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 The downside of our market is that knowledge gets outdated fast.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 :)
Please don't make up generalizations about HN for rhetorical purposes. There's no "usual HN moral". It's a large community.
The thread doesn't seem to me to fit your description, but even if it did, the OP asked specifically for helping about keeping his skills up. That's a perfectly legitimate question, and no one deserves to be slurred as a "workaholic" for caring about it or sharing their approach.
Questions about family are deeply emotional and tug on all our ideas about who we are. HN's civility rule requires us to respect each other's differences and not resort to blame or self-righteousness.
I agree with your comments about "workaholic" and the "usual HN moral". I'll be better.
I disagree with your implication that my comment does not try to help the OP with keeping his skills up. I think it's a very legitimate question and my advice is to try and find a challenging job. I don't understand how my comment can be read as a dismissal of the OP's question. It's a great question that I relate to.
Also, I realize now that you read "workaholic" as a slur and probably most people did. For anyone who felt attacked/offended by that: it was not meant that way and I think I mistranslated the term. I did not mean it as a slur and I wrote nearby that I envy the people with that kind of energy / work ethic. I miss the time when I was a workaholic (it was before I became a parent).
I do feel that there is a growing culture of "work over everything" in startup land and I believe that this is a bad thing. When I wrote my comment, most top comments were indeed examples of ways to squeeze every single ounce out of the day (they are again as I write this). I don't understand why you imply that proposing an alterative ("skill-up on the job") is not a legitimate response in that context.
Totally agreed. I find it impossible to work in the afternoons/evenings, because even if you find a moment, it's too hard to concentrate and do meaningful (e.g. hard) stuff.
Make the best of your work hours. The idea of a boring job "for money" and fun/learning stuff afterwards is outdated. Don't waste your life on a boring job. Work time should be when you do fascinating stuff and learn.
I beg to disagree. I don't consider myself a "lucky bastard", but I define my own job(s) and everything I do is fascinating, I learn new things all the time. I don't do boring stuff.
Sure, there are compromises (plenty of people make more money), and it took me a while to get to where I am, but it proves that it is possible and not through luck, but rather a well-thought through approach and careful strategic thinking.
Most of the people working in the software industry are lucky enough to balance the two (getting a job that is paying enough to live a decent live while also not being totally boring). If you are extremely lucky, there is some correlation between fun and pay. Maybe working not as long is harder in SF, but there are other options, it's a compromise.
But lets not forget that for many this is not very their reality. They have a family to feed and not much room to compromise.
If you are not living in a city with plenty of developer jobs available then that's often not possible and you are stuck to the boring job "for money" scheme. Of course you can always relocate but this has its own downsides...
We as developers have privilege to work remotely. Don't excuse yourself saying "I need an office and people around". That's just not true, as you gain so huge amount of perks when you find a remote job it's madness if you don't even try it for a year or two.
If you really go crazy alone you can always find coworking space almost anywhere in the world.
Moreover, constantly look for opportunities. I recently heard very wise words that the best time to change your job is when you are perfectly happy with current one.
If you are not a web developer or DevOps it is very unlikely you have that privilege. I currently do ML/NLP, and my heart is really in embedded. Almost nobody is going to hire me to do either remotely.
I'll add my own anecdote to this. I think the point about getting a better job is spot on. I was working a job for 2 years that wasn't challenging me at all and got to the point that it was almost rote. It was at those times that I felt the need to get intellectual fulfillment by coding outside of work. I was actually able to notice a very significant inverse correlation between the nature of my day job and how interesting it was to my "skill development" outside of work. If you are spending 40 hours a week on challenging technical problems, you should be getting all the skill development you need.
Agreed. I'm only 25 with no kids and single. I still don't program in my off time. I do things I vastly prefer like rock-climb, work-out or just get very, very drunk.
I'm not a rock-star programmer but I can definitely hold my own in the office. And guess who the managers prefer to take to meet clients, me or the guys that spend 120 hours plus infront of a screen.
I'll just add that even if you are able to perform superhuman feats of parenting and coding simultaneously, you will eventually get burned out. I was able to handle both for quite some time, and I've now stretched myself so thin that I don't feel like I'm doing either thing particularly well.
So to keep up with technology is that I sometimes switch from customer (if you have the chance), then you will automically learn new things. Whether they are old or new technologies.
Another thing is try to follow sometimes courses, seminars (hard- and soft skill), during working hours preferably. Then it won't affect your private time.
And if I have time when my 3 kids are in bed, and I still feel the energy to create something. Force myself to keep my side project small, and don't be too hard on yourself when you don't finish it. Because you definitely learned something.
I am one of those people who at least tries to do lots of extra learning. But firstly, it doesn't necessarily have to be programming: I learn things like math, but also other hobbies (e.g. drawing).
But whether I have time to do things "on the side", the BEST thing I do for my professional career is work for myself, and spend time working on projects that push the edge for me. However much "extra time" you put in outside of normal work hours, normal work hours still make up the bulk of your time, so you have to optimize those.
So like I said, I completely agree with your post, I just think it applies equally well to those people who try to cram in more work on the side.
"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.
IMHO, this thread is slowly filling up with stories of enthusiastic workaholic parents making wildly optimistic claims regarding how productive they are.
There's one big thing to note about boring jobs. A little background on me. I'm a full time student taking online courses, I have an 18 month old so he's old enough to now be a handful and need constant monitoring, and I work in forensics which to me is pretty boring. My wife is also a full time student who is in class till 8pm every night and works weekends. I've definitely learned to prioritize and spend much less time doing things that are more a waste of time, but surprisingly enough I love it this way. I take my son to daycare every day, work my butt off at work, learn a ton, pick my son up, come home feed him, play with him, give him a bath and put him to bed at 8pm. After that I sit down and knock out some homework, do some self study, and work on personal projects. If I'm on schedule or ahead of schedule I spend time playing Forza or TitanFall 2, or working on my cars. This usually happens 1-2 days a week, but I've reached the point in my life where that's all I need to make me happy(I'm only 27 though lol).
However, even though my job is boring I love it due to the management. I'm lucky enough to have the type of job that even though it's boring, it offers me a lot of other opportunities to keep me sharp, and puts me in a location with a lot of extremely competent developers and engineers. I learn from my colleagues every single day. I'm also always in some type of training, even if it doesn't directly apply to my position. If there's a nearby course offered in advanced C methodologies, hardware advancements, intrusion system implementation, or anything else I'm honestly interested in, my company is fine with me going.
I understand this is rare to find, but I think if you have the right atmosphere, being on the bleeding edge of development isn't even remotely necessary. In the end you're gonna look back and see what you remember. And the things that will stick out will be time with family, the friends you made, and the impact you made. I gauge my impact based on my family and I couldn't ask for more. My friends and colleagues at work are amazing. And I get to be here for my son for every new thing he experiences.
Also on a side note the best way to learn is to teach. I heard that a long time ago and I'm a huge advocate for it. Because if you can break something complex down to the simplest level then you really know it. Having a son thats always interested in what I'm doing gives me a constant avenue to teach. So I'm always willing to spend time with him showing him new things and watching how quickly he picks them up. He's still young, but I know once he gets to where he wants to learn how to do the stuff I do at work it'll be a huge boost for me professionally. Because then I'll have to push myself even harder to learn more so I can always have something to teach him.
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 :)