Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up? - <AUTHOR> I recently had one of my colleagues comment on my GitHub account graph - 'There won't be many green boxes in your account once you have a kid'. This was in response to my suggestions on how we should all keep learning.
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.
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/family? <comment><USER8> 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.

<comment><USER9> 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)

<comment><USER10> I know her from all of her "A List Apart" articles.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 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.

<comment><USER12> 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.

<comment><USER13> I was wondering how you'd end up with kids 2, 4 and 9 months old there for a moment.

<comment><USER14> Harem style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 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?

<comment><USER16> 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.

<comment><USER17> > 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.

<comment><USER18> > > _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'.

<comment><USER17> 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.

<comment><USER18> That can be both good and bad, though; I was talking to my stepbrother - <USER2> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 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.

<comment><USER20> _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.

<comment><USER21> 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.

<comment><USER22> > 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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 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.

<comment><USER24> 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.

<comment><USER25> 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.

<comment><USER26> >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.

<comment><USER27> 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.

<comment><USER26> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> 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.

<comment><AUTHOR> And a guitarist too.....jeez....what a legend ! Hope to read your blogs some day, can you provide a link?

<comment><USER28> 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!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> 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.

<comment><USER30> 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.

<comment><USER31> 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.

<comment><USER29> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> 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.

<comment><USER33> 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.

<comment><USER34> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> 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.

<comment><USER36> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> 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.

<comment><USER38> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> 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 :).

</comment><comment><USER40> 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.

<comment><USER41> What is your perspective on having kids a bit later in life than most?

<comment><USER40> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> 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.

</comment><comment><USER43> 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.

</comment><comment><USER44> 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.

<comment><USER18> 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.

<comment><USER45> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> (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.

<comment><USER47> 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 :)

<comment><USER46> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> 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 - <USER3> 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.

<comment><USER49> > 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.

<comment><USER14> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> 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! :)

</comment><comment><USER51> 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.

<comment><USER52> > _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'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> 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.

</comment><comment><USER54> 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!

<comment><USER54> 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 :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> 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.

<comment><USER14> I'm not even a parent and I feel like this already.

:(

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> 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.

</comment><comment><USER57> 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.

<comment><AUTHOR> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> 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/)

</comment><comment><USER59> 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.

</comment><comment><USER60> 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.

</comment><comment><USER61> 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.

</comment><comment><USER62> 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.

<comment><USER63> Add all aspects of social media to that, as well.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> #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

</comment><comment><USER65> 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.

<comment><USER63> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> 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!

<comment><AUTHOR> doesn't look like a valid link !

<comment><USER66> 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)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> 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.

</comment><comment><USER68> 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.

<comment><USER69> How did you find the mental energy to come up with a new business idea and what was your inspiration/idea?

<comment><USER68> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> 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!

</comment><comment><USER71> 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.

<comment><USER72> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> 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.

<comment><USER74> 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.

<comment><USER73> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> 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.

</comment><comment><USER76> 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.

</comment><comment><USER77> 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.

</comment><comment><USER78> 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)

</comment><comment><USER79> 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.

<comment><USER80> Golden comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> (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.

</comment><comment><USER82> 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 :)

<comment> 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.

<comment><USER83> 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)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> > 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.

</comment><comment><USER85> 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/#/)

</comment><comment><USER86> 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.

</comment><comment><USER87> 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.

</comment><comment><USER88> 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)

<comment><USER89> It's reversible, just not overnight. Start today and don't give up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> 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.

</comment><comment><USER91> 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.

</comment><comment><USER92> 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.

</comment><comment><USER93> 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.

</comment><comment><USER94> 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.

</comment><comment><USER95> 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.

</comment><comment><USER96> 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.

<comment><AUTHOR> very good point on mental state !

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> 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!

</comment><comment><USER72> 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.

</comment><comment><USER98> 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.

</comment><comment><USER99> 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.

</comment><comment><USER15> 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.

</comment><comment> 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 - <USER4> 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!

</comment><comment><USER100> 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.

</comment><comment> 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.

</comment><comment><USER101> 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.

</comment><comment><USER102> 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.

</comment><comment><USER103> 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.

</comment><comment><USER104> 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.

</comment><comment><USER105> 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.

</comment><comment><USER106> 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.

</comment><comment><USER107> 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.

</comment><comment><USER108> 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.

</comment><comment><USER109> 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!

</comment><comment><USER110> 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.

<comment><USER111> 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.

<comment><USER110> how did it sacrifice your marriage?

<comment><USER111> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> 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!

<comment><USER63> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> 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.

</comment><comment><USER114> 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.

</comment><comment><USER115> 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 - <USER5> 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.

</comment><comment><USER116> 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 :-) )

</comment><comment><USER117> 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.

</comment><comment><USER118> 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!

</comment><comment><USER119> 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 - <USER6> the kid will be just fine, i.e. with enough energy to do it to you again, no problem.

</comment><comment><USER120> 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.

</comment><comment><USER121> 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.

</comment><comment><USER122> 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

</comment><comment><USER123> 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.

</comment><comment><USER124> 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.

</comment><comment><USER125> 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.

</comment><comment><USER126> 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.

</comment><comment><USER127> 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.

<comment><USER126> Its one thing to be busy and its another to be productive. Be productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER128> 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 :-)

</comment><comment><USER129> 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.

</comment><comment><USER130> 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.

</comment><comment><USER131> 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.

</comment><comment><USER132> 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.

</comment><comment><USER133> 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.

</comment><comment><USER134> 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.

</comment><comment><USER135> 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!

</comment><comment><USER136> 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!

</comment><comment><USER137> 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.

</comment><comment><USER138> 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)

</comment><comment><USER139> 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.

