that programmers often talk
about.

------
danielvf
Father of four with one on the way.

As mempko said, kids can go to bed at a structured time. Kids getting enough
sleep is really good for them and really good for you. After work I spend
about three hours with the whole family, including supper and housework. Then
the kids go to bed, and I get an hour of learning coding in, then hang out
with my wife for an hour. Usually I get about theee straight hours on a
project somewhere in the weekend.

Newborns are something else though. It's prudent to plan on being a sleep
deprived zombie for three months. If you are in the lucky 33% that escapes
this, rejoice!

------
throwaway243546
It depends. Some people have children that go to bed at 8pm and wake up at
8am.

We have a 14 month old that wakes up 3 to 4 times every night. Even using
strategies with my partner to take turns, it weighs down on us and sleep
becomes the priority after the kid and work.

I have no idea how people with more than 1 kid have any time to do anything,
unless you have access to babysitters, of course.

~~~
jakobegger
When they get older they sleep better! Our kids woke up a lot too, now they go
to bed at 7 and wake up between 6 and 7.

Also, two kids spend time with each other! Sometimes I can get a bit of work
done while they are playing legos. That's pure bliss.

------
royletron
I do find this whole situation a tiny bit crazy, I often think software
engineers are often taken for a complete ride by employers. We shouldn't have
to feel like we each have to take responsibility to be up to scratch on the
latest tools, we should be encouraged to factor that into our day to day work.

I don't think this is a question you should ask yourself, but you should talk
to your employer about. I don't see any brick-layers practising new brick
laying techniques in their spare time, or car mechanics expected to find out
about new cars and engines at the weekend. Obviously you have interests, and
you like to know about the latest news or craze but this should be a
recreational activity (ten minutes here and there). If blogging, research and
trying new technology benefits your work then it should be supported by your
employer.

Incidentally I am a full-time senior engineer with two kids and many years
experience. You shouldn't be expected to juggle like this.

~~~
microsage
I think this is a pretty distorted worldview. I'm confident most brick-layers
would be happy to be taken for this kind of "complete ride by employers" in
exchange for the cushy offices, offsite retreats, snacks, beer, endless perks,
and $100k+ USD/yr salaries that software engineers tend to get in exchange.

~~~
royletron
Most developers I know get paid less than national average salary (for the uk)
and are expected to deliver above and beyond, with non of the perks you
mention (I didn't even get offered 2 weeks paternity pay in my previous job).
Please don't get me wrong, I love what I do and I absolutely know how lucky I
am to be here, but I just feel for the OP having a weight of expectation that
isn't fair in any industry.

------
nstart
I think there's a difference between learning and having green boxes on
GitHub. I've followed uncle Bob and he basically spent an hour and a half
after his wife went to sleep. Your time does shrink to next to nothing but the
answer to why people can't keep up can be summed up in a paraphrase by Gary
Vaynerchuck. He talks of an imaginary truck driver named steve. It goes
something like "In 10 years Steve won't have a job and Steve can start
learning now when he's home so he's ready for that day. But guess what? All
Steve wants to do is watch the football match".

Ultimately it comes down to being extremely hard on yourself. It is not a bed
of roses. In fact just by being around to comment on HN I'm wasting time.
Having a kid and still levelling up means becoming a machine which tbh is
terribly unappealing. And it does suck from time to time. Dragging my ass out
of bed early ( I still get 7 hours sleep by not watching any TV) so I can
study before my son wakes up is crap. But if you want it, you gotta do it.

And that's what your coworkers probably don't have. It's one of those hurtful
things to say, but for the most part it's true. They don't have the entire
drive needed to keep learning. They aren't hungry enough for it.

I just want to clarify I don't advocate killing yourself over this. I don't
advocate doing something you don't like. But I do guarantee however, there's
time. To get there is an all or nothing road though. Screw TV. Screw games (I
do about half to one hour per week max). Screw HN ideally unless you are here
to check on actual important developments like security or _relevant_
programming language related updates. FB, twitter, YouTube, etc. Bye!

And that's tough really. So I don't fault anyone either. But I don't like
hearing others trying to tell you "oh it can't be done". Can do.

------
outericky
Without reading all the comments (I'm sure there is great advice).

The older you get the more structured your life gets. Startup cofounder,
husband, dad of 2 (10 & 7 now...), Ironman, runner, endurance cyclist. Focus
on the important things; you can't do everything so do what matters most.

1\. Your kids will only be kids once. You will never get that time back, so
figure out what's most important.

2\. Get them involved. Young. There are opportunities for kids to learn. Teach
them. Get them involved. My kids are startup kids. But their fun times include
coming to the office evenings and tinkering with a raspberry pi or doing some
kodable stuff

3\. Prioritize. Things change. I used to be a gamer. And tinkerer. And...
other things. Now, I work (SimpleLegal CTO. I'm a husband and father. And I
race my bicycle (train 10-15 hrs per week). That's pretty much it. There is
plenty of time in the day, and it's easy to waste.

------
vikingcaffiene
I have a 7 year old step daughter. I make heavy use of a calendar and set
aside blocks of time during the week for focused study. I make sure that I
don't schedule myself for anything involving deep concentration when my kid is
home and awake. You are just asking for frustration because kids _will_
interrupt your flow and you _will_ be a jerk about it. Don't be that parent. A
calendar makes it clear where the gaps in your day are to focus on improving
your skill set. Trust me, you have a lot more time than you think you do.

Having a kid doesn't mean you never have any time for personal enhancement
like study or exercise. It just means that you have to be more structured and
focused. It takes a lot of trial and error to find a good balance.

------
czep
I've thought long and hard about this very question as I often wondered how
I'd maintain my skills when my kid was born. I remember reading the Preface of
some technical book where the author said he's glad he never had kids because
he would always be afraid that in a competition for his time, "the computer
would always win." I feel that way sometimes, I just want to study, learn,
write code, because I love this field and having a family doesn't mean my
interest in computing has died.

But we have to ask why this attitude is endemic to tech and not to other
fields. You don't see surgeons or investment bankers asking their peers in
forums, "how do you skill up" after having kids! So why do we feel like in
tech we must sacrifice everything else that makes us human just to keep our
nose to the grindstone?

I wrote two blog posts that echo this dilemma. [1] "Don't call me a '5:01er'"
where I attack the unfair portrayal of people with kids as being less
committed to their jobs, and [2] "Why can't a CEO be a family man?" about how
our entire civilization seems to have its priorities bass-ackwards.

For me the critical turning point in my perspective came one day as I gazed
down at my son on his changing table. I looked at him lying there helpless and
it made me think of how I said goodbye to my father, looking down as he lay in
the casket. Then I realized that one day the tables would literally be turned
as this very same helpless creature would be looking down at my lifeless body
to say goodbye. And then I knew that the rest of my life was merely the
prelude to that very moment. It taught me that I want to be the kind of man
who my son will miss when I'm gone. I'm not going to get to that point by
stressing out about my github contributions.

[1]: [http://czep.net/15/dont-call-me-a-501er.html](http://czep.net/15/dont-
call-me-a-501er.html) [2]: [http://czep.net/15/ceo-family-
man.html](http://czep.net/15/ceo-family-man.html)

------
wobbleblob
Short answer is: you don't. You'll mostly be standing still until the kids are
a bit older.

If your answer is "But [insert famous tech guru] does it", you'll find that
[famous tech guru] has a spouse who takes care of all or most of the kid
stuff.

~~~
ashwinne
Golden comment!

------
b_t_s
(A) They are in fact super-human...think 180IQ plus aspergers/OCD/etc

(B) They hate their children and use coding/work as a way to avoid them(a lot
of aspergers here too)

(C) Their day job can/does involve open source and/or writing blog
posts.(consultants are big in this category)

Then there's the other 99% of us with very few green boxes who finish chores
at 10somthing at night and pass out.

------
skrebbel
This 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
the way. I hope that by writing this comment I can provide some
counterpressure to this usual HN moral of "work harderer, even hardererer, all
the time, at the cost of everything" that these proud over-achieving-parent
comments breathe.

It's perfectly OK not to code outside work time. It's perfectly fine to, once
you're _finally_ done with the intensive and tiring quality time you spent
with your kids, to sit down, have a cup of tea, watch some Netflix and go to
bed early.

This means that you _must_ ensure you have a challenging job. Not learning on
the job is not an option - you'll be out of work in 10 years, maybe sooner. So
be critical, request transfers, and if your financial situation allows, care
less about salary than about how much you can learn on the job. The downside
of our market is that knowledge gets outdated fast. But the upside is that we
programmers are in great demand. We get to make demands - not many people have
that priviledge. Use it. You can't afford not to.

I'd say that this is good advice for most people - as you might guess I'm a
violent opponent to this whole "you're not worth your salt as a coder if you
don't do hobby-OSS every evening" meme. But it becomes a _need_ if you can't
or won't be Superdad or Supermom every day.

Think about yourself, think about your future. Consider letting off-time be
off-time and getting yourself a better job :)

~~~
UK-AL
"Consider letting off-time be off-time and getting yourself a better job :)"
\- Those two conflict. Most jobs want the next buzzwords in the job
description, which you aren't learning in the current job.

~~~
Nursie
Most jobs?

I work for the uk office of a finance company, on a contract basis, on target
to pull in roughly six figures* this year.

My CV consists of C in the main, with a little C++11 and a smattering of
right-up-to-date javascript and python.

"Most jobs" seems like a bit of an overstatement.

(*for Americans, the UK market does not pay like the US market, rates of pay
here are generally awful in comparison to the US or Australia)

~~~
UK-AL
C/C++ developers are relativity rare. So most people would have to learn that.

------
bdcravens
> When i look up the internet I find people doing full time job delivering
> products while having a family and some still find plenty of time to blog or
> write books

When I think of those I follow in similar situations, it seems they tend to
eschew learning for learning's sake, and even those who were successful
programmers learn to delegate. (Rob Walling comes to mind) So whether it's
running a product, or learning new skills, I think it's a matter of avoiding
shiny object syndrome.

------
vkb
Data scientist here. It is 100% possible to do things with kids, but you
really have to be motivated to do it, AND it really helps if you have a
support system of other people to help take care of your child. I wrote about
the dangerous deception we have in American culture, and particularly tech
culture, of people who "have it all," but in reality have a bunch of help in
the background here[1] and here[2].

If you work full-time and you want to go above and beyond, you're essentially
working three days: work, before school + after school, and then your third
day is learning or development.

Whatever that means for you in terms of reshuffling energy and other
commitments will vary on your personality, energy level, etc, etc.

When you have a small child, it is extremely hard to multitask. So I wait
until she is asleep. All after work time and weekends are for her.

Here is the way my schedule works: I pick her up from daycare, do dinner,
playing, and then she goes to bed. I then take half an hour break, and delve
into whatever I have going on, for about three hours.

I'm currently taking a Java class, writing technical blogs, and working out
some Python. So I'll usually do an hour of reading/Java homework, then start a
blog post, then finish off with whatever else I was working on.

Over the past three weeks, I developed this talk on big data[3]. That was
probably the hardest because I needed a lot of time to write the code, test
the code and concentrate, and all of my energy was just sapped.

All of this is to say that you can do it. For me personally it takes a lot of
reshuffling and work and giving up things, but that's how kids work.

[1][http://blog.vickiboykis.com/2015/09/we-are-not-getting-
the-f...](http://blog.vickiboykis.com/2015/09/we-are-not-getting-the-full-
story-about-the-choices-we-make/)
[2][http://blog.vickiboykis.com/2012/07/sheryl-anne-marie-and-
ma...](http://blog.vickiboykis.com/2012/07/sheryl-anne-marie-and-marissa-are-
giving-bad-advice-to-young-women-who-desperately-need-good-advice/)
[3][https://veekaybee.github.io/data-lake-
talk/#/](https://veekaybee.github.io/data-lake-talk/#/)

------
mlave
I was stuck in a seemingless treadmill where I was looking after my children,
going to work, coming home and being utterly exhasted.

I started going into autopilot at work and stopped inovating and spent more
and more time organising things and less time coding.

I realised that if I didn't change I would end up de-skilling myself and end
up in Management or worse.

Don't get me wrong about Management, I'm sure it's deeply rewarding if it's
your calling but for me it felt a bit soleless so I had to do something.

I now have a nice balance of family time as well as spend at least 5 hours a
day coding professionally and around 5 hours a week hacking on personal or
open source endeavours

So what changed?

I made things uncomfortable for myself.

I started running a few times a week - suprisingly, this eats into more of my
precious time but seems to make me less mentally tired, less grumpy with the
kids and more able to concentrate when coding.

I made sure I did at least 30 minutes of personal coding an evening to skill
up - starting with katas then moving onto personaly projects, open source
contributions or groking new tech. Once that is done I'm free to relax with my
partner, eat, watch tv, drink wine, etc

I quit my permanent Senior Development role and started contracting, this
resulted in less meetings and more pure coding tasks.

I always take the opportunities that allow me to learn new things.

During the day I don't procrastinate (browsing the web, e.g. hacker news is
limited for me) - I work hard on my programming tasks but not silly hard, e.g.
I have regular breaks, lunch, etc.

------
siner
I got two kids: 4 and 1. The little one is a horrible sleeper right now. Me
and my wife work roughly 30h a week each. 50/50 taking care of the kids. Kids
are in daycare for roughly 7 hours. We commute 2h a day if not doing home
office.

I just stopped bothering what to learn or accumulate green boxes. The only
time github graph looked like a jungle was when I was hired to work on a
sponsored open source project.

I tend to read on the train ride if not completely wasted. Coding is kind of
not fun while commuting. Topics differ however.

In the evenings I just do whatever I like to do after chores. Sometimes it's
coding, sometimes just playing games, mostly screwing around the internets or
reading non profession books.

Demand for computer science is not (yet) declining, quite the contrary. So my
need for learning does not come from competition.

The most quality time to learn something new is an hour here an hour there at
work. I try to be efficient to generate the desired output so I can get a bit
of slack to get my head into something new coding wise. Call me unethical, but
it seems to work out for me and clients. There is only one life to live.

------
rodolphoarruda
I'm on PTO today and could notice how distant I am from my kids' daily
routine. They see me home, but they are not sure if they can play or even talk
to me, even though I'm completely available to them. I work an average of 12h
a day, mainly attending project status meetings with clients, which require
all my focus, no background noise or distractions, meaning that my wife and I
have to keep our kids away from me. I lost count of how many times I had to
ask them to be quiet or leave my home office. And it was only TODAY that I
realized the profound impact that this lifestyle has on my kids firstly, and
secondly on me. My kids don't know what it is like to have an available daddy.
Don't know how it works. So they stay with her mother, which is routine to
them. This sucks big time to me, especially because I don't know how to
reverse it, nor if it is even reversible. I'll do my best. (or maybe I should
consider finding myself another job)

