

Family or Career - Zero Sum Game? - tbrooks
http://ben.casnocha.com/2010/03/do-you-want-a-family-or-a-calling.html

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babar
Steve Blank had a good post about this, if you want some perspective from
someone who has actually dealt with these issues:

[http://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an-
entrepreneur...](http://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an-
entrepreneur/)

~~~
greyman
I use the similar approach, with the main principle being that the family must
not be neglected no matter what.

As my daughter slowly grows, I see clearly that a neglect of not spending
enough time with her for a longer time can't actually be compensated later on,
and that could only create regrets when I'll get older.

My experience have been so far that family/career can be balanced, since it is
always possible to squeeze out more time for work by getting up sooner, stay
awake longer or give up some personal leisures.

~~~
arethuza
We currently live somewhere where my work is a 20 minute walk away, my wife's
work is 15 minutes walk away and our son's school is 10 minutes walk away.

That has made a _huge_ difference to what we can both get done in a day - no
need for long commutes (previous role had a commute of 2.5 hours a day) or
school drop off and pick ups.

~~~
davidw
Wow, that's really, really cool. How'd you swing that?

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arethuza
The main factor is probably being in central Edinburgh - which has a
combination of nice homes, offices and good schools in a fairly compact area.

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wallflower
Work on your family as hard as you do your career:

"A truly rich man is someone whose children runs into their arms even when
they're empty"

"My daughter one time said... We were leaving church, like a church party. We
were driving home, in the car. And she didn't want to go home. She was like 3
or 4 at the time. I don't want to go to Mommy's house. I don't want go to
Mia's house.

OK, we'll go to Daddy's house. OK.

We pulled into our house and she started freaking out crying. Why? She thought
my house was the office.

And that's when I realized I needed to start pulling back.

To step it up, be a baller at home"

\- Josh James, founder of Omniture

From video originally posted by adammichaelc (I highly recommend the entire
1-hr video for inspiration and a kick-in-the-seat-of-your-pants)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1164815>

~~~
pcestrada
Thanks for posting that link. As someone with a 1 year old and aspirations of
having my own software business, the video provides tremendous inspiration and
food for thought.

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dekiba
I really liked the Steve Blank post. As for my personal experience, Skype and
Google Apps turn this old paradigm around. I am launching my first business
right now, and last week my first son was born. As I work 90% from home, the
60 hours weeks don't interfere with my family time at all.

~~~
benwerd
This. The technology we have at the moment actually assists a great work-life
balance. If you're spending fourteen hours a day working at the exclusion of
everything else, you're simply doing it wrong. That's the long and the short
of it.

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xiaoma
It was amusing to see a book with a picture of Ben Franklin being advertised
on that page. It's hard to think of a stronger anecdotal rebuttal of the blog
entry's argument.

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strebler
Wow, all of the sudden I feel very grateful: I'm a few years into running my
first startup and I hired my wife (who has a PhD in my startup's field) as the
3rd employee.

Felt risky at the time, but it has definitely made life easier working those
12+ hour days together.

Now just gotta have some kids and hire them too..."Finish your code or no
desert for you!"

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jacoblyles
I used to work for a guy who was a family man, good at his (demanding) job,
and ran triathlons. This is doubly impressive, as I see many fat programmers
who might be successful in their families and careers but are neglecting their
health. As far as I could tell, his method was:

1)Be very focused while on the job and have mounds of energy.

2)Be very smart.

3)Be very clear about your goals and what you want from life.

4)Do not care about appearances. He would regularly come in and leave at odd
hours. But his superiors didn't care because he got good results.

5)Be insanely likeable. Maybe his superiors or his clients would have grumbled
about his hours if they didn't think he was a swell guy. Note: being good at
your job and likeable is a killer combination for being able to bend the rules
and get away with it. Either quality alone is probably not enough.

6)Pick reliable underlings and delegate. This is related to point (5).
Everybody wanted to work for him, you couldn't know the guy and NOT want to
work for him, so he was able to choose competent people for his team.

I don't know that I could be like my old boss. Right now, I can barely keep
grad school and my health together. But I have an example to emulate.

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duck
_A calling is an activity you find so compelling that you wind up organizing
your entire self around it -- often to the detriment of your life outside of
it._

From this definition I would say that a family is a calling (and IMHO the most
rewarding one). I've seen too many exceptions to believe that you can't do
both.

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baguasquirrel
I always wondered whether part of it (at least in this day and age) was that
it's disadvantageous for the spouse to have a hard charging partner. If the
partner gets ahead, then they could get a better spouse.

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rogermugs
it doesn't have to be a choice.. but for most startup oriented people it will
probably become one. also probably unintentionally. they end up ignoring their
kids etc...

i love my job and even though it gives me a lot of freedom to spend time with
my family i still sometimes get so caught up i have to remind myself to focus
on the family.

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gizmo
Family + Career = 0? Of course it isn't. If it were, success would be an
automatic by-product of your family's misery.

What a silly, silly, statement.

~~~
sokoloff
Zero sum doesn't mean that the two terms literally sum to zero, just that one
trades off directly against the other.

Family + Career = K

would be the algebraic expression of it.

