Hah sounds like you described me perfectly. But I do have to say, ever since I'm programming full-time I seem not to be able to just code for fun anymore.
I used to program all day long.. and I guess I still do, but now it's for work, and after 8h of work I'm just done, you know? The "stuff I want to look at" list is growing longer and longer and there's no hope of me ever catching up.
(I can't imagine how it is for people with kids. How do you get anything done in your private life at all?)
Dad of two - we basically don't, if I'm honest. I've had to give up on an immense number of things and while lots of people tell you "having kids is expensive" very few will tell you that the most expensive part is the opportunity cost. I have so many things I want to do and it hurts, almost physically, to watch other people doing them because they could hack on stuff after work while I had to deal with making sure a 3 year old wiped their butt OK or get yelled at because they actually wanted a _different_ spoon.
Now, it turns out my career was lacklustre, so no great loss, and I'm sure having older kids is different than mine (1 and 3) but right now I get make 40-60 minutes a day to do what I want. Not much time for a side gig. I'm writing this right now with my kid watching a cartoon next to me when I originally wanted to work on some UI stuff for a side project, because I'm exhausted. Speaking of the above, she's scratching her butt so maybe we need to discuss the importance of thorough wiping.
FWIW - in my experience, if their demands upset you, it’s not going to go well (you’ll get more demands and feel more exhausted); if you laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation, remind them to ask nicely, and still help them with what they need/want, you’ll be much less stressed, you’ll be teaching them that being unpleasant doesn’t bother you and doesn’t help but does have the natural consequences of slowing down what they want, and you’ll be teaching them a better way of being; at least with my own kids, they picked up on it pretty quickly, and they started being much more fun to hang out with.
True, and oddly given my comment, I adore them and love being their dad. But they destroyed my old life so I've had to build a new one around them. The pandemic hasn't helped.
The first few years of kids were infuriating and terrifying. I built my career by constantly exploring and learning after hours. Kids made that impossible, and that made me frustrated (because there’s SO MUCH I want to do besides diapers) and scared (because how can I maintain my career without learning).
It’s somewhat better now. I’m seeing them grow and can believe that this stage of life won’t last forever. I’ve managed to keep up with work by increasing efficiency during core hours, though I still look forward to getting back on the wagon with side projects when I can.
Here are a few beliefs that have helped me build & maintain a positive mind set:
- An engaged parent is priceless to a child. They desperately need you and you are irreplaceable. There is huge value in showing up for them, it’s just very different from your prior experience.
- COVID is terrible and we’re all struggling to get by. You must ruthlessly prioritize where you spend mental, physical, fiscal and chronological resources. Nobody expects you to maintain the same pace as before; we are all suffering through this together.
- Family and Profession both benefit from strengthening your mind, body and habits. Level up your time management game to improve exercise and diet. When the kids get easier, you’ll have more capacity for professional endeavors than before.
Having your own time to try out whatever you like is immensely helpful for a developer, thats why at the companies I work for I campaign (successfully for now) to have “learning days”. You do whatever coding / learning you want, but you are obligated to share your discoveries with your colleagues. Companies benefit with more motivated, engaged and loyal employees, and you get to progress as a dev.
Sometimes managed to convince people to do this once a week, sometimes once a month, or somewhere in between. For example now I’m doing it once a fortnight.
Everyone recognizes that learning is an integral part of the profession, so I think companies should really accommodate that, rather than expect people to carve out personal time for it.
As a father of two I can relate with some of the answers here, but I'd like to add an alternative viewpoint here just to give young dads some glimmer of hope.
For the first and a half or so we've had a difficult life with the first kid. To be honest, there is just no way around it. Especially your first kid. The SEAL-level sleep deprivation and complete lack of "me time" really takes it toll. I'm also not the type of dad to let mom handle everything. She also has a career and, to be honest, a better one too. So I was regularly up at 2AM, 4AM and 6AM. Then a workday. :) (If you have young parents around you, please try to be compassionate.)
But for some reason I'm more effective now than I ever was. I can remember "not having enough energy" to complete some project for as long as I am alive - even when I was alone. It is clear to me this had very little to do with my actual life and more with my attitude. My life is more complex and demanding than it used to be but somehow I still managed to lose 60lbs, learned to read Latin, took guitar lessons and started a business. Every single one of these items never would have left my todo list without my family. They have endowed me with a keen sense of priority which made planning my life quite easy to be honest.
