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Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?
159 points by johngorse on May 4, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 130 comments
I have a full time job as full stack developer, wife and 2 kids. I commute every day 1 hour in each direction. On a work day I woke up at 5:30 am, wash, dress and jump in a car at 6:00 am, so that I can be at work at 7:00 am. I usually go home at 3:00 pm and if there is no traffic jam I am at home at 4:00 pm. I eat something, change clothes, clock says 5 pm and I try to spend some quality time with my wife and kids. Kids go to bed at 8 pm and at 9 pm I am exhausted as hell, and I fell to bed. And this repeats every work week.

On weekends I barely have time for my side projects (one is familyokjobs.com, which I created over several weekends when wife and kids were sleeping), because there is always something to do around the house. What I'm trying to say: where do you take time for your side projects or studying new technologies?



As your kids get older, and especially when they enter school, a large part of the evening will be spent by them doing homework. Their weekends will be spent more with friends and doing activities (organized sports, etc). You'll have more time to yourself.

In the meantime, enjoy your family time because your kids won't always want to spend all their free time with you (they'll have friends and hobbies to compete with you).

Make sure to exercise. So many on HN experience health problems that originate from inadequate exercise. 30 minutes per day should be sufficient.

8 1/2 hours of sleep per night seems to be an hour longer than what I would expect would be necessary, but if you're getting woken up by a baby then that is good time budgeting.


Note that 30 minutes/day is a much bigger commitment for a parent of young kids than other people. I've run the numbers in posts on here before, but the TL;DR is that you've got ~28 hrs of kid-free (and non-work/commute) time a week without cutting into sleep, but before taking out unavoidable activities (prepping for the next day, cleaning, spouse time) that's likely to eat at least half of it. So 30min/day is like 25% of your kinda-halfway-free time if you're sleeping 8hrs, unless you get creative and multi-task with it somehow—maybe you go running with friends so you get some face-time with them while exercising, for instance, though not everyone has that particular option for various reasons. And of course you can always take it out of kid-time, say by "working" 30 minutes longer but taking a workout break during the day.

There's a reason parents tend to get fatter, aside from just aging. :-/


A bigger commitment than driving 2 hours? I definitely don't know the difficulty of managing time while having young children, but it's easier to justify cutting down on commute time than cutting down on exercise time.

Maybe consider talking with your boss about working from home two/three times a week, that commute time could then be a break in the middle of the day to work out, and a little extra time at the end of the day to be with your kids.


Absolutely, this is true. I'd say your 28 hour estimate is high by a factor of 3x at least. But without exercise, the risk of developing health problems that destroy all that kid-free time is higher.

Getting a back injury from lack of core strength or losing your energy due to obesity harms your entire life.

I'm suggesting regular exercise as a cautionary piece of advice.


Agree. Have a job, kid, and a need to eat, relax at least for an hour in the evening, and sleep. 30 mins exercise a day (which incl. prep and travel to place of exercise could easily turn to an hour) seems as luxurious to me as having a private chauffeur.


Your schedule sounds more like mine. 28 hours of leisure per week? That's unreal!


Having kids taught me how to use every spare minute I have. I'm a single parent with 2 kids, so I have no back up to take care of them if I am busy with something else. Half of my free time is spent with my kids, so I have to make everything else count. My process looks a little chaotic, but I carefully plan out what I'm going to do, and when I need to do it by. My entire day is on a mental schedule. Unless I deliberately want to, I waste very little in "screwing around." Everything is mentally prioritized and evaluated.

Having kids emphasized what I already learned in the food industry, don't do silly extraneous tasks ever, and do things as fast as possible without compromising what I do. I rarely wait and do one thing at a time when I'm trying to get stuff done. For example, I'm normally cooking one meal and prepping the kids lunch at the same time.

Unless I absolutely need a break, I don't watch T.V. idly. It maybe in the background, but I'm normally only half paying attention. I turn on CC so I can read the text, and half listen. Watch videos to learn something? You can read (I've heard 4 times) faster than watching a video, so I almost always take that route. The one thing I don't do is listen to podcasts in the car. That is reserved for NPR to catch up on world news.

Most of the time when people want to meet dealing with business, I demand an agenda, then I decide if it's worth it. I've been known to be ruthless at work with this. I focus my life around things like this.


Yes, it teaches you to manage your precious time to the second, but it also teaches you how to effectively get things done when you only have sparse 15-30 minute chunks rather than long stretches of time to concentrate. It used to take me 30 minutes just to "get in the zone." Keep that up and you'll never get anything done as a parent. You need to be able to snap yourself into the zone in 30 seconds, get something accomplished, and then go deal with throw-up.

Your life becomes interrupt-driven rather than batch processes. Even if you have the same quantity of time (you won't), you need to live differently to handle it.


And applying parallel processes in your life when possibly also really helps. Especially in the morning.

Explaining the concept to my 4-year-old daughter was fun, and is trusted enough to execute these processes in a timely manner (without killing someone).


I still struggle with this. Anything for me that needs creativity or critical thinking (programming and writing mostly) really suffers with the interruptions.


Steven King wrote something that really made me focus on changing this. He essentially said that the difference between an amateur and a professional writer is that the professional write even when not in the mood. That made me think a lot about how I write code etc. and how I can use my free time even when I don't want to when I have to absolutely get something done.


I really like the idea of demanding a schedule and being ruthless about the worth of the meeting.


Watching videos at 1.5x or 2x helps.


My partner and I pretend we're divorced.

We noticed before we had our first that our friends who were divorced with kids actually got out once in a while, because they shared custody. So we have what amounts to an oncall schedule - certain days I'm 100% in charge of kiddo, certain days he is. There's some exceptions for commute stuff - daycare is closer to my work- but this means you sleep in on your weekend day off, and you can schedule nights to game and hang out with friends, etc.

Most of the time we aren't out; kiddo is fun. But the difference between hanging out with a kid and being in charge of them getting their needs met is pretty significant.

Re: commute, I'm hauling the kiddo in with me on my bicycle, dropping her off at daycare, and heading to my work. It's exercise and commute together and I love it. It's about 40 minutes one way, so I have to be careful about not over training, but it's awesome otherwise.