~~~
mkale
It's reversible, just not overnight. Start today and don't give up.

------
zunzun
Children spell love as t-i-m-e, so one hour of my time every weekday evening
was family time. Weekend evenings were the same but usually added reading a
story from Winnie-The-Pooh or the like in the younger days. I did not make
this their rule for them, it was my rule for me. It worked for us, and
strangely helped me intellectually rather quite a lot.

------
timewarrior
I have been working as a coder for almost 12 years now. We have a 3 month old
baby.

Life changed a lot after the baby was born. I took time off for almost two
months and now am getting into a rhythm where I can spend 7-8 hours in office
everyday.

Coming to the original topic - the way I have solved skill up is by having a
day job which helps me acquire skills that I want to acquire. I would never do
a job where I am not learning what I want to learn. I have left multi million
dollars in equity on table at jobs where I was not learning (LinkedIn,
Dropbox). Moved to management roles and back to individual contributor a few
times, as soon as I had acquired the skills I wanted to acquire.

Based on this strategy I have acquired following skills - Backend,
Infrastructure, DevOps, Frontend web, Frontend iOS, Data mining research,
Product, UX, BizDev, Sales. Current plan is Analytics and Machine learning.

Given that now I am able to do a full time day job - I am able to skill up as
a part of it.

------
krosaen
Make ability to learn on the job a high priority. Save your money and take
time off.

I wrote about my experience taking time off for a 'learning sabbatical' here:

[http://karlrosaen.com/learning-sabbatical/](http://karlrosaen.com/learning-
sabbatical/)

and now have a job where I make quite a bit less than my last job but have a
lot of freedom to learn on the job (e.g spend several hours a week working
through material that will make me more valuable on the job, learning stuff
I'm really excited about in the meantime).

I have a family, and can probably squeeze out maybe 3-4 hours a week tops
outside of work / family stuff, and usually don't feel like it because it's
important to have downtime. Having a way to learn during the day is great and
I think a sustainable solution for family minded folks.

------
ceocoder
My daughter turned 10 momths recently. Last 10-11 months haven't been the
same. Instead of reading/being on laptop whenever/wherever we (both of us
work) want, now our schedules are more deliberate. My daughter is a good
sleeper, she is usually in bed by 7pm, we eat dinner after that and get back
to work+light TV watching from 7.30 to 11. Having a good schedule for her
helped us a bunch for maintaining sanity. We started sleep training her very
early.

7.30-11 is the time where I get most of my learning done - code reviews,
feedback to design docs, reading articles on HN, watching lectures.
Essentially what I'm saying is - if you can set and maintain a schedule for
your child, it will help you find time for your self. Hope this helps.

------
watwut
Assuming you have sleep, I found it easier to learn theory and read things
than code. Coding requires longer uninterrupted time, which was hard to get.
Learning from articles not so much - you can do it on playground while they
play, you can read paragraph or think about problem while you watch them at
home. Writing text turned out to be similar - it is easily possible with
interruptions.

I guess the trick is not to fall down into a trap of thinking that kids needs
you super active all the time. They don't, they are fully competent to play
without you, for short times at first only and they will break your focus
every few minutes or so. Give them your attention, but simply dont give up on
reading/writing/etc and you will find the balance.

------
yotamoron
Before I had kids, I considered myself to be a busy man. After my first kid
was born, I realized how much spare time I actually had when I had no kids.
After my second kid was born, I realized how much spare time I had with only 1
kid. After my third kid was born - you get the picture (we stopped at 3).

My point? your life is full of unbelievable pile of unimportant things (and by
'unimportant' I don't mean important in some objective, cosmic way, but
important by the core values YOU have that can only present themselves when
under pressure). Having kids (or, in a more general way, having much much less
free time) will force you to become much better in separating the wheat from
the chaff - which is a great thing.

------
juanger
My kids are 8 and 6, last thing I learnt was to knit some months ago. Last
thing I coded in my spare time was a midi generator. I'm not a super human,
need to sleep 7-8 hours, don't go to the gym and instead bike to work every
other day and enjoy playing videogames.

It is difficult to find a balance as responsibilities don't scale linearly,
combination of different situations are more complex than the sum of the
parts. Just think about this: When you get out of the office, what do you have
to do? I'm not referring to what you want to do but to the things that you are
"forced" to do. Probably nothing or very little (gym, laundry, etc).

When you have a family, you have to consider lots of unknowns when returning
home: problems, chores, play time, illness, vacations, homework, parties,
injuries, different hobbies per family member, sibling rivalry, etc. You have
to consider everyone in the family and all the combinations so, of course you
have way less spare time to enjoy for yourself.

That being said, here are some ideas:

1) There are lots of things to learn other than what can be shared in your
Github account graph. Having kids forces you to diversify and that is good.

2) Kids are a great opportunity to learn mentorship. They need to learn
everything: how to talk, walk, ride a bicycle, eat, manage their time, etc.
Learning how to distill your knowledge and propagate it is a really good skill
for a programmer.

3) All the good programmers that keep up and share things: It is easy to see
20 great programmers sharing their projects in twitter and think that they a
super-human, but remember that for some of them, that is their job and that it
is easy to feel you don't do much when comparing yourself to a collective that
is delivering every day something awesome.

4) There are things you never got to learn/do but with kids you can have the
opportunity (or be forced :)) to. In my case: camping and surfing