I know those achievements I listed are not that hard, but for me they are significant. I've found most things in life don't require your eternal soul as a sacrifice, they just take (usually a lot of) time and so you need to be strategic about your goals. Take it slow, don't burn yourself out, but also don't stray from left to right unnecessarily. Keep your eyes on the ball. Don't shift from "write a compiler", "read latin", "write toy OS", "build cpu from nand-gates" to "learn german" and back to "learn to draw realistically" in a month. Focus. A dirty word, I know, but a powerful one.
Because as children age you're able to reclaim some of your life back. At least, if you don't fall into the trap of them living a packed schedule themselves.
I've got three, the eldest is now old enough to babysit the rest if needed. With a consistent bedtime and family nearby to care for them on occasion, my wife and I do get some spare time. We mostly choose to spend that together but we can pursue our own hobbies also.
As a parent of two kids who are both past that age, I feel like your perspective on this is all wrong. You’ve given 70+ years to someone else. And you haven’t lost those years at all, since presumably you also have a meaningful day job (and if not, that’s not your child’s fault).
It sounds like you and your partner should work on splitting the load more. You don’t need both parents to look after the kid constantly, you can often take turns. Kids can also watch TV and all kinds of stuff. They also have earlier bedtimes, giving you even more free time.
> since presumably you also have a meaningful day job (and if not, that’s not your child’s fault).
Turns out that you need 3x the money when you need to feed 3x the people, so no, my job is not as meaningful as it could be and while you can't say it is my child's fault, that certainly caused my family status.
I don't know how old you are and for how long you've been programming but your experience mimics my progression.
I started playing with some kind of programming when I was about 9-10, BASIC on a MSX and later HTML that opened up me for web development on ASP 3.0 and PHP at the time.
It was a very big hobby when I was young and turned into a career when I was pretty young, about 16. It stayed as a hobby for another 9-10 years but I got to the point where thinking about programming outside of my paid time was exhausting...
It helped me tremendously, I would never have a career if I wasn't extremely curious about programming for 15-20 years of my life, I just got to the same stage as you did.
There is an evergrowing and endless list of things I want to learn and experience, staying on top of the latest tech on my own free time is just too costly nowadays. I still do it, when I need it for work and during work hours, and all the accumulated experience helps me to figure out things way faster so I don't need to use my free time to catch up. Increasingly rarely I get that curiosity again, to use my free time to study something work-related. When I do it nowadays it's for much larger and abstract concepts such as organisation culture and change, team spirit and building trust and effective communication.
I noticed that the past 5 years of my career has been much more about the human and social aspect of work rather than technical ones. And I didn't try to become a manager, tech lead or product owner, it has just attracted me as I think I always got attracted to gaps of efficiency at work. It seems that seeing this human aspect of work brought me closer to more human aspects of life (arts, music, sociology) and a bit away from controlling the machine I learned when I was a kid.
This resonates with me too. Instead of spending 2 weeks shaving off 100ms in a request I’ll spend two weeks shaving off 3-4 days worth of time for a request from the marketing or sales team by figuring out a better process for them to request changes on the management side.
An aside for future or present dad's (and all Parents.) There is so much joy and learning that happens with raising kids, that I think the secret is not fight it, but enjoy it. Almost sounds cliché, but embrace the experience. From the very beginning to when they are adults, to experience a window into your own life, a window into the world. These windows allow you to explore your surroundings and relationships with a different eye, with more understanding.
The best way to get into that zone, is to forget your own desires for a bit, forget your schedule. Just live in the moment of the kid (s). After you relax a bit, and surrender to their schedule, then all of a sudden you find opportunities for your time in between. But with passion and effectiveness. As mentioned below in a comment, you can be more focused, I believe because you are more relaxed. If you fight all the time to make 'your' schedule fit, you become frustrated. As you let go, you find a schedule that works, and with enthusiasm for that time to create and build. Cherish the moment with the kids, everything from diaper changing to eating, because they are a reflective window on your own soul, and a fresh mirror to the insanity if the world around you.