Edit: We also do side projects on our off nights. And we pay people to clean/do the yard work, which also does a lot for free time.


I've looked longingly at divorced folks myself, with every other week off.


More expenses though.


Well, divorced roommates ;)


Same boat. Here's me:

  1. My side project is my life.  I don't use the computer at all outside of work. I play with the kids, do stuff around the house, spend time with my wife. 
  2. I moved to being remote full time after killing myself commuting in SoCal.  My enjoyment of life has increased tremendously. 
  3. Like others have said, I don't waste any time.  I read Twitter/HN when I'm taking a 15 break in the morning and in the afternoon, but otherwise I work when at work. 
  4. I pick up new technologies while at work.  Part of why we are paid so much is we have to stay on top of what is the latest and greatest best practices.  This is like Doctors reading medical journals for their particular area of practice.
Overall, you don't get to do your kids over again. If you miss something it is gone. There is no undo/redo cycle. Everything else for me is secondary.


This is my story basically for many years. I've found having side project is even tougher as a mom than a dad (SO has been better at carving time for himself than me).

What I've found works is to be consistently working on same side project over time, dedicate some me-time and set small goals. Instead of trying too many new things, stick to same side project for months at a time. Also "book" a few hours every 2-3 weeks for myself and go work at a Starbucks instead of staying home. Finally set small achievable goals; what I would want to do in 1 day, spread that over a month.


Full time working with two young kids aged nine months and three years. I'm lucky my commute is a fifteen minute walk. Most days I wake up between 6-7 depending on the youngest. Our kindergarten is right next door so I drop the eldest there on the way to work. Usually work 0820-1620. Pick up the eldest on the way home. Then cook or watch the kids whilst my partner cooks. Hopefully both kids are in bed and asleep by 2030-2100. Spend an hour chilling with my partner then bed.

I've only really managed side projects during my paternity leave whilst the baby was sleeping or during a period of gardening leave. That's more than prior to kids as I spent most of my free time climbing, skiing and going out. We also rebuilt our house last winter and finished the interior off over the past year. This spring/summer my 'side project' is a lot of manual labour sorting out our garden.

I've always learnt new stuff at work and have been lucky enough to get work that has been pretty new and different each time which obviously helps a lot.


I'm like you - full time job, wife (who also works full time), 2 kids under age of 6. I too am tired some nights but some things have changed (for the better):

1. Changed jobs to a balanced work/life job. 2. No longer a developer, but still in IT. 3. 12 minute walking commute (no buses, cars, or bikes) 4. Moved downtown - smaller house than most people, but as noted in #3, walking commute to pretty much everything. 5. My side projects are my kids, as they are very young and are not independent by any means. I've dabbled in tiny project which was python to grab Scotch prices. But that was 6 hours. So yeah, not much time. Also, my "heritage" home is a bottomless pit of maintenance, but kind of fun as the kids get involved.

I would say either you work remote, or work from home 1 day a week if you really like your current job. Is it possible to find a closer job? You can gain at least 1.5 to 2 hours hours a day right there.


It is possible to find a closer job, but I kinda like it here where I am. I have an awesome team mates. I was thinking about remote job, but this is another story, because the lack of personal contact changes you I guess. While I love my wife and my two kids (son - 2 years old, daughter - 5 months) I guess it is healthy to change environment from time to time.


If you like your job, then see if you can work from home just 1 day a week. Start small.

I'm actually the "boss" where I work and I allow one of my employees to work wed and thurs from home.

So long as they do good work, I could care less where they are. So perhaps try telling your boss that you have thought of all the details like meetings, picking a quiet day when its not busy, or telling them that you will guarantee you will be reachable at all times. Sometimes managers that are old school need to be sold on how you will manage their worst fear - doing nothing at home.


Working remote even 2 days per week would buy you 4 hrs/wk. That's huge. We just moved closer to my work and the kid's school. The 20 min gained per day (in the morning) has been surprisingly valuable.


Also working on home in free time. It's great to involve the kids to learn about trades and "learning to live" and fix things. They're having fun and helping, and I'm still completing large projects on time.


You have to accept that your lifestyle is going to change. It really kicked in with me when my kids started school, the evenings became shorter and now with them as teenagers there is basically no time between them going to bed and me turning in.

I cut down my workload dramatically to spend more time with them and I don't regret it for a minute, they grow up so fast. I look at pictures only taken a couple of years ago and the change in them is vast.

You might look to commute less but working at home just didn't work for me, kids get home at 3:30pm and forget trying to concentrate after that. I can still find time in the mornings before they get up at 7:30 if I need it.

Enjoy the ride, for me (and we're all different) my family is more important than any side project.


Try to get rid of the commute. That's two wasted hours every day.

I have a similar 1hour commute but I only need to be in the office 1 day a week. On the other 4 days I get up at the same time (5:30-6:00am) and I work on my side projects until 8am when I bring my daughter to school and my home-work day starts.


> Try to get rid of the commute. That's two wasted hours every day.

I'm not OP, but I have a ~45 minute commute in New York city on the subway. It's one of the places where I can actually relax, read a book, listen to a podcast, and nobody needs me for anything.

(I'd loathe it if I had to drive, though.)


Cool, so your time isn't wasted, it is "me" time.

The original poster is not so lucky.


Yeah, one job entailed a 1hr ride on the commuter rail each way. I could read a book again!


I have ~2 hour commutes each way, and honestly, they are the calmest moments of my life. Sure, I'm white-knuckling it down I680 and I880 hoping I don't die on the freeway. But hey, I'm listening to my favorite music, planning my day mentally, prioritizing things, basically my commute time is my thinking time. It is the only time in my life where I'm not exposed to constant interruptions. Step into the office and my time is chunked into chaotic loosely structured 30-minute sprints. It's meetings, E-mails that need to be answered RIGHT FUCKING NOW, meetings, tracking people down to ask them to help with something, "pings" from people, more meetings. Then I get home and it's do this, run that errand, play with me, feed me, read this book, parent stuff divided into equally frantic 30 minute chunks. I mean I love being a parent but shit, I sometimes can't wait for my commute.