The ultimate trick is to stay in a mental state that allows you to do those
things, it is easy to sometimes feel overwhelmed with so many things going on
that depend on you.

~~~
fatherofone
very good point on mental state !

------
ladytron
Founder, big data startup 4 kids in 4.5 years Lots of patents and nerdy stuff.

I have no hobbies. I don't go to networking/startup events. I don't watch
TV,Netflix, etc and I don't have cable. Rarely go on vacation, unless a family
obligation to visit grandma.

Tactics: Office with 24/7 access outside house (worth the rent) Coffee shop
open at 6 am/closes at 1 am with wi-fi.

Basically I work every morning at coffee shop before kids get up. Partner
works late after kids go to bed at 8 pm. We work at the office lab every
weekend, taking turns, with a sitter, or we just bring kids to office with
coloring books, games etc.

Doing this you can work about 35 - 50 hours a week, but obviously it's not for
everyone!

------
jakobegger
A lot of people have a stay-at-home partner who takes care of the kids. This
makes a huge difference. My partner is currently studying at university, and
whenever she has holidays, I can work a lot more.

But in general having kids takes a lot of time. So I can't do all the things
that I used to do before. I go out a lot less, I watch barely any TV anymore,
and I rarely code anymore at night (too tired most days), and I read fewer
books.

However, I'm still productive. Little projects that I used work on for a few
weekends take months now. I just spend a few hours here and there. But once
the project is done, it's done, and it doesn't matter how long it took.

------
jug
For me it's helped me _really_ come to terms with the KISS principle and
avoiding needless stuff. Understanding the value of proven and stable
technology, and convenient, flexible, yet fast workflows. Spending a bit of
extra time to get things right from the beginning, and then settling.

The past me would have messed around playing with Linux distros trying to find
what's most cool and best for me, totally wasting a lot of time in the
process, perhaps kept building websites using more obnoxious workflows because
I never saw a need to change.

Now I'm using a combo of gohugo and surge.sh to build my site, on Debian
Stable Xfce. No distractions and stuff just works, man, with a minimum of
fuss. Xfce on SSD is just laughably fast and slick. I think I audibly laughed.
It's not just for low spec PC's! Anyway, then came the realization I could
evolve my new site with these new tools to build a better face to the web for
my career. I'm blogging in convenient, fast near-prose Markdown and I type one
damn command to puzzle everything together and deploy. Now I realize these new
insights will probably be good for me as a professional too, not just sparing
time at home. It's not only at home time is considered valuable...

It's especially good to get this thinking into the "core" of yourself, you
know. That it's automatically part of everything you do. It's honestly too
late I've had that happen but kids probably helped.

------
qaq
Focus on tech. with long life-cycles (as in spend 80% of your learning time on
it) and the rest to get familiar with the latest cool things. As an example in
a world where most teams don't have a DBA being a go to Person for say
Postgres is a valuable position to be in. The 20% time also needs to be
strategically allocated spend it on something that is likely to have staying
power. Also don't spend it all in one area as in learning React and Ember and
Angular and Vue or spending it all learning all the KV stores.

------
daxfohl
You've got confirmation bias. The people you read about were likely all great
coders/writers before having kids, and their livelihood now depends somewhat
on those activities. For the vast majority of us, githubbing and blogging are
enjoyable but not necessary activities. When we have kids, yes there's not so
many green boxes. If you haven't written books already, now is probably not
the time you're going to start. That's not to say there's _no_ free time, just
not as much.

------
Jean-Philipe
Okay there were many comments here... I'm a dad of 5 and 7 year old girls.
They're now old enough so I start teaching them to code, and then I plan to
take it from there some day (learning together). Besides that, I always have
an hour or two each day to do what I want, when they sleep. In the first year
with each kid it's hard to find any time, which is fine, but then it just gets
easier every year.

Another way for you to keep learning might be to found your own company - just
be careful to focus and not to neglect your family. With my first company, I
was lacking focus and put too much unnecessary work into the company, to the
cost of my family. Also, my co-founders didn't have kids.

The second time I founded a company with another dad, who understands flexible
schedules. We're now a few moms and dads in the team. Sometimes I would go
home early, be with my daughters, and catch up with work later. I feel I'm a
lot more focussed than before having kids, and I definitely get a lot more
done, in less time! It doesn't even compare. I don't have a choice anyways. My
learning mostly happens on the job. When we get a new project, we sometimes
decide to try a new technology - if it seems to add a benefit or save us time
in the long term.

Ah yeah and of course, communicating with your partner is key if you want to
shave off some time here and there!

------
whynotmaybe
It's possible to skill up, I do it by using public transport for +-50min a day
and asking everybody in the house to be quiet after 8PM and leave me alone, a
few times per month.

Why only a few times per month ? Because most of the time my brain's too tired
to function properly and it's wiser to empty it with netflix than getting
pissed off on your family.

It's true that there aren't many green boxes on my github, but it's not my
main income, it's on the side. I do it for fun !

Advice for anyone willing to skill up with kids : \- discuss this with your
SO. Your SO can understand this and accommodate some time for you. (Some time)
\- discuss this with your kids when they're old enough to understand. \- work
by small increment

You cover both extreme of the argument with "I argued many good programmers
have family with kids and still manage to keep up. They brushed me off saying
it's just not possible or they don't look after their kids.", .

Some are super humans and can do everything, some think that they must forget
who they are because of their kids and put their lives in PAUSE for 20yrs. ALL
the others try to balance their life.

You don't stop training because you have kids, you don't stop watching movies
because you have kids, you don't stop going out because you have kids. They
become an important part of your life, just a part, not your whole life.

------
Anil-Shrestha
Father 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.

------
noer
I should caveat that I'm not a professional developer (I code things
occasionally during the day for work, but my job isn't to make things with
code). It's something that I enjoy learning & making small projects with, but
for the most part, it's a thing I mostly/only do outside of work/during
personal time.

I usually work on things after my son goes to bed and spend anywhere between
2-4 hours depending on the day. My wife takes him to a class on Saturday
mornings and is gone for about 2 hours so I use that time. My work ethic
definitely ebbs and flows, and I definitely wish I could do more, but I also
have a rule for myself to not have a laptop out when he's awake/home.

My son was born 9 weeks early and had to spend a fair amount of time in the
hospital after he was born. During the time my son was in the hospital, I took
on a freelance project that required a fair amount of front end work and
frankly I was in over my head. After the first week of this project, my son
came home and I was trying to juggle a newborn, a full time job and a pretty
significant freelance project that I wasn't totally qualified to do. I got
fired from my freelance project after about two months when it became clear
that I didn't have the time or skills to do the job. Looking back, I have no
idea how I did it.

------
tomrod
It is gratifying to see so many developers have kids and achieve amazing
things simultaneously.

I put myself through grad school in economics (5 years), learned
C/Fortran/Python, learned data science, all with two young kids. Ungodly hours
and sleep deprivation were the norm for months at a time. Prioritization of
that precious little free time became so important. Milestones, project plans,
etc. Recreation consisted of kite flying after exams for the semester were
complete, and the student-apartment barbecues on Sundays.

How do I keep learning? I keep Netflix off as much as possible, code on
projects (sexy or not) instead of firing up steam, and focus on good enough
instead of perfection. In other words, tradeoffs.

Do I have everything down? No, I have a list of things to learn or understand
better as long as my arm. But I'm working towards it, and my kids (now
tweeners with a toddler brother) work with me occasionally too. Just last week
we worked together on an invention convention with me as a SME. I learned
about circuitry, my kids built an awesome LED light/clock/bookmark. One wants
to be a video game designer when they grow up, one wants to be a musician and
deejay like Tiesto, and I'm tickled that I get to share the things I learn
with them.

Tech and coding really are and can be a family affair. It's not only a good
source of income, but for kids the idea that they can fundamentally change the
world, push boundaries and improve life for people builds on their already
optimistic imaginations and, frankly, is really cool to see.

------
RyanBlk
I have a very pregnant wife and 3 year old son.

Once you have children, your time management skills go through the roof. I
should start off saying that I always put family time first and my hobbies
second. The key is to have a solid routine that you follow. We try to get my
son into bed by 8ish. I then will watch TV with the wife until around 9. From
9-midnight is my free time. Sometimes I watch another show with the wife,
sometimes I am tired and go to sleep, but most of the time I am on the
computer. I also have time during his nap on Saturday and Sunday. I will
probably lose these 4 hours once my daughter is born.

I used to excessively play video games during this time before my son was
born. Now I have been working on my roommate matching website
[https://www.roommatefilter.com](https://www.roommatefilter.com) . My
priorities changed once my wife became pregnant. I wanted the best life
possible for them and started getting productive with my time.

You quickly find out what's most important to you once you only have a few
hours of free time a night. Most people have at least an hour a day to better
themselves, but choose to engage in more enjoyable activities.

I tell people that don't have kids, having children will be both the most
rewarding and hardest thing you will do.

------
gbog
Just my case: 3 kids (7, 4, 1.5), I have all the time I want for my hobbies
(mostly in music, prgoramming and gardening) and I get beers and loud music
with friends every other Friday. I also have plenty of time with my kids, do a
lot a different with them, often going to countryside together, going to buy
second hand things, etc.

The recipe?

\- A good stable programming job with zero travels and few overtime.

\- A wife that understand that going to bars with friends is necessary for
personal balance. She does the same.

\- Zero "kid week-end activities", week-end is not filled with car trips to
the piano or aikido lesson, it is filled with random activities with kids like
gardening, fixing the house, lego, cartoons (only Miyazaki), books.

\- We live in China so we have plenty of help, someone drives the kids to
school, someone else cooks and take care of the youngest, yet another person
do the house cleaning.

\- I never forced myself into some activities I did not enjoy with my kids. I
try and find cartoons and books that them and I can enjoy (thus the Miyazaki
restiction). You do not owe anything to your kids. Having a good life balance,
therefore being a happy parent, is the best gift you can give them.

Obviously this works well for me because I like kids in the beginning, I'm
naturally attracted. Some could have to force themselves a bit more, but
nobody should ever self-sacrifice to their kids: this is a poisoned gift to
them, they will know, and have this terrible burden to carry thorugh their
life, and might not pardon you.

------
phereford
There is no one answer here as every family structure is different. Like most
other comments here, my 2 (5yo, 22months) children have first dibs on my time
while I am not on the clock or am not dealing with a production issue off
hours. Once they go to bed (sometime between 7:30-8:30pm), I determine if I
have enough in the tank for either: 1) Learning 2) Spending time with my wife
(second dibs on my time).

In order to "stay relevant", I have found this to work for me: 1) During my
passive commutes (every morning and afternoon), I have a solid 30 minutes of
either listening to a podcast if I don't get a seat or toying around with new
languages/frameworks otherwise. 2) Convince your current company that it is in
their best interest to bake learning into your current job.

Obviously (2) can be quite difficult, but it starts a conversation you want to
have anyway about making sure the entire team stays relevant and fresh. Most
people always point to Google's innovation time as a good measure of how this
should be done.

Having children has absolutely changed my priorities around and put an
increasing value on my time. For me, I would much rather forgo learning the
new JS flavor of the week in favor of spending as much time as possible with
my growing children.

------
koliber
One insight I had with kids is that, assuming you have a willing partner, you
can free up evening time for yourself by doing "nights off.". I hugely believe
that kids and parents benefit from quality time together. However, it feels
that it is not always necessary for both parents to be involved. My wife and I
switch up at least once a week where one has the whole evening off. Often,
it's more than once a week. The free parent can go and meet up with friends
for supper, go to a meetup, or work on a side project.

I learn at work. Not always, but a little bit every day. It is rarely a new
library or language. Often, it's a little insight into how to name functions
better, or a subtle shift in my philosophy of how code should be organized. It
compounds heavily over time, and makes me the experienced developer I am
today.

To answer your question, some people are superhuman. Some are just better at
marketing and aggrandizing their ability to split time. Some have kids but
don't spend time with them.

Try to find a good balance that satisfies you. Be cognizant of your time
management, energy levels, and expectations. Consider how your diet, exercise,
and sleep affect your day. If you have resources, consider outsourcing some
work like house chores, laundry, shopping, and cooking to free up some time.
Most importantly, make sure you realize that it's OK not to be like everyone
else.

As a side note, my public GitHub account graph is a bad way to judge my
professional activity. I push code multiple times a day to GitHub repos, but
only have 7 public contributions in the last year. A huge majority of my work
is in private repos.

------
WBrentWilliams
Down here in the ignored bottom of the comments, all I can really say when it
comes to juggling family and any other activity (job, interest, hobby...) you
either do it or you do not. All I can tell you is the how of what I do.

I set a goal and found time. I found 30 minutes every morning. I make it a
point to have slack time (hence, answering this post and reading Hacker
News...), but I target about 90 minutes a week on whatever single project I
choose for the week.

------
orless
I'm 37, I have two sons, 7 and 5yo. Me and my wife both work full-time, with
ca. 1.5h commute time every day.

I still do a lot of open-source and side projects. These are my green boxes:

[http://imgur.com/WTgz9TE](http://imgur.com/WTgz9TE)

I don't stay late in the office, we're home around 6pm. We have an au-pair
girl who helps with children (takes them to school/kindergarten and picks them
up). I mostly do 1-2 hours after 9pm (after I bring children to bed) a couple
of times a week and maybe a few of hours on the weekend. I guess that'd amount
to around 6-10 hours a week altogether. I don't always get enough sleep.
Sometimes when working on something very exciting I stay till very late (like
2am) and regret it the next day. I go to 3-4 hackathons a year, something I
arrange with my wife well ahead of time. She knows it's important for me and
is very supportive.

But to be honest I don't I do my OS or side projects for "skilling up", I do
them as a hobby, because I like it. "Skilling up" happens primarily at work -
my employer invests around 10% of the worktime in "skilling up", I have around
15-20 days of courses/workshops a year.

------
laughfactory
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!

------
AznHisoka
the advantage of having young kids is generally they sleep very early which
means you can have the early evenings to yourself (assuming they stay asleep).

they also take lots of naps in the afternoon which equals down time for you.

so as a rule, when they sleep you have some free time.

~~~
JabavuAdams
True to a point, but I almost sacrificed my mental health, and I _did_
sacrifice my marriage by not sleeping when the kids are sleeping.

As a single parent, now, I _have_ to go to bed right after the kids do. The
unexpected benefit is that I'm much healthier and happier. Also I have several
full evenings a week with no kids to use for e.g. learning.

~~~
AznHisoka
how did it sacrifice your marriage?

~~~
JabavuAdams
I would stay up very late after the kids were in bed, because I was unwilling
to give up on the day. This meant I was never around to help in the mornings,
and would routinely sleep in 'till 11 or so on weekends, while my ex-wife got
up with the kids at 6 am.

This, coupled with reduced income due to bootstrapping a business created too
much relationship damage to recover from.

------
zwischenzug
My kids are 9 and 10.

About 5 years ago I read 'Getting Things Done' and (despite my misgivings) it
literally changed my life.

Since then I've:

\- set up a JIRA to track ALL the things I work on

\- written a book [https://www.amazon.com/Docker-Practice-Ian-
Miell/dp/16172927...](https://www.amazon.com/Docker-Practice-Ian-
Miell/dp/1617292729) (and am currently writing a second edition)

\- started a blog
[https://zwischenzugs.wordpress.com/](https://zwischenzugs.wordpress.com/)

\- changed jobs

\- become a speaker
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ian+miell](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ian+miell)

\- started an open source project that helps me automation my spare time tech
work: [http://ianmiell.github.io/shutit/](http://ianmiell.github.io/shutit/)

And now I feel I've got MORE time than I had before I read it, and better time
with kids etc..

The takeaway from this is that if you get serious about managing your time the
benefits can be awesome.