</comment><comment><USER140> 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.

</comment><comment><USER141> 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.

</comment><comment><USER142> 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.

</comment><comment><USER143> 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...

</comment><comment><USER144> 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.

</comment><comment><USER145> > 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 ;)

</comment><comment><USER146> 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.

</comment><comment><USER147> 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.

</comment><comment><USER148> 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.

</comment><comment><USER149> 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.

</comment><comment><USER150> >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.

</comment><comment><USER151> 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.

</comment><comment><USER152> 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.

</comment><comment><USER153> 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...

</comment><comment><USER154> 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.

</comment><comment><USER155> 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.

</comment><comment><USER156> 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)

</comment><comment><USER157> 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?

</comment><comment><USER29> 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.

</comment><comment><USER158> 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)

</comment><comment><USER159> 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.

<comment><USER160> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER161> 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!

</comment><comment><USER162> 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

</comment><comment><USER163> 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.

</comment><comment><USER164> 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.

</comment><comment><USER165> 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.

</comment><comment><USER166> 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.

</comment><comment><USER167> 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.

</comment><comment><USER168> > 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.

</comment><comment><USER169> 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.

</comment><comment><USER170> 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.

</comment><comment><USER171> 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.

</comment><comment><USER172> 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 :)

</comment><comment><USER173> 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.

</comment><comment><USER174> 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.

</comment><comment><USER175> 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 :-)

</comment><comment><USER176> 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.

</comment><comment><USER177> 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.

</comment><comment><USER178> 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.

</comment><comment><USER179> 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..

</comment><comment><USER180> 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.

</comment><comment><USER181> 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.

</comment><comment><USER41> 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?

</comment><comment><USER182> 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.

</comment><comment><USER183> 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.

</comment><comment><USER184> 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.

</comment><comment><USER185> 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.

</comment><comment><USER186> 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.

</comment><comment><USER187> 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.

</comment><comment><USER188> 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.

</comment><comment><USER189> 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.

</comment><comment><USER190> The secret is to wake up very early before anyone else to get anything you want done.

</comment><comment><USER191> 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!

</comment><comment><USER192> 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.

</comment><comment><USER193> 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.

</comment><comment><USER194> 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 :)

</comment><comment><USER195> 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.

</comment><comment><USER196> 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.

</comment><comment><USER197> 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.

</comment><comment><USER198> 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!

</comment><comment><USER199> 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

</comment><comment><USER200> Pick your day job carefully and tend the garden that is your career.

</comment><comment><USER201> No-one ever mentions their github account graph on their deathbed.

</comment><comment><USER202> 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.

</comment><comment><USER203> 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.

</comment><comment><USER204> 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.

</comment><comment><USER205> 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.

</comment><comment><USER206> 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.

</comment><comment><USER207> 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.

</comment><comment><USER208> 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.

</comment><comment> 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.

</comment><comment><USER209> It's really hard for the first few years while the kids are very young but it gets easier. I wouldn't worry.

</comment><comment><USER210> Whoever wrote that is an ______. Fill in appropriate derogatory term here.

Having kids and being productive are not mutually exclusive.

</comment><comment><USER211> Make time and have a super-human SO :-)

</comment><comment><USER212> I don't have kids but the answer is: _slowly_ with bursts of focus and concentration.

</comment><comment><USER213> 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.

</comment><comment><USER214> 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.

</comment><comment><USER215> I manage by not starting a family and by not having kids (to my knowledge). Too expensive.

<comment><USER216> wow ty for your valuable feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER217> Dealing with kids increases your capability to deal with managers, so there's that.

</comment><comment><USER218> One shouldn't feel obligated to work long hours just to keep up in the first place

</comment><comment><USER219> Just do good work in the given work hours.

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

</comment><comment><USER220> The solution I see parents of all kinds using is to dump your kid into a school.

<comment><USER63> "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.

<comment><USER220> 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.

<comment><USER63> Couldn't get a read on the short reply, thanks for not bashing me!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER221> 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.

</comment><comment><USER222> 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.

</comment><comment><USER223> One of the more obvious choices, in my opinion, is to have only one child.

</comment><comment><USER224> 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.

</comment><comment><USER225> I have a one year old, and he doesn't let me program.

</comment><comment><USER226> I come to office early (6:30 to 7) and leave early.

</comment><comment><USER227> Any female developers on this thread?

</comment><comment><USER228> I (try to) teach them how to code...

</comment><comment><USER31> 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.

</comment><comment><USER229> 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!

</comment><comment><USER230> With difficulty.

</comment><comment><USER231> I'm 25 and a father of a 5 yr old and a 8 month old. It can be tough - <USER7> 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.

</comment><comment><USER232> 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.

<comment><USER233> 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. ;)

<comment><USER234> 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!

<comment><USER233> 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._

<comment><USER235> Your boys will feel fucked up and unloved because you don't invite them on to your teleconferences?

<comment><USER41> No, it's because suddenly their parent is ignoring them for no reason they can understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER236> 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!).

</comment><comment><USER237> 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.

</comment><comment><USER238> 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.

</comment><comment><USER239> 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.

<comment><AUTHOR> 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 !

</comment></comment><comment><USER240> 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.

</comment><comment><USER241> The most important lesson I learned about motherhood? Be more selfish [http://qz.com/606391/](http://qz.com/606391/)

</comment><comment><USER242> This whole question makes no sense. How do doctors, lawyers, accountants and every other profession do it? Why are programmers different?

</comment><comment> 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?

</comment><comment><USER243> They want to develop too.. so to the git-mobile, download some game source code, modify everything to rocketjumps and racecars.

</comment><comment><USER244> 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...</comment>