Depends, I travel on train 2h every day. I work on my side projects (I have table reservation and internet from mobile). Additionally I have excuse to leave early.

I wake up 7am, work 8:30am-5pm, 6pm back home. My son is still very small, but long term I plan looking for job with less hours 4/5.


Well I must be in the office 4 days per week and 1 day per week I can work from home. Is this 1 day per week your company policy or did you convince your boss that you can pull it off remotely?


Get a self-driving car and just do the side-projects during the commute.


As someone who suffers from severe motion sickness when I take my eyes off the road, public transit is already awful, and if people start expecting me to do work during my commute I'm going to have to file for disability or something.


I believe it is the horizon that needs to be seen, even in peripheral vision.


LOL, I'm waiting for that day man, it will be the happiest day of my life ;)


Imagine taking a nap in your car while it drives you to work. That's the dream


I turned my commute time into cycling time.


1. Be good. 2. Be good enough to remote. 3. Move to someplace cheap (or be born there). 4. Work remote part-time while making a killing at the same time(compared to local). 5. Profit time with your new/current procured family.

My plan basically. Only step 5 to go.


Seconded!


Like a few others here, I also work remote. Zero commute makes a big big difference. It means you can step away from work and instantly be at home. It also means you can see the wife and kids during coffee breaks. Also, instead of sitting in a canteen for your lunch hour you can spend it with the family. In my case, I'm lucky enough to live close to the sea so when the weather is good we can spend lunch on the beach.

I work on side projects in the evenings, and at the weekends. Having kids has impacted free-time, as it always will. In order to maximise productive time, I gave up video-games entirely.


So, I have 3 kids, 8,6, and 3.

> I commute every day 1 hour in each direction.

I know some people are stuck in this situation but I would really recommend finding something closer or getting a fully remote job.

I have had a 100% remote job for the past 5 years and it has made all the difference. I wake up, get the kids breakfast and then head over to the standing desk and get to work. Since we homeschool I always eat lunch and dinner with my kids. Working remotely is the only way this would be possible.

> where do you take time for your side projects or studying new technologies

I do this mainly on the job now, currently learning/implementing Terraform and studying for AWS exams. Take on new challenges at work etc. I also freelance, where I am exposed new tech and challenges.

> full stack developer

There are tons of remote jobs for that skillset, I really encourage you to look elsewhere.


I have three young kids. My experience has been:

1) sleep (a normal amount, not extra)

2) being an OK parent

3) a house that is almost always fairly clean

4) side projects/learning

5) friends

6) a relationship with your partner/spouse that's doing OK

7) actual solo leisure time

Pick four. :-/

[EDIT] Oh, and "staying halfway in shape" comes out of your "actual solo leisure time" hours or possibly "friends" hours if you have the right kind of friends for that.


Well put! I like how you Incorporated trade-offs into this comment. Yes, you can have X, but something will have to give. Sleep, time with friends, alone time, time with spouse, learning time, etc... There's only so much time to go around, and it's amazing how the arrival of each kid diminishes your available time further and further. With three little ones now it seems virtually impossible to keep up with everything we got done when we had only two. There are days I do nothing but kid stuff: feeding, cleaning up after, playing with, wiping butts, vacuuming, cooking, dishes, blah blah blah. I don't know how dual-earner households do it. My wife is a stay-at-home Mom, and even so we're both maxed out.


Did you list those in order of importance, or just randomly?

Because my rank would be (2), (6), (1) and (7) - and (6) and (1) are damn close, since we both need (1) to maintain (6).


No particular order. I've mostly settled into 2,5,6,7.

I can't seem to give up 7 for 1 without hating life, even though going low-sleep sucks a ton. It'd be sweet if we could afford housekeeping to take care of 3, but oh well.

These aren't perfectly identical categories anyway, of course. You can sneak an hour or two worth of 7 in per week depending on what you do, 15 minutes here, 10 there, even if you don't make any other time for it, but doing that with 4 is nearly impossible, and the quality or benefit of any of the activities will tend to be lower that way (you definitely do a fair amount of cleaning no matter what, for instance, though maybe not enough to achieve 3).

Dedicated, significant chunks of time with all the pieces in place for the various activities are what's hard to come by, and what forces in general picking some of them over the others. You just gotta let some stuff go or you'll go insane trying to keep up with it all, and failing to do so anyway.


I pick 7777


I have 10 kids, soon to be 11, and I homeschool.

So... that's how open source projects go to die, and the major reason why I no longer maintain procps. This was painful, but family comes first.

The concept of "quality time" is broken. You can't squeeze life into a few spare moments here and there, and you mostly can't schedule it. You have to live it, being there for the skinned knees that can happen at any moment. There is no substitute for being available.

Side projects are limited to things that can be done with kids. That changes as they grow.

Studying new technology is something I can do at work. I help invent it actually, and I dig into a wide variety of things, so that's fine. Maybe it is different for web developers; ouch if that is the case. I do low-level stuff.

A big difference is that I don't live or work in a "proper" city and haven't since I got married. I tend to live in the sort of place that is borderline big enough for a commercial airport, with perhaps 33,000 to 100,000 people at a density that is well below anything in the Bay Area. This lets me afford to live near work, and it means that there is little traffic. By car, my worst 1-way commute was 15 minutes. It's now about 3 minutes.

Compared to your hour-long commute, that 3 minutes is pretty much a rounding error. It's like I get an extra 10 hours of life per week. You have at most 4 hours for family on weekdays. Imagine if you had 6 hours instead.

I get that big-city life has more entertainment, but you don't seem to have time to take advantage of it.


Love everything about this answer. I like how you live. Well done!


The phrase "Having kids changes everything" is true.

I have 3 kids (8, 4 and 2). When I reflect on the past 8 years my most enjoyable experiences have been first with the kids, wife and friends.

I took steps to work from home after my first child was born. This has allowed me to work at a high demand start up and spend quality time with my family. Now I get to take "wrestle breaks." Best 20 minutes of my day.