Although when your kids are very young (we had two demanding ones under 2)
don't be too hard on yourself - it's really hard!

~~~
thatwebdude
I didn't read GTD, but I liked the philosophy when it became popular.

Just came here to say that time management is key. When we had our first
child, I learned this sink-or-swim style and it made me a much better human
being because of it.

------
BayAreaSmayArea
Having a kid kicked my ass in high gear as far as learning and monetizing that
learning. I've been fortunate enough to have good jobs and arguable didn't
"need" to do more but when I found out we were going to have a child every
part of my body shifted into provider overdrive.

I started consulting, hustling, and expanding my knowledge and skillset as
rapidly as I could. I started a consultancy on the side and nearly doubled my
income over the course of a few months. Between that and my boy not being a
very good sleeper I probably ran on an average of 4.5 hours rest a night for
between 3-4 years (with once a week crashes of a long night of sleep on
Fridays and Saturday afternoon nap).

It was tough, damn tough, but I made sure to spend quality time with him every
night and most mornings, gave him nearly every bath during the first 2 years
of his life, and got up with him every time he needed me in the night from
midnight to 7am as that was my shift so the wife could sleep. During the same
time I achieved an extremely high proficiency with ruby and later rails,
learned to sell myself, came on as first engineer at a startup and dug deep
into Elixir right around the time it hit 1.0, eventually launching a product
written in it and learning a ridiculous amount about the BEAM in the process.

Theres less time to fart around with video games, and I don't have much in the
way of hobbies, but little fulfillment was going to come from those areas
anyway.

Its doable, and I'm alive and sane on the other side with a load of
accomplishments to point to, a great relationship with my wife/son and
reasonable assurance that my child(ren) will have everything they need to be
successful.

------
shoefly
I don't know how they do it unless their partner is doing all of the
parenting. I used to work crazy hours until our kid arrived. Now, I work 10
hours or less per day. My kid doesn't sleep, so this compounds the problem. He
never goes to sleep until 10:30 pm, and always wakes up before the rest of us.
He is young, though, and every year gets a little easier. I'm more productive
this year than I was last year.

------
smdz
Planning tasks works for me. For example - I maintain different list of cards
in private TODOS boards. I add the item as soon as it comes to my mind. I
don't place a deadline - but I may reprioritize items every week. So, if I
have 3 hours to work on something - I know exactly which priority I could work
on. I also have a lot of other automated reminders - to an extent that
sometimes the list automatically drives me into finishing a lot of tasks. The
other part is a Completed list where I move cards as they are finished - gives
me a very good feedback when I archive cards every weekend. Apart from this, I
also use a time-tracker (for personal use) - It helps me look whether I was
wasting too much time.

Once you have a kid - time shrinks. If you thought 24 hours a day was less
before having a kid - just imagine. However you also start focusing on being
efficient with your time. At least that's what happened to me. You can't work
100 hours a week consistently after a certain age (usually after 30). I don't
thrive to work 100+ hours a week, but I am very careful at where/how I spend
my 50+ hours a week.

------
rmz
Many interesting answers in this thread. But to get to your question: How do
you skill up? My answer would be: As best you can, all the time. Find pockets
of time and learning tasks that fit within them. Explore opportunities: Moocs,
toy projects, more serious projects, read books, listen to podcasts during
your commute, when you work out (which you should even though you don't have
time for it), switch jobs from time to time, talk to people. Just never stop.
One thing you should do however, from time to time, is to give up: It's not as
if every learning task is feasible. Kids/work/family do put sometime severe
constraints on what you can do. Some things just don't work out, and you won't
necessarily know what they are before trying. So try lots of things, but give
up from time to time when you have to. Learn about what your constraints are,
and design next your attempt to fit them better, but don't stop. (.... but
every now and then, you just have to find/steal/cheat to get some time to just
hack, there is no substitute :-) )

------
andymoe
You will have less time and have to prioritize. I look back and wonder what I
did with all that extra time before children. Turns out not much.

Thankfully babies need a lot of sleep and after six months their stomachs get
bigger and they start eating a bit of solid food and will sleep through the
night if you are lucky.

Night owls can still have 9-midnight to yourself if you want... I did this for
two years with my first child while trying to get a start-up going and still
use that time once in a while now.

But there is a better way. Look at your employer or company culture. It turns
out the standard hero culture in tech of long hours on your own is not a very
effective use of anyone's time. Look for a culture that values learning,
collaboration and teaching. If you _actually_ work 8 effective hours a day
maintaining a sustainable pace you can get amazing things accomplished.

Techniques like pair programming, BDD, trunk based development with less or no
time wasting code reviews can help you transfer knowledge, let teams move
faster with higher quality while maintaining a good pace. Try those things
instead of sleeping less.

------
nrjames
Children under age 1 are easy. From ~1 to ~4, they consume A LOT of your free
time. For me, that was the hardest period to find time to continue to learn
and to work on personal projects. From a mental health standpoint, it helped
me to "give in" to being a parent and "let go" of the notion that I could live
the same life as before. I put those in quotes because they are silly
concepts. Embracing being a parent and the joys of interacting with your kids
is a lovely replacement for spending time alone with a computer.

Eventually, I combined the two and ended up creating several apps for my kids.
One was an OS X app that allowed them to bang on the keyboard without damaging
my files, etc. Each letter corresponded with an animal. A full screen pic of
the animal would appear and the sound would play. It was called Toddler Typer.
While it's no longer on the App Store, my kids, now 6 and 4, both still like
to play with it. The second was an iPad app called Toddler Taxonomist
([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toddler-
taxonomist/id6423870...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toddler-
taxonomist/id642387016?mt=8)) that is still available for free (though I need
to rewrite it in Swift or something). My older daughter sat on my lap and
helped me make it.

Now, I have a full time job, hold a position as a Fellow, work on personal
projects when I have time, and spend good time with my kids, when I can. The
best advice I have for you is to try to avoid getting frustrated during those
first few years and to pivot to parenthood as a learning process. Combine
interests where you can, and don't lose sight of the fact that your kids will
be intensely interested in the activities you do on the computer. When they're
old enough, show/teach them what you're doing!

------
mirekrusin
You can have: 1\. your partner not working and taking care of kids 2\. a nanny
hired for after office hours 3\. parents helping (realistically short term
only of course)

Can't think of other options. Just one kid can easily fill up 24h of a day
without a problem, as a bonus leaving you with 45 minutes of sleep only - and
the kid will be just fine, i.e. with enough energy to do it to you again, no
problem.

------
noonespecial
I teach it to my kids. The lesson is that I find out that I didn't know it
half as well as I thought I did once I try to explain it to them.

------
mmjaa
I have two kids. They're awesome. I make time for them on the weekend, and
when possible during the week. I include them in my work life by explaining
the things I'm up to during the week.

But the key thing is that when I'm with my kids, I'm _with them_ and not
focusing on other things. That seems to be the most important thing: quality
time with the kids, even if its a small amount of time, makes all the
difference in the world.

I also make sure to spend time building things with them - airplanes, marble-
runs, whatever. It helps when I'm not around, because they can improve things
and report back when we next have quality time together - and that has been
really beneficial on those weeks when I've not gotten home in time to spend at
least a few minutes with them each day .. we have a project in some kind of
state, and while we're not able to spend time together, they improve on that
project. Having these kinds of things happening has been quite important to us
having, in my opinion, a great relationship.

------
verulito
I'm 36 and I have two kids, aged ~5 and ~7. I think it gets easier once they
hit middle school but I can account for all my time right now.

9am-10am: wake up 10am - 6pm: work (yup, 40 hours) 6pm - 8pm: shop, cook,
feed, put kids to sleep 8pm - 9pm: discipline my kids for not sleeping 9pm -
1am: my time

weekends: 8am - 9am: wife lets me sleep 9am - 8pm: I entertain kids

So I got a few hours a day there. Multitasking is almost impossible because if
you don't sink their energy then they create more work for you.

What consumes my free time: \- Running errands \- Exercise (~1hr/day) \-
Preparing meals (very basic) \- Cleaning

I also have more doctor appointments than most and such, hopefully temporary.
My wife has some issues that makes it hard for her to parent so I work more
than others.

Here's how I observe others doing it: \- Cut back on sleep \- Asian mom lives
with them \- Hire babysitters \- Really supportive spouse. ie they don't
accomplish \- Delegate kids to other activities or let them entertain
themselves at home \- Don't exercise. Eat out. Etc. \- Have kids without
issues

------
xtrimsky1234
I'm a parent of two small daughters. Now I'm still able to program once or
twice a week for maybe 30 minutes.

But I definitely don't have time to do one commit a day :(.

Back in college or highschool, I used to pull a full weekend worth of
programming, meaning starting saturday at 8am, finishing sunday at 10pm. I was
able to build very cool projects in just a weekend. Now if I estimate maybe
the 1 hour I have per week, the same project just takes me months...

I still do cool projects, VR video games, cool websites. It's just taking a
lot of time. This project for example took me 4 years (lol):
[http://traveler208.com/](http://traveler208.com/)

But you know what, looking back at what I have of my life, I cherish much more
the time I spent with the family at the lake, or the time I spent with my
wife. The time where I programmed a platform that used only free servers all
over the internet to combine a 7TB bandwidth in a month for a P2P service was
cool, but it's not as good.

------
simion314
I don't care about learning new languages/frameworks, I know I am a decent
programmer, I work enough hours to have enough for a modest life. Conclusion
is that software is no longer cool for me, if I will need to learn a new
framework for my job or language I know I can learn it but I know that me not
knowing latest cool thing does not affect my job.

------
equalarrow
I'm surprised at the responses for this post. Mostly because there isn't much
family convo on hn. Great stuff, thanks to all.

I have 2 kids - 5 & 3\. It's the best and hardest all wrapped in a
unpredictive, non-linted experience. On top of that, being in tech, I feel,
puts you at a little more disadvantage.

Maybe because we live in SF where it feels like most software gigs want to
operate at Uber speed.

I have a medium sized company job now, but have been through contracting and 3
startups since my oldest was born. I was definitely pushed many times to
making the decision of company first and I've had to do what I've had to do to
keep the money coming in.

Luckily my wife has her own biz and could take time off for the kids, but
we've both talked about how this has put us in the traditional roles and how
we wanted it to be different.

I would never take having kids back vs. a more accomplished software career (I
switch between mgr and sr. engr roles anyway). Kids have put this point of my
life into perspective more than anything.

If I want to do a side proj (I've done a few over the last few years), then I
double down on discipline. I'm up at 4 every day, put in a solid 2 hours and
then stop. Kids and family are next, then day job. I come home, usually around
dinner time, give kids bath, stories and bed time.

It is definitely clockwork and treadmill feeling at times, but it's how I've
made it work. In those 2 morning hours I code and keep updated on latest.
Luckily I have quite a bit of exp so most things I already understand and it
becomes more about translation into other languages / frameworks.

In closing I would say this: we have all been our children. I reflect back on
my life remembering what made me excited and happy and try to facilitate they
for my kids and be present with them. When they are asleep, then I have me
time.

------
pryelluw
There is always time here and there. Its about decisions and doing what fits
you. In my case, I work for one uninterrupted hour after my kid goes to sleep.
Is that enough? Yes. Im blogging, writing a book, and learning F#. Im not
smart or special.

Stop believing the stupid shit other people say. Do what works for you and to
hell with the rest.

------
supergetting
Wow, inspiring comments. I am a 30-year-old software engineer — not married,
no kids, but reading the comments here gets me thinking that however busy I
think I am, I wouldn't even dare to compare to what you all are going through.
Instead, I should stop fooling myself of thinking that I am busy and cease to
be lazy.

~~~
pryelluw
Its one thing to be busy and its another to be productive. Be productive.

------
kps1ny
It should not have to be a choice between kids and what you enjoy. Incorporate
children into your favorite activities so that you can enjoy time with them
while doing what you love. If you want kids and green boxes, work on projects
related to kids and teach them how to do it at the same time.

For example, perhaps there's a project related to a tool that helps kids learn
to code. Contribute to it, and then have them use that tool and see how your
work made it better. Maybe your contribution was a result of their idea for
improving the product when they found it wanting.

If your kids are not yet old enough to speak or code, you can still work on
projects that they might use sooner rather than later.

It's always a matter or priorities in any case. Doing away with TV is one way
to gain a lot of time that will let you enjoy both kids and coding.

-Ken (father of 8yo and 11yo daughters who enjoy World of Warcraft and coding :-)

------
NDizzle
I have 3 kids - 11, 6, 4. After my third kid was born I fled the bay area.

Find a good school system that is nearby. I have 10 years worth of schooling 3
blocks away. (pre-k through 8th grade)

Work from home. If you get rid of your commute you open up a lot of
possibilities.

Have patience. Meditate and stretch often.

And finally - avoid javascript! You can't keep up with javascript.

------
logfromblammo
Having 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.

------
dep_b
In my spare time I make sure I take enough AFK time anyway. With >60 hours
weeks I don't really feel like doing stuff for fun or interest on a computer.

However I do learn on the job and I do keep a list of tabs open to read while
compiling/uploading/drinking a coffee/to be honest just slacking off. So when
I see a new problem I do not only have a set of tools that I already used and
know but I also have a bunch of potential tools I could use.

I never used Mongo or any non-relational DB yet. But I'm ready to use it as
soon as I see that one of the problems I'm solving requires one of the many
benefits these kind of databases have. I don't need a pet project for that.

For example I tried F# for a small Windows service with a WebSocket for a
customer because I knew it would be a very good pick for an application that
mainly manages data flows.

------
commenttolearn
What are you willing to sacrifice? If you really want to make it a priority
you will have to sacrifice something. Do you spend too much time watching
netflix? playing video games? reading news? Start replacing these things for
career improvement activities.

Be smart with the learning activities you choose. Side projects? probably not
the best option since they require a lot of your time. Books, podcasts, video
courses? That sounds more feasible since they are things you can squeeze in at
any moment of the day.

Also keep in mind that learning is about quality and not quantity. It does not
matter that you spend 5 hours coding on a side project if you are solving the
same problem over and over.

