Ask HN: Did your life as a parent affected your life as a developer?

My plan basically. Only step 5 to go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think it's just tough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1) sleep (a normal amount, not extra)

2) being an OK parent

3) a house that is almost always fairly clean

4) side projects/learning

5) friends

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

7) actual solo leisure time

Pick four. :-/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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