Kids coupled with dieing grandparents help you to think about the big picture. I will not be one of those people on their deathbed wishing I spent more time with my family. Know what you have before you lose it.


I know that everyone's situation is different, but I really don't get people who accept that kind of commute time unless it's something you want or you have no other options. (I know people who like to drive and get their only "alone time" in the car on the commute, so it works for them, but they tend to be the exception.)

If you value your time at $100/hr (probably low end of the spectrum for a skilled dev in most of the US), that comes to an opportunity cost of $4,000/month you're losing to driving back and forth. And that doesn't even start to account for the actual costs of driving, nor the mental energy of dealing with doing it. (I want to bang my head against the steering wheel after 30 mins in traffic, and then spend at least twice as long decompressing and not productive after that.)

I know that's very different than $4k cash for most people, but it's worth thinking about


And now you know why rent in big cities around tech hubs is so crazy high: because its worth it (and building more housing will just attract more people)


Yeah, personally I gladly suck it up and pay to live walking distance to most of where I need to go.

Unfortunately the impact of the people willing to do that on other people who can't earn $100/hr is pretty awful. I suspect in the long term that is going to end up gutting cities that don't find some way of dealing with it.


Having kids greatly reduced my free-time to work on side projects (or actual work). Getting married reduced my ability to move anywhere anytime or take risks freely. Buying a house with endless projects has also reduced my free time. If I was single and without children I'd probably be making more money at a different company. But I wouldn't be as happy.

Every choice that reduces your time spent developing affects your life as a developer. It doesn't mean you can't be a rockstar as a single dad with 5 kids but it may be harder. Ultimately you have to balance things that make you happy and work.


Sorry for asking the pessimistic question, by no means do i intend to be a troll, but don't you think that it is irresponsible bringing children in to a world where you can't even take the free evenings after working 8+ hours and giving your best? (because you need to "stay competitive or something"). The developer culture of living to work (instead of the other way around) and being totally cool about it is something that still surprises me. I understand that you like coding (me too), but not having time to do anything else (not even raise a kid, watching a movie, reading a book or just resting) appears to you as something completely normal. I simply don't get that ideology (i mean, is like a type of slavery where the slave's hobby is precisely and just what he/she does for work). I say it as someone studying computer engineering.


In my experience, if you're a good engineer, it is fairly straightforward to work to live. It is not particularly challenging.

The problem is that you are, over time, shown powerful tools and processes capable of perceptibly increasing the rate of human technological progress. For many people, pursuing this goal is irresistible, and this is when you transition to living to work -- when you know that you are personally capable of moving humanity forward.


I can see the allure in that, but perhaps this is a false vision used to exploit people, similar to the "American Dream". Are you sure you're moving humanity forward? I can see those working in medicine, food, etc. helping people, but many of this technology is aimed at purposes that are detrimental to humans or at best conveniences that still contribute to climate change.


I'm a big Star Trek fan. The alien races in Star Trek are metaphors for different factions of Homo sapiens.

Given that context, I view Star Trek as a reasonably plausible view of future humanity. The Star Trek universe certainly has problems, and is regularly threatened with existential crises. There are many new terrible things in it, but there are also many new beautiful things. It's sort of a greatly expanded version of life as it is today; the inhabited universe is larger, more diverse, and as a direct result, there are, on the whole, more options and more possibilities.

So here's the question: Given the option, would you choose to live in today's universe, or the Star Trek universe?

You don't get to choose which individual you are in either scenario, it's a dice roll. You could end up a North Korean peasant or an Albert Einstein (or pick your own role model). You could end up an admired Federation leader or a Borg drone.

But, if you could choose the present day or the Star Trek universe, which would it be?


I'm also a huge Star Trek fan, and I think that would be a very interesting world to live in. How about we get there without destroying the planet and working so much?


You kinda sound like you're not a parent.

Many developers don't live to work. Those who do may not be great parents; or aren't interested in it at all. It's not hard to do; and still stay relevant and current.

In fact, I could care less about it. I actively despise computers from 5pm - 8am.


Father of two (aged 4 and 5) and running an small company of 14 developers.

Before they were born, I always reserved some tasks for weekends, and spend several hours coding at night during workdays.

It took me almost three years to realise that this was absolutely not compatible with family. I used to "steal" sleep time instead of family time, so I ended sleeping between 2 and 4 hours a day. Even productivity was good, I was always tired and in bad mood.

While it was really difficult to change long term habits, I work now from 9.00 to 17.30 with 15 minutes commute time, I dedicate most of my non working time to my kids and wife, and I am now a extremely happy person, and also the people closer to me :)

And productivity has grown because I can focus on the really important things, both at home and at work.


My family is my side-project, and I have to work daily to be content with that.

Which is to say, I give up side-projects in favor of them.


I have two kids, one 6 years old, and another 4 months old. Since I cannot spend more time in the office, I'm required to be more productive. I discovered "less is more" principle this way - by putting in less time, I actually achieve more. Also, at home, ususally I have at most one hour to spend coding my semi-hobby project. And this way, I discovered that it can be a very productive hour. Another upside of having constantly inquiring "explain me like I'm five"-type son is that content of my brain's RAM is instantly swapped out several minutes after I pick him at kindergarten. Bottom line: I rest better; spend less time; I'm more productive. (and earn more money)


I'm a founder looking for ways to make my next startup family-friendly. I'm a parent of two sons in SF so I know what it's like. A grab bag of ideas so far:

- Allow parents to bring babies to work (0-6mo)

- Locate in suburbs where parents live instead of in the city

- Hire remote employees who work from home

- Establish a culture of taking an office break around 4-5pm then resume at 8pm for a couple hours

- Do social events during the day instead of after hours

- Suspend email delivery certain hours, such as 4-8pm, and on weekends until Sunday afternoon

- Same as above for real-time chat for most employees (some exceptions for things like sales)

- As an exception to above, have on-call schedules planned way in advance

- Flexibility on holidays to help synchronize with school schedules

Other thoughts?