Lastly, make sure you have a learning activities list ready so that you always
have something to start working on and don't have to waste your time thinking
about what's next.

------
ropman76
When I had newborns if I had to take work home with me or stay late it would
increase the stress on my wife to take care of the kids. So even if I was a
little sleep deprived I went into work with a "I have eight hours to get this
crap done" attitude that really pushed up my productivity levels. As far as
skilling up there is more to developing skills than just pushing code to
GitHub. I found that it's easier to read a Kindle one handed (holding a baby
with the other) so I started buying books about some of the more theoretical
aspects of computer science that don't always seem to go with my day to day
coding job. I have had many "light bulb" moments doing that by either being
reminded of things I had learned in school or learning something new about how
things work.

------
sriku
Dad of two here.

Good question. What I'm reading in your question that many replies are missing
out on is that your question is less about the actual responsibilities, which
I see you happy to take up. It is about what to do with your mind which, now
when not at work, can _only_ think about your kids. Also there is this feeling
that you should put your kids first and above yourself.

If that is the case, focusing inward helps. If you're at a place or time where
your kids are not a matter - they might be safe and sound asleep, you may be
on a work trip, you may be up a bit early on a day, whatever; at that time,
you can tell yourself that it is OK to focus on your expansion.

I also found the time constraint changing what leveling up means to me -
instead of picking up that new framework or tool, going deeper into whatever I
want to.

------
01000001
Well, I don't know what happened to me, but I became a father in July, and
this is my GitHub:
[http://i.imgur.com/EZSE03y.png](http://i.imgur.com/EZSE03y.png)

I still spend a lot of time with my child, and have a great balance. Anything
is possible, if you're smart enough to arrange things properly.

Not super human, but I do spend about 8 hours working, and about 6 hours doing
non-work, but I intersperse it with taking breaks to play with my kid or to
sit and eat breakfast.

You will find it hard in the beginning, when you're not getting much sleep,
but it does get easier, and I imagine it's just going to get easier.

I had people tell me my life would be hell. They were wrong. Just because they
mismanaged it and lost their passion, doesn't mean you have to.

Good luck!

------
gdubs
Well, GitHub's green boxes are probably not a great metric for how much one is
learning. (And really I think the sign of enlightenment is red boxes, but I
digress.)

You will probably have the realization post-kids that you had obscene amounts
of spare time in your youth.

But it's ok because having kids can really focus you. And it's amazing what
your mind is capable of when you're focused.

Time box distractions and be clear with yourself what your goals are. Steady
progress towards them can be really effective. Even 30 minutes a day of total
focus towards a larger goal will over time pay dividends.

But, maybe most importantly: sleep. You're likely to get sleep deprived, and
learning anything requires sleep and lots of it. There's always tomorrow.

If you're asking because you're expecting, congrats!

------
wojt_eu
I take breaks for hands-on training in between contracts or sometimes in the
middle, on average it's been three 1-week breaks a year. Besides that it's
just 15 minutes of technical blogs before work and maybe two hours with a
technical book over the weekend so that I'm at least aware of what's going on.

Becoming a parent did not prevent me from doing extra work but rather made me
re-evaluate my priorities. I want to give a good example to my 7-years old son
with some balance in life with time for playing, sports, slow family dinners.

Fortunately web development allows me to accumulate savings for inevitable
pause between jobs be it for re-training when my Rails expertise becomes
obsolete, fun projects, sabbatical or founding a startup.

------
saddington
I'm a little late to the thread here, but, I thought I'd share...

I do indie app development work (for myself) and then work with a few other
guys to build an enterprise SaaS startup (just like everyone else...
right...?).

In addition, I've been blogging every single day for 16 years
([http://john.do](http://john.do)) and I just added a daily vlog
([http://john.show](http://john.show)) where I talk about a few of these
things...

But, I'm also married for 12 years and have 2 girls (ages 10 and 6). It's
insanity trying to do all of these things... but, I manage... and here's how:

1\. I've created a pretty strict boundary-line for when I work and when I
don't. My wife and I agree on this boundary line and then... 2\. I fucking
work my ass off to get as much shit as I can done. 3\. I forgive myself for
not accomplishing everything I want to get done, and then, I get up the next
day and try to do better. 4\. I get support from partners and my friends.
Building shit on the internet is tiring and can quickly become very lonely.
Without help I lose, 100% of the time. 5\. I take care of my body and mind and
spirit through intentional self-care. I work out 7 days out of 7 a week. I
have to or, I literally die.

By the way, it took years for me to figure all of this out, so, me dropping
this might seem self-righteous and stuff, but I'm not trying to be like that.

I experimented my way through all of this and it took forever to find a pace
and a rhythm that made sense for me and my family. It's hard as hell and every
day I feel like I'm falling farther behind... but the reality is that most of
that is in my head and the reality is that i'm moving faster and smarter than
I ever have been.

I just, like everyone else, struggle to see the forest through the individual
trees.

ping me if you want to chat more. i'm down for it:
[http://twitter.com/8bit](http://twitter.com/8bit)

------
marmot777
I'd say that the first year of a child's life it's hard to get anything done
at all. That's not specific to programming, it's just when you get no sleep
it's hard to be productive on anything from work to keeping the kitchen clean.

So if you are now in the first year then I'd say don't let extreme sleep
deprivation be the final word on how your life is going to be later.

I think the first year can be an extreme experience right up there with
mountain climbing or other things I've done that have been intense, except
there's no let-up and you can't take breaks when you want. The first year
shows you who you are. Sometimes you have to keep going with no sleep and the
stomach flu. Period.

------
meheleventyone
Is it a given you need to work in your free time to keep up? From my
perspective that seems a little relentless.

I've mostly only pursued hobby projects outside of work when I've not been in
work. Nap times on paternity leave with my first for example. Or more recently
getting laid off and using my gardening leave as an extended paternity leave
with the second. Otherwise that itch is usually beaten out by the working
week.

Personally I experience a lot of value in having a broader range of interests
and knowledge.

Young kids will definitely suck time and energy from you. Anything you do
outside of home life will suffer. I can't really fathom how women in less
equitable relationships cope with less help from their partners.

------
atollstat
I don't know what's harder - dealing some days with a teenager and a toddler &
their age related issues, running engineering in a startup on a daily basis,
counting days that we will run our of business, going through the highs of
successful demos and dealing with the lows of almost-there sales calls,
wondering if it's time to get the resume in shape, planning to implement crazy
ideas in your favorite language and then getting bogged down fixing inane
production bugs; oh, it's a constant struggle - believe me.

But you just have to move that stone, an inch every day despite everything
else going on. Sounds like such a cliche, but it works if you just keep at it.

------
codingdave
On the job. When I need to learn a new skill for a work-related project, I do.
I dabble on the sides, to know what is going on in the larger tech world, but
I don't fully skill up until work actually demands it.

I do think it is possible to keep up on skills while raising kids. But I'm not
sure that you'll be happy with the decision to do so when you are 50, the kids
are grown, and you find that your skills are getting outdated anyway, your
career is winding down anyway, and you have 20 years of memories of sitting at
a desk while your kids do things without you.

Make your own choices, but most old people will recommend you let the career
slide a bit, and spend time with family.

------
3chelon
It's possible because some of us have very supportive wives who have made a
lot of sacrifices regarding their own careers. Even then, it was hard in the
early years, and we never subscribed to the whole farming-the-job-out-to-a-
nanny mindset, believing that since we chose to have kids, we should probably
raise them ourselves rather than outsourcing it.

But on the upside, time flies once you have kids and before you know it
they're teenagers and barely speak to you anymore ;) Then you suddenly find
yourself with all this spare time again. On the downside, in the intervening
years you've developed a serious Netflix habit that's proving tricky to
kick...

------
kbouck
With our 4mo, what works well for my wife and I is that we coordinate periods
where either one or the other is on active baby duty. This allows the other to
have uninterrupted blocks of time necessary to get stuff done, to catch up on
rest, or whatever else. Of course you'll want to have lots of family time
together too with both wife and baby.

It is true that your work/hobby time will become more limited, so you must
carefully prioritize how you spend what time you do have.

Embrace the challenge of finding balance between family and work. You will
probably find that having good work-life balance has a positive impact on your
work productivity and overall happiness.

------
up_and_up
> They brushed me off saying it's just not possible or they don't look after
> their kids.

Fuck that noise.

Hands-down the best programmers I have worked with have had multiple kids. I
am talking about darth vader level chops, the gurus on the team. They take a
problem or technology and understand it at its deepest level.

Things I notice that they would do:

1\. Always have one new major idea/pattern/framework they were focused on
learning. They would focus on it and learn it well.

2\. Present ideas or attend meetups once a month. Going once a month is not a
huge commitment.

3\. Have a small side project, maybe something to test out the
idea/concept/technology from #1

I myself have 3 kids and this pattern has worked well for me also ;)

------
kogus
Three kids here [age,gender] = {[8M,4M,0.5M]}

Firstly, the available time is going to decrease. There is just no way around
that, and yes that is painful. Hopefully the enjoyment from the kids is worth
it, but it's a real trade-off for sure.

Secondly, the problem can be mitigated by having a strong routine and clear
times that are "yours" for developing. (This is true for any hobby, of course.
The hobby in this case is developing).

For me, the kids get in bed by 8, and from 8-10 is time for me and the wife,
and from 10-12 is codin' time. Early morings before the kids wake up would be
a better fit for some people.

TLDR; Don't forget yourself when setting priorities.

------
fsloth
Some kids once beyond toddler age do not need constant attention. It helps if
they have siblings - they can play with each others. It's also ok to
occasionally zombify them with TV for a few hours if a parent _really_ needs
some personal concentration time.

It's about balancing what the kids need and what the parents need to sustain
mental health. Kids will happily take all the attention they get but will grow
fine of not _all_ time is spent on them.

No, there is not as much time. But when I didn't have kids I wasted that time
anyway trying to find the perfect vim colorscheme and whatnot non-value adding
procrastrinatory foibles.

------
ilovetux
The most important thing is organization, after that is time management and
finally typing speed.

Do everything you can to keep as close to 100% of your time focused on your
main role (automate and/or delegate all secondary tasks). Remember every
distraction costs maybe 10 minutes to get back "in the zone".

It's hard but definitely possible, have heart I have 3 kids under 5 and I
think I'm doing pretty good. One last piece of advice, financial stress sucks
(doubly so with children) so try to have some savings for when unexpected
expenses come up as these sorts of circumstances can affect your performance
directly.

------
jdauriemma
I started my development career when my wife was five months pregnant. She's
an OBGYN, which means I'm de facto responsible for most domestic
responsibilities. My son is at daycare or with grandma during business hours.
I mostly keep up by managing my time during business hours responsibly and
taking opportunities to read and do side projects when my wife is on call or
working late. Bedtimes and naptimes are my friend. It's working out very well
- I feel like I'm staying current and learning new skills regularly while
still being the primary caregiver for my child.

------
pknerd
>a family and some still find plenty of time to blog or write >books. How is
this possible? Are these people super-human? >How are you all doing or
managing if you have kids/family?

I only write blog. To answer your original question, kids are great stress
reliever. I work from home and often get irritated by their _unwanted_
shouting and screaming but then I don't work all the time. I do give them
time, eat with them and play with them. For blogging/side projects etc it does
not take much time, specially if you are organizing things around you.

------
Debugreality
If you haven't already streamline your learning skills usually developers with
kids are more a bit older and have a lot of practice learning.

Kids do require a lot of energy/time but it is often shared with other
family/friends who are parents so it helps to have a good network.

Get resourceful in finding time like early in the morning or on the train.

Don't be afraid to use your "working" hours, good companies understand the
value of skills development so your learning is really a win win for them and
you assuming you are planning to stay there in the immediate future.

------
ambroselittle
I have six kids. It's definitely harder because, let's face it, you have only
so many hours in the day. Basically, you just have to carve out times. So for
me, if I need to, I can do some work/study after putting them to bed after
dinner. But mostly I try to use Saturday afternoons--that tends to be an open
area on my calendar, unless we have something special planned. If it's
important, you make time for it.

It's not complicated, but it's also not black/white. You may do less, but that
doesn't mean none.

------
mti27
Green boxes? Github graph?! Well heck I guess since the corporate dweebs
weren't able to turn our craft into a commodity, we'll just have to do it for
them. Yes, with kids you won't have as much time to hack around at the end of
the day. But three generations from now everything you ever coded will be long
forgotten, so kids are the better investment. (Pop quiz hotshot, do you know
what your great-great grandfather did for a living?) On the practical matter
of the original question, early to bed, early to rise...

