
Ask HN: Is it important your partner/spouse be interested in your tech career? - jastingo
I&#x27;ve been working in the tech startup scene for the past few years and have come to love the work and the community.  I&#x27;m actively engaged at work and enjoy working on side projects and doing reading&#x2F;research with my free time.  It&#x27;s come to be a hobby for me and the lines between work and play are becoming less easy to distinguish.  I&#x27;m not troubled by this, but it has affected some of my personal relationships - some for the better, some for the worse.  Most notably, for the worse with my significant other who is not at all interested in the tech scene.<p>I&#x27;m curious about how common this is in the HN community and how others may be coping with this situation.  On the one hand, it would be nice to be able to have at least casual conversations about what I&#x27;m working on, why I find it interesting, why it might matter to someone not directly involved with the technology, etc.  On the other, I can see the merit in completely disengaging from the tech mindset and engaging on a completely different level while at home with family.
======
sidlls
My wife couldn't have more different academic and work interests than me, and
I think that's great. It provides trivial conversation starters for both of us
and makes us both more well rounded. I specifically sought dates with women
who had interests distinct from my own for this reason.

Having someone around with a disinterest in it helps me view my own
relationship with the community in a less biased way.

Consequently over the last year or two I've come to associate "the tech
mindset" with increasingly negative terms. I have come to think our community
is often not a high quality one. It's often judgemental, insular, and
unjustifiably arrogant beyond even the worst I saw in academia. I wouldn't
have recognized some of these things if I were in an echo chamber that was
simply reinforced by my SO.

------
ytNumbers
It's perfectly fine that your SO is a non-tech person. It might even be a good
thing. If you can't explain in layman's terms why your side project is so
fantastic, then you might realize it's just not so wonderful.

------
dziendobry
Looking forward to this discussion. Will contribute this afternoon.