The big win is "suburb", but also consider smaller cities. Suburbs can be OK for city dwellers who have cars, which isn't all of them. The daily commute runs backwards of the norm, so traffic is reduced for them. Smaller cities are really affordable. You can pay people less and they still get bigger houses.

Keeping work tasks at the workplace is important. There is an extra benefit for you: security. The best practice is to store proprietary stuff on a network that isn't connected to the Internet at all. Instead of suspending email delivery, just deliver it exclusively to devices at the office.

Babies at work is important if you hope to keep mothers. Nursing works best when there is no delay. The problem with special rooms for nursing is that they create the expectation that they will be used, but nursing is far easier if people are comfortable nursing wherever they happen to be at the moment.

If you can do flex-time, do it. (depends on nature of business) I'm at a place where some people come in randomly, some come in before the Sun is up, and others come in in the late afternoon. Missing a day entirely isn't a big deal; you just make it up. (we do timecards) I'm sure this helps non-parents too: some people want to take college classes, some people want to go surfing, etc.

Timecards may be helpful. Without them, people may feel pressured to work unreasonable hours.


"bring babies to work" - are you serious? do you have children?


Yes, I do have children. I got the idea from this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/opinion/sunday/take-your-...

Bringing babies to work definitely has issues, but also benefits.


0-6 month, as they specified.

That's nice considering daycares have a minimum age requirement before you can start leaving a child to go back to work.

Most of the first few months are spent sleeping.

Perhaps they should have said "remote work while child is 0-6 months".

Honestly, a flexible remote schedule is just something I'd be willing to change jobs for right now. When kids get sick and I have the follow the same vacation/PTO policy as hourly people here; I begin to despise my HR department.


I like your idea of:

"Establish a culture of taking an office break around 4-5pm then resume at 8pm for a couple hours"

as it is similar to what someone does at my work and it really helps them out.

We have one person that lives far away (45m to 1hr) and she leaves early, around 3:30pm so she can be at home waiting for the kids when the bus drops them off. Then she puts in another hour of work sometime that evening.


Sounds great! Except the working after 8pm thing??


Living in the city means no commute which means lots more quality time mornings and evenings


If you mean San Francisco, that isn't really an option with a family. There exist 4-bedroom houses with yards (little tiny yards) in San Francisco, but even the old 1960s ones go for about $1,800,000.


More parents are willing to raise kids in 'burbs than go with city schools.

Most suburban school districts far excel urban ones.


When you have no time for your family they become someone's else side/main project. Sometimes it's good. But mostly - not. That's why i don't have side projects besides my family.


I moved from full-time to stay at home dad with some consulting and side projects on the side. Family is #1, everything else is secondary. However, wife works, is well paid, and is a national expert in her field. We're In the Midwest.

Kids are essentially another full time job, with varied and unpredictable overtime.


I have children with communication and social issues (ASD).

My side projects have changed from web apps things to:

Learning makaton.

Making and laminating pictures (PECS) so my youngest can use them to communicate.

Attending various classes relating to ASD.

Fixing IT and Telecoms for the various local charity organisations that support us.

You just have to play the hand your delt the best you can.


Even without your insane commute, your description of your life sounds like mine. I'm a data scientist by trade, married, and father of three young ones (5, 2, and 4 months). My side project is writing (I've always wanted to be a published author), and it drives me looney always being so tapped out and exhausted. I try to enjoy family life while they're young because I know they'll become more independent as they get older, but man, when I'm too tired to do anything when my "alone time" rolls around after I get the older kids to bed, and when it seems my wife and I rarely get 1:1 time, it really makes me cranky and resentful. So the writing doesn't get done, and neither does any continuing education.

What I'm trying out is getting to bed earlier (hey, if I'm too tired to do the things I value then maybe I should just sleep!), and I'm starting to exercise. I've been told that exercise helps 1) sleep better, 2) feel better, and 3) gives you more energy. We'll see how it goes!

But yeah, try to figure out a way out of that commute. Some people are able to turn their commute into productive time, but I never had the knack. My understanding is that this phase is just that, a phase, and as the kids get older it will get easier in some ways.


Ok, I'm going to make a suggestion that others may find silly and may not work for you...

You have two hours a day where you can't do anything but drive and think.

Audio notes are your friend, take them while your in the car.

What I find when I do this is that I don't really need to reference the notes after I take them! After reading this article ( http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-ja... ) I think I understand why now.

When I get the time to work on my own stuff I find that I'm much more efficient with it than I would be if I was just sitting down to stare at a screen, and I can accomplish a lot in 15-20 minutes a day on side projects, or research, or ....


I get up at 5:30am, shower, eat, and start at 6am. Work until 5pm, and then pick up my kid from daycare. Bath, cook dinner, kid's bedtime at 8pm. Do another 2-3 hours work.

Work from home, so no commute. Work 6-8am Thursday, and then rest of the day off to look after the kid. Usually do a couple of hours on a weekend night, depending on what my partner's doing.

I try to do side-projects, learn new stuff, etc, at nights. It doesn't work too well because I'm exhausted.

I switched to remote hourly contracting so I'd be able to take the Thursday off, but trying to fit in a full week's work on the other days is exhausting. Losing the commute was great; the social isolation and loss of work/home separation sucks.

I think it's just tough.


Although you're remote; someone's abusing those hours it sounds like.

You're working too much, of course you're exhausted!


I'm a newish dad and full stack dev. I've found that what's been most effective for me, aside from spending (admittedly, far too much) time coding in the evenings before sleep, is making a concerted effort to share whole-day responsibility of the kids on weekends. I'll take the kids on one day, my wife will take the kids on another day. We trade off during the week too so we can both have large stretches of uninterrupted time.

Exercise (and for me, meditation) are important balancers too - don't neglect them for the sake of coding, you'll find that you just get burnt out.


Although I don't usually get full-days this has become really helpful for me. 4 or 6 hours of time to do something is incredibly productive for me now.


I had the same thoughts as you do now regarding not having enough time for my development career. My advise: spend as much time as you can with your kid! You will not be able to replay those moment when he/she grows up.


My GF and her little boy moved in with me recently, that was a shock to the system, I knew on a conceptual level how much time kids took but damn was I underestimating the effort required.