------
YCode
I have a two year old; basically my at home coding time begins when he goes to
bed/naps.

Beyond that it's the two of us playing and very little computer time.

You can still ponder the problems and consider solutions in between reading
books and playing cars. Sometimes it's a more effective method than staring at
the screen.

But don't expect to get much of anything done at first. That's okay.

You can always catch up on trends, but those first parenting experiences are a
once in a lifetime opportunity and the window of time when you are a superhero
to your child is fleeting.

------
csixty4
My kid turns one in a month. I'm just starting to get coding time back in my
life.

Usually it's after everybody goes to bed, which I known is a bargain with the
devil because I can't remember the last time I was allowed to sleep in on a
weekend & catch up on sleep.

The other thing that helps is the fact I work from home. So my wife encourages
me to get out of the apartment for a couple hours every day on the weekends.
So, I go to Starbucks and code or read for a bit.

Everything is different with the little guy around, but it's a trade-off I can
live with.

------
taf2
Kids can be a great motivator, and to me it sounds like you got advice from
people without kids... read up on cray computer...

Not saying this makes him a good father but legend says he would have the kids
remain quiet during family trips because he was designing the chips while
driving... it might have the story here
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray)

------
sebringj
I am more productive now than ever and I have 3 kids. I would attribute this
to breadth and depth of skill, always learning new things and of course,
working remotely as a consultant which gives me huge amounts of time and
energy that other car-bound people simply don't have AND the biggest one is I
have an amazing wife who stays at home with me and let's me focus on my work.
Maybe that is rare so maybe the guy had a point for the majority?

------
xrd
Also, I had to get clear on my arrogance on where I would work. I took a job
with eBay, and would not have considered it before. But, they are extremely
family friendly: three months paternity leave is incredible. Make sure you
aren't trading the Kafkaesque options package at a startup for a less
glamorous workplace and an opportunity to spend quality time with an even more
confusing, but ultimately rewarding, two year old.

------
RUG3Y
I have a six year old who is interested in programming, so we learn together.
We've been making projects in Scratch, scripting Minecraft with Python, and
I'm getting into some Java so we can work on some Minecraft mods. I'm getting
this for us to work on together as well:
[http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php](http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php)

------
padseeker
The company I work for pays for Safari Online. They also have mobile apps that
allow you to read content or even download videos for offline viewing. This
evening on my train ride home I watched a video on how to use webpack.

The best time for me to get extended learning is after my kids go to sleep. I
have a 10 and 8 year old, they're usually asleep by 9. It was harder with very
young kids. Now at this age its somewhat easier.

~~~
dronacharya
That's what I had to say, pretty much to a T! (My kids are 11 and 8 1/2, and
go to bed around 9 as well). I watched a video on bash scripting on the way to
work today. My daughter is into robotics and programming, so we do get to have
a lot of fun together. It was very hard to find the time to learn something
new when they were younger.

------
plehoux
For me, one word, sleep. I sleep a lot. It doesn't fit the narrative, parents
are supposed to be exhausted, right? When I'm tired I go to bed, whatever the
time. Kids do sleep a lot, just not when _YOU_ want.

It's not about quantity, it's about quality. When I'm not tired, my code is
better, my business decisions are better, my relationships are better, so yes,
I sleep a lot.

#3 is on his way, exciting, fulfilling time!

------
johanneskanybal
Your colleague could have been nicer and told you what things you'll gain
instead and how that will mainly increase your employability if that's what
keeps you up at night.

A few things that comes to mind is motivation, time management/prioritizing,
social aspect of having perhaps the most important thing in your life in
common with most other seniors, meaning.

these are not things to be afraid of but sure you'll have less time

------
LVB
Though I've gotten better about making due with shorter stretches of time, I
eventually realized how important it was for me to have a least _some_ in-
depth study time. My wife is the same. Our deal is that we take turns and each
get ~2 hours on the weekend to go away alone to a coffeeshop or wherever
for... whatever. It's nice, feels like an eternity, but ultimately isn't too
much time away.

------
kdazzle
I like to read a bit after dinner when my kid goes to bed. It's much nicer
than looking at a screen after I come home from looking at a screen. And I
like reading tech books better than blogs anyways - I find that a lot of stuff
online just regurgitates what classics like Clean Code are saying, but less
eloquently.

The only downside is that reading books doesn't help you learn new languages
or frameworks.

Screw the github graph.

------
sergiotapia
I have kids, I have open source code - you make time for things you're
passionate about. If your buddy doesn't have open source stuff it's all good,
but his hand-wavy "you don't have kids" argument is bull.

To keep up I:

\- Write open source projects for things I want to use. \- Use languages that
are out of my depth. \- Pluralsight \- Manning/PragProg books that interest
me.

------
lenniez
This is such a great question because I've been struggling with this too.

I'm a full-time hired CTO for a startup and I have a 1yr old girl, married and
I recently bought a house that also requires a bunch of time. 1 year ago I was
addicted to learning new things and hacking things together. I had a dozen
side projects and I was part of several start-ups, invested money, time and I
was shareholder in a few of those start-ups.

Sad truth was for me that I couldn't combine all of these after we got the
baby. I had to step down for some of the startups I was involved in. In the
beginning I tried to combine it, but since I only had 5 minutes, here, 10
minutes there, it was impossible to keep up with the pace that startups
require. I also couldn't plan meetings anymore with my cofounders, it was
actually annoying. The little time I had I wanted to spend on engineering, not
on meetings.

This has been very frustrating for me, but just like anyone else here in this
hacker news thread; Working / developing couldn't bring me any of the
happiness that being with my baby girl could.

Here are my random thoughts;

\- Skilling up is also part of my job. I would say that around 1/3rd of my
working hours it's all about reading & research. Of course, hacker news is
also part of that ;-) It should be perfectly possible to talk about this with
your superior and ask for more time to research or try new
technology/frameworks. Everyone benefits from this.

\- Commuting is part of my daily life and I use this time to either read up on
things (Instapaper) or listen to podcasts, like Software Engineering Daily.
Podcasts are great. I also listen to podcasts when I do boring tasks that
don't require much thinking, like mowing my lawn or removing snow from the
driveway.

\- Step down early form side projects when they don't bring you anything.

\- Learn to say no. No to sideprojects, friends with good ideas, bosses that
want overtime. No.

\- Watching less Netflix / movies / TV shows.

Last but not least, I was also a heavy gamer around 5 - 6 years ago. Stop
gaming before you get children, I regret all those hours I played games in
stead of hacking&learning. Uninstall those games, now. If I could talk to a
younger me before getting children; Work hard, don't be lazy, get things done
and I can't stress enough to stop gaming.

------
theuttick
I have a 4 yo son and a 9 month old. I am a stay at home dad and I just
launched a startup. My kids go to bed a8 and I work and learn from 8pm to
either 12 or 2am.

Yes it sucks. Life is a series of choices and I choose to loose sleep instead
of time with kids or work time. It took a while, but I learned javascript,
angular, AWS, heroku, and several other things. It just takes longer.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
> There won't be many green boxes in your account once you have a kid

Maybe your colleague meant it in a negative way, but it could be taken as a
positive statement too. You could take it as something like, "your kids will
teach you to focus in a way you never have before."

It seems plausible that constraints make for greater creativity, so long as
they aren't too constraining.

------
sontek
I just skill up before they wake up and after they go to sleep. It takes a
little more discipline but if you keep them on a schedule you can also keep
yourself on a schedule.

Our schedule:

School Drop Off: 8am Bed Time: 8:30pm

Which leaves plenty of time for reading and doing opensource. Not as much as a
I used to but enough to continue being at the top of my field without worrying
that the youngins are passing me.

------
billylo
Kids learn fast. Teach them what you want to learn. Before you know it, they
will be teaching you stuff you don't know.

48, son in university now.

------
pietromenna
I can only speak for myself. When my wife and daughter go to bed, I can stay 2
hours coding;reading or watching videos which improves my skill. The truth is
that when you have a newborn it is impossible, nut once they grow (more than 2
yo), it is completely doable. Of course, you will feel tired some days and
just watch a movie, but trying everyday helps.

------
jreuben1
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 :)

------
sigspec
I don't. :)

But really I utilize work downtime when I can (and when I'm not distracted by
HN or YouTube or Reddit, which is often).

It's a challenge but I would feel terrible isolating myself while the wife and
kids are doing family things. After the kids and wife go to bed then I have
plenty of time to do what I want whether that be research or leisure.

------
m82labs
I have four kids and I still find time to speak at conferences, write the
occasional blog post, and work on side projects. One thing for me is that
having kids has forced me to be better organized. So even though I can't spend
an entire Saturday working on a project anymore, I get a lot more done with
the time I have.

------
m23khan
I have a 2 hour commute to work (1 hr each way) and I am not allowed to Work
From Home -- this is a blessing in disguise.

Addition to this, since my Wife is from other end of the globe from where I
live -- I will send her and my 1 yr old for nice few months to visit her
parents and siblings where I can focus on bulking up on my skills :-)

------
joshuacc
I don't do much public-facing stuff, but anything that goes to increasing my
professional skills (technical or otherwise) happens during business hours.
Generally it's 20-30 minutes of personal development time per day. That's part
of what the company is paying me to do: become a better employee for them.

------
49531
The biggest thing for me was when I started working remotely. I found the
reason I was tired after work wasn't my work, but my hour long commute. Once I
stopped that I gained time and energy.

Now I can stop working when the kids get home from school and put in a couple
hours after they go to bed each night for extracurriculars.

------
msangi
I have a three months old baby. She took away all the time to write code
outside work but I feel like I'm still learning.

The trick is that when I feed her just before going to bed I always put on a
conference talk or a video lecture.

This saves me from getting bored and I also found that the background talking
makes her fall asleep more easily.

------
enibundo
I understand that most of you are very passionate about programming and the
fear of losing out some stuff is strong... but on the other hand, I strongly
believe being 100% THERE for your child while he grows up is a better
investment. You want to raise someone who won't lack his father/mother
presence..

------
Yaggo
I go to sleep at the same time or shortly after the kids, then wake up early
to have two hours of high quality time for my own projects. I was a night owl
before getting kids, then transformed into early bird. My thinking is much
clearer in the morning than in the evening, the early morning hours are the
best.

------
tmaly
The key thing to remember is that when you have kids, you can have exactly one
hobby. If keeping your github account green is your hobby, you can do it.

You just have to stay healthy, eat, exercise, and get up an hour or two before
everyone else.

I have been doing it for 4 years now, and I am still able to ship features on
my side project.

------
webmaven
This is quite an interesting discussion.

Has anyone here initially decided to not ever have kids (say, in their 20s)
and then much later changed their minds (say, in their 40s or 50s)?

Alternatively, has anyone here simply put off having kids for a few decades
and then had them?

How has that worked out for you, from both personal and career perspectives?

------
eb0la
I think the best way to skill up with (or without) kids is being in a place
with a lot of variance.

With Variance I mean a place where you work with different kinds of problems /
business / people and that will lead to work with different technologies.

This seems to work for me (I've got a 3-yr son) and keeps me updated.

------
angelofm
well... This is a tough one, my baby is 2 years old, he goes to bed at 9pm, at
roughly 9:15pm I am on a laptop learning new stuff (Elixir and Phoenix last
month), I have fun with new technology until 10:45pm, this gives me 1:30h
every day dedicated to learn.

Because I am human I skip 1 day a week to do whatever I want, at weekends I do
about 3h saturday and another 3h sunday of learning again when everyone is in
bed so I can concentrate better.

This gives me about 12h a week of studying and experimenting with new
technology.

The only way to keep up is to be organised and assign your priorities, make
sure your kid is at the top, whatever it takes he needs to be at the top.

As a consequence of all this I got to understand how time is important and
very scarce, I try to optimise every single free minute, this is a very hard
exercise but essential.

------
espeed
Learn timeless things -- like advanced mathematical concepts, data structures,
and algorithms -- rather than wasting time on frameworks and tech that's going
to be obsolete in a few years/months. Developing a deep understanding of data
science and AI would be time well spent.

------
hydandata
First year is brutal, especially if the baby does not want to breastfeed, but
afterwards it is sort of manageable, it is like running a side project. I had
major issues not only keeping up but doing normal work, but colleagues were
very understanding and helped out when necessary.

------
nurettin
Share duties with wife. She can stuff food into their mouths as they watch
cartoons while you recover from work and talk with wife, you can play with
them and put them to sleep while she recovers from all the morning chores.

Afterwards, 21:00-24:00 is plenty of time to work on projects.

------
keithnz
I'm currently sitting on the train, keeping up :) soon I will be home with my
kids, then they will go to bed, and I'll hack on something. Or skill up on
DOTA2..... either or :) tomorrow I'll be back on the train in the morning
skilling up.

------
evoltix
It's all about finding a routine and following it as closely as possible, and
adapting as needed. For me, it's at night when everyone is asleep.

Family is the most important. Cherish every moment. Reflect on those cherished
moments. Time is but a fleeting thing.

------
wenbert
We put our son to sleep at 8pm. After fully sleeping, I can Netflix 1 movie or
do work on my side-projects. On weekends can't get anything done. Too tired
from activities during the day.

Oh i create tickets for myself on bitbucket and work on those at night.

------
TheAndruu
The secret is to wake up very early before anyone else to get anything you
want done.

------
Cyph0n
I have nothing to add on this yet, but I'm getting married pretty soon, so I
just wanted to thank you for starting this thread and everyone else for
sharing their opinions. Some of the responses here are very insightful!

------
awjr
The simple thing I've found that works is to try and not watch TV and where
possible cycle/walk to work.

The exercise clears your head and avoiding the time sucking waste of space
that is TV, helps create the space to think and play.

------
kagaw
I have a 1 yr old child. I have a full-time job and managed to keep up with
new things. I managed to keep up with new things while at my day job which i
allocated 2hrs a day, it depends thu if i'm busy with my tasks.

------
bluejekyll
Nap time and bedtime. I actually found that my codingnon side projects went
_up_ after having kids, b/c I can't just go out and hang with friends now. I
have to stay home, but bedtime is my time :)

------
cwbrandsma
My younger kids go to bed at 8:00-8:30 pm. My older kids are often doing
school work, reading, or playing computer games then, and my wife is finishing
up house work.

So 8:00 to 9:00 (maybe 10:00) is my window.

------
agentgt
I just had my first son 3 months ago and I must say he is a delight.

I have felt a little guilty about my productivity but it is totally worth it.

My best advice is just to stop comparing yourself or your family to other
people.

------
cstuder
I've found a quiet hour hidden in the morning: From 05:00 to 06:00 (Until the
kids wake up...)

In the evenings, I'm usually just too exhausted from work & family to do any
more intellectual work.

------
jwatte
Don't waste time commuting. Don't waste time watching TV. Try to mindfully get
high quality out of the time you have. And make sure to communicate and take
turns with your partner!

------
asaaahbra94104
Dude basically you have to just give yourself your own 20 percent time. So if
you work a 60 hour week, take 12 hours to work on a large OSS project on your
own time preferably something new

------
patsplat
Pick your day job carefully and tend the garden that is your career.

------
known
The most important lesson I learned about motherhood? Be more selfish
[http://qz.com/606391/](http://qz.com/606391/)

------
evolve2k
No-one ever mentions their github account graph on their deathbed.

------
petewailes
Commuting time on the train is how I get things done. If you've got anything
more than half an hour to commute by train, that's 5 hours a week to spend
doing things.

------
synrst
People make this same dumb comment about getting married, dating, etc.

If you got married or had a kid and it ruined your life, it's your problem.
Don't project failures onto others.

------
z3t4
You prioritize between sleep and learning cool new things. And if you can
afford it, and your free time is worth something, hire people to do the
household work.

------
pjmlp
By having a job that provides the space for writing blogs, learning and open
career paths.

Life is too short to spend coding after work, without space for family and
friends.

------
5_minutes
I went working part time. Exactly for this reason: to have one full day a week
"me" time, which is often messing around with new tech.

------
alkonaut
I put my kids (4+6) to bed at 7. That gives me ample time every evening to
procrastinate my hobbies while playing computer games.

------
thafuzziest
I have a 3 year old and 7 year old. They are in bed by 9 pm. I can learn from
10 pm to 1 am then get up at 5 am for work.

------
m-j-fox
You need to get good at time management. Look into GTD and orgmode. You can
level up your emacs skills in the process.

------
somecallitblues
It's really hard for the first few years while the kids are very young but it
gets easier. I wouldn't worry.

------
hellofunk
Whoever wrote that is an ______. Fill in appropriate derogatory term here.

Having kids and being productive are not mutually exclusive.

------
new_hackers
Make time and have a super-human SO :-)

------
omouse
I don't have kids but the answer is: _slowly_ with bursts of focus and
concentration.

------
sitkack
Boarding School. All these people claiming that every moment with the child is
precious are full of it. They are just raising spoiled brats. Instead of an
etch-a-sketch, teach them Latex or Fig. See-and-Say, no, `say` command. If you
can get them on an ssh-tmux connection you can parent from anywhere when you
eventually split from your wife.

------
yakaas
first of all its hard, really hard. (at least for me)

and then when you find some time it comes at a cost.

waking up early is an option, works well for me. but the catch is you get
tired easily and then in long term it affects health.

my advise is to pick things very carefully, time is very limited.

------
ChristianMarks
I manage by not starting a family and by not having kids (to my knowledge).
Too expensive.