How do you let go of the things you want to do? I like to think that my side project is something only I could do, that the world needs but doesnt know it yet... so the thought of giving it up sends chills through me.
You seem to have a really nice outlook on things so I'd really appreciate any hints on how to reconcile this and get to where you are! (I dont have any kids yet)
For the vast, vast, majority of us, nothing that we do individually is important. Sure we work and provide some value to somebody somewhere, but if we didn't exist or didn't do that job, the world wouldn't be any worse off.
If you think otherwise, it's probably your ego lying to you.
And even still for those “others” - nothing individually they do is that important, it’s how the team they’ve assembled operates when the leader isn’t around... and as much as a belief system can anchor people into habits and behaviors, it’s still the deputies or vps of a cause that must maintain consistency in purpose...
That’s a long winded way of saying, no ones individual contributions are that important... it’s only through the concert of others that any person reaches those heights.
You can still do side projects when you’ve got kids. You just have to treat your priorities seriously, which usually means having to give up most of the netflix/social-media time. You also have to realize that in a two parent household, you don’t usually need both parents looking after the kids, and it’s better for both of you if you take turns (for your sanity AND for your free time).
It can, but it really depends on the personalities of you and your partner. It works best if your partner also has some independent work they need to get done (or enjoy doing, ex a hobby).
In talking with fellow parents of young children the biggest variable seems to be whether there is a stay-at-home parent, live-in relative, or nanny who can help with the recurring labor required to run a household like cleaning, cooking, shopping, bills, repairs, yard work, taxes, etc. Otherwise that work piles up until after the kids go to sleep and on weekends.
You can sacrifice sleep, but that's not sustainable for everyone.
My partner and I block out a couple hours each week for the other to wrangle the kids so we can work on our various hobbies/projects. I've found that when I work on my computer-based hobbies I usually end up frittering away half the time reading online news whereas outdoor construction, yard, and bike projects don't seem to suffer from that so they end up making more progress.
Hopefully in ~5 yrs I can actually do some of these things with the kids and it'll get a little easier.
I do have small children, and, for like many others, I get to do my things when everyone are asleep. You seem to have interest (which means you have energy), but the problem seems to be finishing. I have the same issue.
I am maintaining a list of them in a notebook, and am trying to limit the number of them to not more than 8-10 at the same time. And I can only start a new one if I finish an old one.
Everything in that list is a task with a clear Definition Of Done, so I know when I can cross them out. Realistically, each of them would take from 4 hours to a week (assuming full-time). Over the years, many things got done. Slower than I'd like, surely, but I think a SaaS business will come out of those TODOs in a few years.
This way, things are moving forward (since I must complete something), but I am allowing myself freedom to switch effortlessly. That motivates to do *something* when the hour comes. :)
I don’t mean to stick my nose in, but seeing as we are on HN: I keep hearing the market is pretty good for capital lately, have you explored raising a round to accelerate dropping the 9-5?
Speaking as a person with kids, I get into many things but with exceptions of very simple/small stuff, mostly nothing gets done and there are lots of stuff in various stages of incompleteness. It also depends on your level of procrastinating. Doing all these things also has an effect on sleep because I only get time once everyone has gone to bed.
I found that the kids running to you and jumping up and down and demanding your attention is an extremely quick way to reset. After an hour or so you completely forgot about work.
When things are kinda slow and aimless at work, that's when I really start to do some projects at home again. But to be honest, it all comes and goes.
But yeah, right now I'm both single and in lockdown, and if it was any other way I wouldn't spend a week just programming some sort of custom build/deployment agent.
With kids? One of my colleagues once told me that once you have them, you'll suddenly be out of time you didn't even know you had in the first place.
Ever since I started a "real" job in programming a few years ago, I've had such a hard time doing anything programming-related on the side. Which is such a shame since I have so many ideas. That's why I've been thinking of switching to a different field of work, even if it pays less. Ideally something where I don't really use computers at all. Not sure what that could be though.
I used to program all day long.. and I guess I still do, but now it's for work, and after 8h of work I'm just done, you know? The "stuff I want to look at" list is growing longer and longer and there's no hope of me ever catching up.
(I can't imagine how it is for people with kids. How do you get anything done in your private life at all?)