I try to keep him entertained as much as possible so that she gets some time for herself even its just a soak in the bath while we play xbox or something.

It's been fun and hardworking but I dont regret it either.

Fortunately they share custody so it's usually half week here, half week at his dads.

That recharge time is important and something a lot of parents never get.


Before I had kids my time management was absolute crap; so getting this together was key, and nearly made my days 25 or 26 hours long.

Your schedule seems about right. There's definitely worse ones out there. Assuming you have young kids, they will become more independent with time to allow you to have time back for yourself.

My schedule is nearly identical; although I do have to admit I'm about an hour later than you for everything.

To become a semi-successful parent (is that even a thing? We'll see in 18 years) who still gets shit done I've learned to simply utilize every idle moment. It allows me about an hour of extra time for something during the weekdays, and makes my weekends more efficient. I tend to sacrifice my own sleep when I really need more time for something and it usually works out okay, as long as I don't make it a habit for the week (or I'll feel sick, tired, or just unwilling to over-perform).

Right now, I'm going through a home renovation, so the process is slow but it's considered my "side-project". The nice thing about it is that I can involve my kids in it to keep them occupied and still get a little bit of something done.

For keeping up with tech, my pace at work is slow enough that I can continuously evolve the software I write with new technologies and best practices. Before I started where I'm at, I was at a much more fast-pace place which was fun and exciting; but absolutely damning to my home life because of all the other stuff I've got going on. (And nothing angers Mrs. and Kids more than coming home at 8 or 9pm frequently).


My life is close to yours. I have 2 young kids but I work from home. But here's how I swing it: I wake up at 4:00am and work till about 6am when my kids wake up. Then I'm back at it at 7am when my wife takes over with kids. I then work till anytime between 3pm and 5pm.

That's about 10 to 12 hours a day. It's a lot but I'm usually working on contract or my own business so I love my work.

I don't really believe in side projects. I believe in taking a plunge.


Your biggest problem is your 2 hour commute. Move closer to work or find a job closer to your house and you'll have a huge increase in free time and energy.


Agree. Change what you can control, at least start there.


Partner, 2 kids, full time job. I get home, play with the kids, wash them and put them to bed. I usually work on side projects most evenings and spend an evening or two a week with my SO.

I usually budget 3 - 4 nights a week to side projects.

I saved most of my time by choosing to work remote/close-to-home. I don't make as much as some of my friends who live in the big city or out on the West coast. However I get to wake up at a reasonable hour, walk my kids to school, and stop by the café on my way to work to catch up on the local gossip.

From about 8 - 11, 3... sometimes 4 nights a week I work on my side projects. I used to do more open source stuff but right now I'm working on a book [0] and testing the waters with a GraphQL service [1]. I've also committed myself to recording one, short, album a month.

It sounds like a lot but I guess being a parent I've learned to juggle and be effective with what little time I have. I tend to pre-plan my activities and force them into habits, rituals that sort of thing.

Some days I'm too exhausted. But that's ok. Take a little time off and go to bed early.


Yep, same here. Having kids completely destroyed my productivity. I now understand why people like to spend money on apps like Farmville, because it's mindless and you don't feel stress. I feel the same way with reading reddit and HN at night, because I'm too tired to think about reading. If I pick up a book, I'll fall asleep within about 15 mins. So it's hard.


Being self employed has made things a lot easier for me, but two years into having kids, I'm still trying to break the bad habit of thinking "I'll get it done tonight / this weekend."

My wife and I do split things up in ways that make it easier. So we each have a morning off, a weeknight off, and we split the weekends so we each get 1-2 blocks of 4 hours. This is obviously a luxury that is easier with two parents, one kid, etc.

As my daughter turns two, I'm amazed at how quickly her personality is emerging and developing. I've spent a lot of time thinking abou a blog post I read years ago by some founder or investor who pointed out that you really only get about a decade with your kids. From toddler to early teen years where their lives start to diverge and they have their own need for independence. That really drove home the point that this is an incredibly fleeting time, and I have to pay attention and be present, because once it's gone, it's gone forever.


I work remote at an early-stage startup. My wife recently regained custody of her 12-year-old daughter. Our daughter is on the Autism spectrum, and when combined with emotional issues and an entitlement attitude, this has not only consumed my time, but my wife's as well. It's a full-time job for two parents.

My "side projects" encompasses more than than software programming -- martial arts, meditation, biking, etc. I used to be able to do a lot of things, but I can't anymore. My step-daughter comes home around 15:30 and it tends to go on until around 21:30. More if there was a meltdown or some sort of family drama (which, in the past few months have happened frequently, but thankfully, is trending less now). I've had to take over getting her up in the morning -- both my wife and my wife's mother have had significant trouble getting her out of bed, showered, dressed and ready for school. Likewise for getting ready for bed.

I've had to accept that my life and lifestyle has changed. (I thought I was prepared for it; I wasn't). I've had to work through a lot of things myself, including periodic, arising feelings of resentment that is toxic to a child growing up. The meditation helps, but ultimately, I had to accept change and the fact that I am not as in control of my life as I used to be.

I had also been working with her a lot on homework -- to stop doing her math and reading like she is mashing buttons while playing a video game. I quickly found that there are even more basic wisdom and skills that my daughter never learned: what it means to be a part of a community; what responsibility means; what respect and speaking respectfully means. We've also been trying to wean her off of the meds and learn how to process her emotions.

Over time, I've been coaching her through different things. Our current theme is "organization" -- how to organize her time, how to organize her things, how to check things off a list by herself instead of "mashing buttons" (she has a tendency to try something to quickly satisfy what she perceives as what my wife or I wants instead of thinking things through, or methodically checking through things). The idea is to transfer more and more responsibility for herself to her rather than helicopter parenting and enabling this attitude of "parents are service providers". It takes time, it's bearing fruit, and this process goes at its own pace.

And yeah, at the end of the night, I'm exhausted too.

Some five years back, I got into an internet flame-war with someone about this. He was working 60-hour weeks with kids, trapped in his job, and I was talking about side-projects. I was single with a lot of mobility. Joke's on me.