~~~
AmandaShebang
wow ty for your valuable feedback.

------
_pmf_
Dealing with kids increases your capability to deal with managers, so there's
that.

------
eli
One shouldn't feel obligated to work long hours just to keep up in the first
place

------
robot
Just do good work in the given work hours.

You should also have an hour or so after the kids sleep.

------
fiatjaf
The solution I see parents of all kinds using is to dump your kid into a
school.

~~~
thatwebdude
"dump" is such a wrong word. But okay, I'll bite.

When my first child was born, I had the "pleasure" of staying home with her
most of the day, while I got to learn programming.

Fast forward a few years and boom! Mom and I have totally immersive careers
requiring 8+ hours a day from us. (Every weekday, even! Sometimes more!).

In fact, mom is just as much of the breadwinner as I am (more even), so who's
gonna watch the kids? We had kids in our twenties, our parents had kids in
their twenties (read: not retired babysitters), everyone has their own thing
going on. And they all make it work.

We make it work by sending our kids to the most amazing school/daycare system
I've ever seen. It's so professional you wouldn't believe it. Their teachers
are much better school teachers than we would be.

It's great because they get to learn how to socialize, their immune systems
get a proper boost before K-12, they learn new hobbies and advance in programs
I couldn't have dreamed of when I was kid. The intelligence level of my 4-year
old is quite astounding to me, and I have the entirety of her school to thank.

It's hardly dumping them there. But if it is, that's a really fucking
expensive dump.

~~~
fiatjaf
Well, if you cared enough to look for an experience you thought would be good
for your kids then you don't fit in what I was talking about.