This was my life till 2011 when I renegotiated my contract to work mornings only (5 hours). That gave me afternoons off with benefit of stress-free commute home.

It wasn't easy to get the arrangement but I started off with two days of the week at first and then upped it to all five days.

If you can tolerate reduction in income, that's a respectable arrangement to start off with.


Just a comment on your side project: replacing the font would help tremendously.

Super hard to read through listings in a font not suited for legibility.


Tnx for suggestion. I did a change. More like it or do you have any concrete suggestion about font?


Definitely better. Next suggestion would be to decrease spacing between each header and its details below, as well as minimize the number of font sizes you have (your by line and your tags lines are 1.5em and 1.6em, your header is another size and it also differs from the number size on the left of it). These things are more stylistic design choices, whereas the font type was definitely a usability concern.

Personally I would pick a font that is less vertically stretched, but again, stylistic choice at this point.


Agree with these. You can hire a freelance designer for fairly cheap and it makes a huge difference.

I think adding a visual separator between sections would help too, along with maker search/header/post-cta a little bigger:

http://imgur.com/a/qaj0x


Having gotten married recently, things have already changed quite a bit, before even having kids. I have a similar job and commute as you do.

I also recently had the opportunity to change jobs and made it a point to join a place that doesn't believe in working long hours and staying late. (I used to work in an infamous place for long hours, then I left that to cofound my own startup which was again long hours even if more flexible.) My team here is totally fine with my 9:30-6:00 schedule with working from home 1 day of the week. This is currently how I balance it. I predict having kids will throw a wrench at this scheduling again and I'll have to re-adjust. As for side projects, it's pretty much fitting it in spare minutes on the train commute, when the wife showers, etc.


Sorry if this is over personal, but how does getting married change things? Were there more changes than marriage at the same time? I'm not married, but have been living with my partner for 3 years, together for 8 and am about to buy a house with them, so I'm wondering what I've got ahead of me!


I think it's a personal commitment thing. For example, after being married, I'd like to commit to having dinner with her all (or almost all) days of the week, whereas before, I was pretty ok with staying later at work and grab a bite with coworkers; that sort of thing. I absolutely make it a point to avoid staying late at work unless absolutely necessary.


If you're already living together; it doesn't change much of anything.

Except if it doesn't work out she gets a lot of your shit.

Marriage was a walk in the park; but kids was where it started to get difficult.


Of course it affects my life. Now obviously the rest of the day and most of the weekend is either spend at work or home with my son (he is 3, so still needs more attention than older kids).

On the other side, I was never really into side projects in the evenings, simply because I needed that time to cool off and relax a bit. Without that time I would quickly burn out. The best is (and if you can) is to make your "side project" your day job.

The question is still if it actually affected me as a developer in the sense that I can not do the work anymore? No, it did not. I leave work earlier but that's pretty much it. I don't feel less productive than before. Actually I even think I am more productive since the time is more limited. It is all about what you make of it I believe.


I was the CTO of a series-A backed startup. My entire life changed when I had my kid, and I decided to quit my job and live cheaply in eastern Europe for about 6 months. You can read about it here: https://medium.com/@buf/experimenting-with-retirement-ef6ab0... tl;dr - I retired, and it was amazing.

Since, I've come back to the States and I think I've figured out a good balance. I work remotely now, so I can spend time with the family and watch the kid grow daily. Sure, I won't be a CTO anymore the next few years, but it gives me time to take on a reasonable amount of work.

I think I'll do this for a few more years.


Your commute is costing you around 10K per year, just for direct costs such as car and fuel. Then you have indirect costs such as: -lost time which you can probably put a dollar figure on (esp if you are using some of that time for a side project that may one day have value) Then finally there are the intangible costs: -lower fitness, meaning more sickness, more medical bills. -a less fullfilling relationship with your wife and kids -stress of the commute, also contributing to poor health.

Basically you should go to your boss, if possible and ask to work from home - you could even take a 10K pay cut and it would make no difference financially.

I've worked from home for 10+ years and it's great. You should do it if at all possible.


Not much time, eh? ;-)

Well, I see one obvious thing to cut without sacrificing your work or children, and that is the commute. Get yourself a gig that you can walk/bike in a short amount of time. Choose it well and you'll get exercise too.

Now, I know what you're thinking right now, I can't! Because of X, Y, and Z. Sure, understood in the short term. But, ask yourself where you want to be in a year or two?

If you start looking now, you can find a closer or remote job, or move home to be near a great job---over the medium term. Want to know how I know? Because, I've been doing it for twenty years. So when people say, "oh, I couldn't possibly" BS is called quickly. Good luck.


Forget about developing and side projects. How do people keep up with learning new things and staying on top of things. Its very hard to learn new tools, frameworks or even stay current in 30min/night, and when youre not exhausted.


IMO the silver bullet is to find a job that eliminates your need for side projects and studying new technologies. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's definitely not impossible.


A lot of parents really, really like having kids. The ROI on having children is, for them, so self-evident that they don't really think about it. But that's not true for everyone, esp. if you were old enough to be pretty fully-formed by the time you became a father. Kids come at a huge cost. You're exhausted from dealing with them, and in the meantime you're probably not exercising, and you're eating like crap, and, inevitably, just plain getting older.

Step 1 is to reconcile your ideal of who you'll be in the future -- what job, how smart, how influential, etc. -- with the resources actually available to you now. I had to downshift considerably.

Your kids aren't going away, and you're not going to be able to sustain what you're doing now until they get old enough. You need to make a change, and soon, because if you don't you're going to end up wondering how and why you mortgaged your life to your goddamn kids.

I have three boys: 5, 8, and 10. For my first six years of having kids, every time someone told me to "enjoy them while you can" I wanted to punch that person in the throat. I knew they were right, but there are days when that's just not even in the realm of possibility.

There are a lot of parents who are tired, and sick of walking on dropped cereal, and miss being able to pick an actual restaurant that serves actual grown-up food. But there's also a huge societal more to not talk about it, or to aways end with something like, "But it's so worth it," or "It's the hardest job I've ever loved," especially for women. But while it's almost certainly "worth it" for the majority of parents the majority of the time, there are going to be days when it's just NOT.

The cliché is that "The years are short, but the days are long." It's true. In hindsight, the fact that I have a ten-year-old seems insane -- how could it have been ten years? What the hell have I been doing for the last decade? Do I even remember life before kids -- what it was like to just have a wife, to set my own schedule?

At the same time, every night at 6:30pm I find myself asking, "How can it only be 6:30?"

I spent a good number of years just basically resenting the crap out of my boys, which is about as healthy as you might guess. I hated dealing with my kids, hating myself for hating dealing with my kids, and knew I'd hate myself later for not enjoying the young-kid experience while I could. I, my kids, and my wife all suffered.

Now I've got therapy and some drugs and a CPAP, and things are better. Not every day, but most days. Well, many days.

Kids completely take over your life, at least for a while, and it's almost impossible to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Your job -- your JOB -- is to figure out how to enjoy them now so that the sacrifices are worth it to you.


This should be voted higher. It's not "passive-aggressive", as the empathy-deficient thatwebdude says, it's honest, if painfully so. There are plenty of days when a parent cannot in all honesty give the socially-mandated "But it's so worth it" appendix to the litany of perfectly justifiable complaints. It IS hard, exhausting, and does involve a recalibration of your expectations of life and yourself. Thank you for posting this, not many parents would be so honest. (In saying this I am not denying that there are other parents who can in all honesty say they love the whole process.)


I bet the decision to have kids was your wife's.

I'm glad you're coming to terms with it.

Sorry, that was just a very passive-agressive read.


No, it was a joint decision. I just figured I'd be more-or-less like my dad, who loves being a dad. It never struck me that it might be something I really struggle with.

Overall, it was the right decision for us. But there are definitely valleys along with the peaks.


I get a lot done. Having more responsibilities means I focus more and dilly-dally less. I focus on what's important. What I lose in hours, I gain in ambition and focus.


From 5:30am-9pm my hours are for work, commute, family and chores. My wife usually falls asleep at 9:30-10. If I feel rested, I'll hack for 30min-1hr most nights.

On the weekend, we both make sure the other has "my time." It's important. I used to get 2hrs+ a night to hack. My productivity at work wasn't nearly as good as it is now. I don't miss it. I like family life way more. My life as a developer has never been better.


I struggled with this for a while too, but I quickly realized spending time with the family is a lot more fun than side projects.

Also, I'm surprised no one has suggested daylighting [1] yet, it can be a reasonable option if your employer pays you to deliver instead of keeping a chair warm for 8 hours.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14217849


tl;dr;

1. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize,

2. You'll never have enough time.

3. Timeshift and batch up tasks

4. Trade money for time.

Father of 2 kids (3 and 6mo) here. RUTHLESS prioritization has been critical in helping me reach my goals. Having the two kiddos has taught me to be absolutely ruthless and efficient with my time. Prioritization is the key and saying no is something you need to get used to. I'm a people-pleaser at heart so this has been a difficult transition but, after accepting that I can't say yes to everyone and everything, I've been able to make more progress towards my goals.

There aren't enough hours in the day to do all that you want. Period. You need to take a hard look at every single activity you do and decide whether it's worth spending time on. If something isn't in the Top 3 of your priorities for the day, drop it and don't even consider it. Trying to do everything ends up wasting time because you end up having to half-ass everything. Time is precious.

Timeshift and batch tasks. Pre-plan what you can so that you can be present for whatever it is you are doing. Meal plan your week in advance so you don't waste time deciding what to cook. Decide on what you're going to wear for the week in advance to speed up your morning routine. Have your kids do the same (mine actually likes it).

Learn to delegate to trade money for time, at least temporarily, if you have the resources. Hire a gardener, hire a house cleaner, hire a VA, outsource any tasks that can be outsourced. Deliver food if necessary. If I said you could buy an extra hour a day for $20, would you? I certainly would (and do).

Side note: HUGE props to the single parents out there. Don't think I could handle two w/o my (awesome!) SO.


I have three kids under 5 years, and I've been more productive than ever. Mostly due to the fact that my wife and I aren't spending time socialising after hours or on the weekend.

Once the kids are in bed, there's not much to do on a Friday or Saturday night. As a result, in the last 5 years I've built and launched several small side-projects.


You can do that indefinitely, or until you suffer a psychotic break. Either way, you'll be fine.


Yep. That's why when you reach this milestone, you ain't care about the name of a company, if the product is hot or not. All you care about are

- ability to work from home

- not too competitive environment (otherwise you'd get put aside by young people)

- good health coverage


Related discussion 2 months ago:

Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up? | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13816627


I am not in such situation (yet), but if I were you, I would probably learn new technologies just for fun. Side projects require some level of commitment to yield results, which is admittedly hard when you have kids already.


I have the option to take the train to work, so that gives me a solid 2 hours a day to hack on my side project.

I would have to say my time hacking on a project is more focused with kids. You have to be if you want to get things done.


Lifecycle of a software engineer:

10-20 years old = if Zuckerberg then stop here, else:

20-30 years old = Best perk, best company, best project

30-40 years old = Work from home, short commute, less work

40-60 years old = QA or maintain legacy code


Maybe this side project obsession we all have stems from most things being easy to us? Too many people trying to be Tony Stark?


I keep reading about software developers who sleep every night and work 8 hour days. Both are completely foreign concepts to me.


8 hours days are possible when you get out of startups.

I never had trouble with sleep after I had kids.


Some nights I work on something else from 8/9pm to 11pm/12am. Other nights I recover. Weekends are tough to get time.


Pro-tip: Figure out a way to work from home some days. You'd save 2-3 hours. Give one to your company and one to yourself.


Or, better, join / create a distributed team. Last August, the day before a 3-week family vacation to Japan, we closed Leanpub's office and became a distributed team. It was a great decision; we are happier this way, even though most of us live in the same city. Zero commute = more time with your kids and more time working with fewer interruptions. (No, we're not hiring right now :)


If it didn't then you are probably doing one or the other wrong.




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