I probably don't agree with you on everything, but you seen to care about what
your children are doing when they're not with you, what doesn't happen with
most parents I know.

~~~
thatwebdude
Couldn't get a read on the short reply, thanks for not bashing me!

------
franze
learn to multitask i.e.: computer books (like real paper books) and bathtub
with steaming hot water

also if you eliminate time wasters like TV, netflix, alcohol you have plenty
of time with your kids, for your kids and for code.

------
kk_cz
with two kids aged 3 and 5 I have about 9 hours of "me" time everyday
(unfortunately this includes time for sleep). The choice is yours - the less
you sleep, the more you can play around with code.

------
bartvk
One of the more obvious choices, in my opinion, is to have only one child.

------
VLM
Well, time for the politically incorrect, yet reality based, "dad pill".

First of all most people social status signalling are liars and the few who
aren't are very unusual from unusual situations. There aren't that many book
authors or operating system kernel authors. So debating the engineering
operations of lightning strikes and lotto wins is kinda pointless nonsense.
What if my project takes over the world? Well it won't now stop daydreaming
and work on real issues that are important. As for the liars you just have to
read the books they talk about a little more than they do, which might mean as
little as a light skim or getting to page 2 instead of giving up on page 1, or
experiment with the new flash in the pan software for an hour instead of their
five minutes. You'll still be ahead of 90% of the population.

Secondly give up on careers, ignore upward mobility, if you're not happy where
you are today, daydreaming about being one of the very few who make it to the
top of the pyramid is a bad life strategy dooming you to unhappiness in later
life. Anyone over 30 is probably working with tools in a field that didn't
exist when they were 20 and if they claim they got their via conscious effort
they're just liars and status signalling see #1 above. If they're over 40
ageism is about to remove almost all of them from the field so since you're
going to get kicked out anyway may as well have fun having kids along the way,
because you aren't going to "win" and thats OK. The difference between a guy
unemployed by ageism at 45 without kids and a guy unemployed at 45 by ageism
with kids is the unemployed guy with kids is had more fun, had a better life.
Merely not having kids doesn't mean the "agism fairy" will not wave her wand
on you ending your career. Sometimes the rate of change is crazy, I spent my
early 30s in a field that didn't exist when I was in school. If you think you
can plan that and apply a timeline for a career against it, you're merely
lying to yourself or others. Nothing wrong with having general goals, but
specific tasks of "XYZ at 40" is for losers. Even worse there's survivorship
bias where random lotto winners think they have ESP but actually just won the
lotto and thinking they have ESP leads to very bad life decisions.

Thirdly a super politically incorrect "dad pill" is depending on demographics
about half the kids out there are growing up with no dad, so having you around
and out of jail and providing and guiding and playing with them occasionally
immediately puts the kids in the upper half or even upper quarter of society
even if you do the worst bad job as dad in the country, which you probably
will not sink to. Actually doing anything with the kids already puts you in
elite territory. Another way to phrase it is there's a lot of political
indoctrination that kids only need 1.00 parents that being the mom of course,
so if you're feeling bummed about taking time for yourself or career you're
still providing 1.75 worth of parents which is 0.75 more than society claims
is necessary or even ideal. Just like the kid who gets a Ferrari for his
birthday from dad doesn't necessarily turn out better in life than the kid who
got a Ford from dad, when you're far enough into the corner of the bell curve
of doing anything at all, the specific ordering and timeclock measurements
don't affect rank as much as paying attention and being there and not being a
dirtbag and actually parenting the kids as opposed to being their big person
friend roommate and "skills" in general.

Fourthly related to "no one is gonna make it to the top of the pyramid" just
learn at work like everyone else does. Well, actually some people don't even
learn at work. If you're not a quick learner, its important to learn how to
learn first. You're not really competing against people who claim to have
infinite time to learn because they have no kids, you're competing against
people who never learned in college or refuse to learn post college. You're
gonna do fine.

Fifth relating to liars telling lies, decades ago when I was a young single
guy it sounds very self serving to express lies about how all I ever did was
work on technology because I had no kids, but mostly I drank and watched
sports and chased girls and had sex and breakups and interpersonal drama and
listened to music and watched TV. Well the dad pill is you might want to think
about growing up, and when you cut all that waste of time junk out that
doesn't really matter in the long run anyway or you've outgrown binge drinking
or you got a wife so dating is probably over for awhile, even when you add
back in "dad duties" you still have plenty of free time because you're not
being a drunk bastard every weekend night, or if you're doing that instead of
parenting, you suck so fix that at which point you'll have plenty of free time
again. So grow up, man up, dad up, whatever and put down the beer bottle or
switch off the TV, in the long run parenting the kids is going to be most
important, then all this "work for free for the boss at home" stuff a distant
second, and you'll still have some time to goof off anyway.

Believe it or not when farmhands worked the fields sunup to sundown or dads
worked in factories six twelves a week or when dads fought in war deployments
for years at a time, they still fathered their kids reasonable better than the
current crop of kids. You got it easy now. Just put some effort into it and
you'll be fine. So thats the "dad pill". Not as cool as the red pill or blue
pill but more masculine and useful in the real world.

------
crispytx
I have a one year old, and he doesn't let me program.

------
master_yoda_1
I come to office early (6:30 to 7) and leave early.

------
verytrivial
Any female developers on this thread?

------
eranation
I (try to) teach them how to code...

------
moron4hire
If, in having a kid, you _don 't_ suddenly come to a few realizations on what
is truly important to you and in all the ways you've been wasting time, then
either you're an ubermensch of productivity or you may have some unresolved
emotional issues and I would highly encourage seeking counseling.

I'm sorry, that's not meant as a dismissal. I mean it quite literally. There
have been three things in my life that have improved it immensely: therapy,
getting married, and having a kid. Everything else is window dressing.

I needed therapy to learn how to evaluate myself. I needed to get married to
start feeling comfortable with myself. And I needed to have a kid to realize
my low six-figure web and database consulting business was never going to have
a meaningful impact on the world and I needed to focus on my VR project.

I've learned that commenting on Reddit does not make me happy. Playing video
games does not make me happy. Watching TV and reading books doesn't make me
happy. They are occasionally enjoyable, but to make these things a regular
part of my life is just a holding pattern, a low-grade dopamine hit that just
maintains the current state. What makes me actually, really happy, actually
making progress towards not feeling depressed, not feeling anxious, is
spending time with my wife and son and making progress on my passion project.

And I say "making progress" specifically, rather than "working on". Going
through therapy gave me a new set of skills on being more objective towards
evaluating my own life, admitting to myself when things are sunk costs, not
going anywhere, etc. I come from a long line of "creative procrastinators". We
are the sort of people who put off filing taxes at the end of the year by
cleaning the house. It stems out of fear of the unknown, but the point is that
we are very good at slipping into the terrible habit of being active instead
of productive. I've had many a project that I thought was "the one" that was
going to be my startup, and I'd inevitably slip into micro focusing on
technical details rather than keeping an eye on the goal and focusing on doing
those things that make progress towards them.

I got a little lucky in that I was able to find a great, small team of people
to make that work my day job. It's "luck" in the sense that I had to be in the
right places at the right time to draw their attention to eventually negotiate
a partnership. But it wasn't "if you build it, they will come". That movie is
about a literal miracle. I had to stop dicking around on code 100% of my time
and start focusing more time on marketing myself.

Quit hanging out in bars. Quit hanging out with the "friends" you only sort of
like, but you secretly suspect are only in your life because they are in your
extended circle. Quit spending all morning on HN, Twitter, Facebook. Be honest
with yourself. You already know what is keeping you from progressing. You just
have to stop relying on emotional crutches so you can discard them and focus
on what is important.

------
dvdhnt
TL;DR - I'm successful in my dev job and family life because I have learned to
write everything down, set parameters for the things I do, and have surrounded
myself with positive people who care about me and my family. This combination
of factors results in spare-time to learn new skills, exercise old ones, and
my company allows me to experiment.

\-- The Whole Story --

First, a little about my current, professional role; I'm one of 3 backend/web
developers and the primary dev for our flagship i/e enterprise offering. I
don't deal with architecture or design unless I request to do so. I am
responsible for writing the majority of our tests, choosing and implementing
the tools we test with, and participate fully in code-review, QA, and bug
reporting/fixing. Like many devs, I attend weekly meet-ups, code side-
projects, and do my best to stay abreast of developments in, well,
development.

Personally, I have 2 children, 1 of pre-school age and the other in an early
elementary school grade. I'm able to -

* help my oldest daughter with homework * attend school functions * pick them up from daycare often * do activities, like dress-up, painting, and building forts * each night: give them baths, read them bedtime stories, and sing them lullabies

Our sitter, a family friend, recently asked me "how do you do it?" and
followed up with "I'd be exhausted!" Her question caught me off guard. I don't
necessarily think I'm doing anything special. In fact, I often find myself
worried that I'm not doing well enough. Luckily, there are people like her in
my life who remind me that I, and my wife, do a pretty damn good job.

\-- How is this possible? --

Well, for one, it's because of people like her; the people in my family's
lives who care about us. Another contributing factor is the company I work
for, an organization that actually cares about me. Our team is willing to pick
up the slack when a member needs help. Being based in Chattanooga makes a
difference, too, and although commute times can reach ~45 mins, it's a fairly
low ceiling, especially when compared to SV commute times. Lastly, if you work
on a team, and that team doesn't give you the opportunity to grow your own
skill-set within your professional-role, then that team is failing you.
There's a reason that professional athletes are given access to training
facilities and musicians are allotted time for rehearsal; you need to exercise
your dev muscles. If it weren't for my team sometimes giving me the
opportunity to explore rabbit holes, and knowing when to pull me out, I
wouldn't be half the dev I am today.

PS - yes, when you first become a parent, your
education/productivity/effectiveness takes a hit; that's just how it is.
Otherwise, you'd be leaving your significant other/partner to do it all, and
I've seen how that can affect a relationship. It's important to acknowledge
this drop-off, plan for it, and make up at least a portion of that lost ground
over time.

Good luck!

------
w_t_payne
With difficulty.

------
workingdad
I'm 25 and a father of a 5 yr old and a 8 month old. It can be tough - your
relationship with your children is just like any relationship: you have to put
time and effort in and you have to remember to balance what's best for you as
well. For a long time I didn't take care of myself and swung too far the
opposite direction - I sacrificed my performance at work, my friendships, and
my hobbies until one night of drunken craziness where I put my relationship
with my wife and children in the backseat for a night. I realized I had been
neglecting what makes me, me and at the first chance to let loose I took it
too far. I've since learned (and am still learning) a better balance. Some
things I've learned that are invaluable in keeping that balance are:

\- A work relationship that supports your personal growth and family. I am
extremely lucky to have a job that actively encourages me to take time to
learn and skill up while on the clock and also engages me in planning my long
term career growth with them. They also really care about my family and make
sure I have the ability to take care of them with things like good insurance
and the ability to leave with a short notice for things like sick kids or
other personal emergencies. I know not everyone has that opportunity, but if
you do, think twice before skipping over it.

\- A solid support network. I wouldn't be able to function without my wife's
and my parents. Got one sick kid but the other still needs to go to school? My
parents come in clutch every time. Again, we're very fortunate to have them
but we've taken it for granted in the past when looking to move cities and
being near a strong support network is always a positive with kids.

\- Friends/Hobbies. I haven't quite figured out a good balance with this one
myself. For a long time I never made time to hang out with friends or just do
something I liked because I felt like I couldn't afford that luxury. If I get
home by 5, that only gives me a couple of hours with my boys before bedtime.
The time after that I want to spend with my wife. If I go out with friends,
I'm missing that small window of time to be with them. But as I mentioned
earlier, that's not totally healthy because if you keep that up too long then
when the time comes to let loose, it happens in a big way. For now, there's a
small bar/restaurant between work and home that I've taken to knock off an
hour early every few weeks and spend a couple hours with friends there. It's
on the way home, so the commute doesn't cut in to how much time I get to
spend, and I still make it home only a little later than normal. My next step
is probably to start going in to work earlier so I have a little more free
time in the evenings for something I miss dearly: reading for pleasure.

I envy those who manage to find a good balance and routine, but it's just a
work in progress for us all. If/when you become a parent, you'll have to find
what works best for you.

------
jstewartmobile
One of the many great things about children, if you're not a total heartless
bastard of course, is that having them really sharpens your mind as to what's
important and what's not.

Most of these things the HN crowd obsesses over are shit, and the things that
replace those things will also be shit, and the thing you make with those
things--even if it makes you fabulously wealthy--will also be shit, and if you
don't believe me, take Ryan Dahl's word for it:
[https://gist.github.com/cookrn/4015437](https://gist.github.com/cookrn/4015437)

So rather than worry about sliding further away from the apex of our shit
pyramid, ease up and enjoy the ride. You may even come up with something of
actual value to society along the way.

~~~
caseysoftware
This.

PG wrote a post a while back about how kids really only have the magic of
Christmas a handful of times (ages 3-11?) and then it's gone.

When you're making choices, realize there will always be another framework,
another conference, another chance to try out that new tool but your kid is
constantly changing, learning, and is fundamentally different today, tomorrow,
and a week from now, especially when they're young. I have a 2yo and a 5mo and
they get first dibs on my time. After they go to bed, I work until whatever
time.. but they're back up by 8am so I take it easy.

Btw, it's _fun_ opening a conference call with "Just so you know, my son is
joining us for this call. He's not NDA'd but he's 2 years old, doesn't write
yet and has a very limited vocabulary. Are you okay with that?"

And then if it's internal-only, I turn on video for a minute so he can wave at
everyone. ;)

~~~
bshimmin
OK, I'm completely baffled by this. Am I the only one who thinks taking your
young children on a conference call is somewhere between totally
unprofessional and, well, very annoying? I get that your children are your
priority - but surely they shouldn't be the priority of everyone else on that
call? Is the work at hand not the priority?

My 3 year old makes a lot of noise and is quite prone to tantrums. Some of my
clients are also quite prone to tantrums. Combining the two seems like a
recipe for disaster!

~~~
caseysoftware
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 that, I'd rather find a new job than raise f-d up boys that
don't feel loved._

~~~
simonswords82
Your boys will feel fucked up and unloved because you don't invite them on to
your teleconferences?

~~~
webmaven
No, it's because suddenly their parent is ignoring them for no reason they can
understand.

------
nullundefined
First and foremost, screw the green boxes on GitHub. They don't mean shit.

Second of all, there are many ways to "skill up" and that doesn't always mean
creating open source side projects or experimenting with the newest fad.

After becoming a father I found I certainly had a lot less time but it forced
me to cut out everything that didn't matter. That included watching tech
talks, working on a bunch of small projects, getting my "commit a day" on
GitHub, reading a large number of books, and so on.

Instead, I decided what I needed and wanted was financial freedom and I wanted
to achieve that by building my own software business(es).

I stopped measuring myself by silly graphs or what others in the industry may
or may not think of me. I stopped second guessing myself and I stopped
worrying about my "marketability" or "maintaining skills" for hireability's
sake.

Why worry about skills, marketable or keeping up with the fads if I work for
myself? As long as I'm true to myself and I can build kickass products, I
don't care about anything else.

Since then, I've built my own successful business and I am currently working
on the second (second baby and second business!).

------
marknadal
I have a 16 month old, do engineering (performance testing, load testing,
distributed systems testing, database optimizations, and more for
[https://github.com/amark/gun](https://github.com/amark/gun) ), but also am
the CEO. This means I correspond with investors, do fund raising (which is
another full time job), and of course have to be around for sales and
everything else.

What is the magic sauce to doing it all?

Family.

I owe everything to my supportive wife, who herself just successfully defended
her PhD last week and published a paper with one of the most prolific
scientists in psychology (and science in general, Baumeister has over 120,000
citations - more than Hawking!).

When you make sure you have a healthy relationship, by edifying each other and
promoting each other's ideals/dreams, life becomes a flourishing whirlwind of
excitement - psychologists call this "eudaimonia".

Care for, and love what is right, true, noble, and worthwhile. All else will
fade away, and then you'll have time for what matters. And never, ever, give
up.

------
zoner
I have now 3 kids (1, 2, 6 years old). When the 3rd was born I realised I have
to get up at 6 to be able to go to the gym as my wife can't walk the dog in
the morning any more with 2 kids wrapped around her (She's a baby wearer). So
I get up at 6 every day.

Things change and it's very grateful just looking at them playing.

I do have fun time programming on hobby projects, but less. I still have time
for paragliding, but not as much as I would. I made a rocking pram using
Japanese woodcarving tools. That's a new hobby :) I do learn new things at
work as I advance in my career, it's very important to keep up, I don't have
any choice right now.

------
nogenerix
How dedicated are you to becoming a 10xer? You don't have to sacrifice your
relationship with your kids to level up your skills – you need to cut out the
distractions that are holding you back.

~~~
fatherofone
Not worrying about Nxer but careful not to become a furniture in the team and
certainly don't want to come to work only for next paycheck !

------
bbcbasic
I 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.

------
gaius
This whole question makes no sense. How do doctors, lawyers, accountants and
every other profession do it? Why are programmers different?

------
grey-sunshine
I'm 21 and I'm wondering if I have kids, if they will like me? Will I pretend
to play with them? Am I capable of raising kids?

------
Pica_soO
They want to develop too.. so to the git-mobile, download some game source
code, modify everything to rocketjumps and racecars.

------
majkinetor
If you have more then 2 kids, its either your life is over as you know it or
you suck as a parent (ready to get minuses here from supper moms and dads).

With 1 or 2 kids there is life. Less life then before when talking about work,
or you suck as a parent.

The thing is, you can't devote all your time to kids. Too much attention and
they become unable to do anything on their own, they will require your
presence all the time. Too little with kids and you suck as a parent and get
to miss single time event, enjoying the time with your kids while they are the
appropriate age and you are still their hero.

So it turns to be a balance, IMO - some days or weeks you will get 0 personal
time for development and some days you will get planty. Count a time with the
spouse too. Bad relation on this level quickly turns out to be the worst
decision for entire family.

Now, some other skills will be useful here: triage, organizational skills,
medicine (to keep yourself helthy as much as possible and in good shape)
etc...

