Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

It seems like a kid should be more important than being the best worker imo. Seems like sensible priorities. I don't have a kid though.

Your career isn't necessarily your job. If you work somewhere where they judge you for having kids then it might be best to move on. Do they judge people with hobbies, pets or drinking habits a similar way? The only time that is an issue is in industries where you genuinely need to work a lot of hours, which are few. Trading desk, pilot or surgeon springs to mind.

Also if a company requires you to do 60 hours of coding instead of 40 and it's just JIRA tasks adding feature X Y Z then those extra 20 hours don't help your career at all, but if you did a 40 hour job and spent 10 hours learning carefully selected skills in your spare time that would help your career a lot over time.

I'm still somewhat early in my career. I have 2 toddlers.

I don't know how others perceive me but I know I'm not able to give nearly as much to work as I would without kids. When I last interviewed for jobs, I was asked about my side projects. I made the joke, "I have kids, they are my side project, haha," and I think he understood.

This is in the short-term though. I suspect that long-term my career will be better than it would've been without kids b/c I think I will be overall happier with kids than without, and I'll be forced to make better life choices like go to bed on time, etc. To be clear I didn't have children so my career would be better :D

I have a 1yr old and a 2yr old. I definitely struggle to find a balance some days because the kids are super needy and I always want to go heads down at my job. Perhaps if I worked out of the house I may be writing something different now.

Yes. Without question.

It's worth it. It forces you to shift what you care about, and career path is one of those things you have to think differently about. That's also worthy of having kids.

To get where you want to go you often have to go where you don't want to go.

Yes, 100% completely. Once I had my kids, I was never as productive as I was pre-kids.

But it was completely worth it.

  Ever since i have had a kid, I have started asking the reverse question; Is my career dragging my parenting down?

I always wanted be a good dad, whatever that means to each one of us, my career choices started showing up in conflict. I had to make choices. Overall, over the past few years having a kid really made me think about my priorities. It made me focus and plan more and improved my ability to do more in less time. The first few years are hard and you will not be able to give as much time to your career if you want to spend that time with your child and spouse in constructive ways. Which is fine because the career is 40 yrs long. My conclusion is that I chose to have kids and now I will work on maintaining that relationship because at end of the day you can change jobs, go to a place that recognises people have lives, do something else in your life apart from your current career (you never know), but your kid is your kid and not someone else's and the early years will not come back again. As for my experience with my manager - As long as i get the work done, my place of work doesn't care about being seated in office. With Work From Home now taking off there are plans of making this semi permanent even if things go back to normal. Edit: formatting

> Less hours means less dedication in the eyes of management.

You need to change jobs. I work for a fortune 100 company that is extremely supportive of kids and families. They don’t just talk the talk, but they actually walk the walk.

I'm the CTO of a small company (about a dozen people), and I don't know that my career has been hurt, but I've certainly had to reprioritize. Doing dev work, where the occasional task can take 30m to 30h, and you have to be focused for hours on end, is less practical when you have to rush out for daycare pickup, have a toddler jumping on you, or try to work during nap time which often ends earlier than you'd like. Consequently I find myself doing a lot more business development, product planning and people management. I still write some code, even if it's often more efficient to delegate. I like to keep my skills up to date and to not become slowly ignorant of my own company (a problem I've seen plenty of times before).

One way it's helped, is it's a really easy topic to bring up with clients or on sales calls. It makes me more relatable, and gives a good first impression since people assume I'm at least competent enough to provide basic care to a child.

Kids—I have 3—reinforce attributes that should be valuable in the workforce.

* I ruthlessly prioritize — you have to when you're balancing a family.

* I don't dwell on mistakes – milk, quite literally, is spilled on a daily basis.

* I'm a better manager – kids teach you to be clear and immediate in your feedback, not to mention more empathetic

* I speak better – reading bedtime stories means you practice public speaking every night

A company that measures performance in hours or dedication will not reward those attributes. But the good ones will happily give you flexibility in exchange for good work.

If you're struggling to find a balance, know first that you're not alone. But recognize quickly that your employment environment may be incompatible with family life, and so what's "slowing your career down" is your management... not your kids or your own performance.

In my experience, you have to be more proactive in marketing yourself and your work. I have worked from home for seven years, picking up my three kids every day at 3pm.

It feels like you are always falling behind. But overall, I have found myself doing okay relative to my peers, while cultivating a solid family schedule and focus. Everyone is different, but the times I have lost out in office politics are far outweighed by the other things in my life.

Being a parent helps build a skill set that can help you level up your career - if your employer values them. It can also make you less interested in that advancement. My own anecdote:

I have two kids (3 and 1). I’ve experienced a bit of a leap in soft skills; empathy, mentorship, and patience, to name a few. This has corresponded with me taking on many more leadership responsibilities in my team, and being recognized as a go-to thought partner and interestingly as an authority on technical matters.

I took 6 months of parental leave for the second child (I know, incredibly generous). I came back and received an “exceeds expectations rating”.

I have colleagues who are also parents. Several of them are “staff engineers”, the highest level of recognition at our company.

On the other hand, I turned down a promotion as I felt I’m already giving all I have time for/didn’t have bandwidth for the extra responsibilities. I’m happy with my current compensation and responsibility set, especially as it allows me to spend time with my family.

At the places where I worked, the people who pushed and shoved to get into the higher paying jobs, or changed jobs for more money, without exception, all had kids. So there's a tradeoff. You will have less spare time, but possibly more economic motivation and career focus. But you might have to find a job where you are not measured by hours in front of a screen. That might ultimately be a good thing anyway.

I have been promoted regularly since becoming a parent.

In my experience, once I moved in with someone that had kids and I started talking about family at work, it seamed like I got bigger raises and better promotions. Whereas pre-family, I was seen as "just a kid, a smart one, but still just a kid". After I was treated as an adult.

No. Well... no. My first kid was born in 2006. I left a big 4 accounting firm after an acquisition in '10. Tried to do a start up with a friend... Health food delivery in Oakland in 2010, without any connection to any of the big VCs. Failed. Second kid was born the fall of '10, third in Winter '13.

Looking at raw income numbers, I was making 85k in '06, 75k in '10 (had to find a job quickly after the startup failed - insurance needed for the child birth!) and around 95k in '13. I'm making around 280k right now, so I think I'm on track regardless of having kids or not. A key to my income is that once I stopped working in an office and got rid of my ~75 minute one way commute, I started a part time job, remote software development. That was project based, not raw hours, and since then my primary job has also changed to project based, not raw hours. I'm not killing myself each week like a lot of stories I hear. On a real busy week I'll do about 50 to 55 hours.

Now, another measure to consider, I have coached little league for about 5 years, travel softball for 2.5. My busiest season was fall '19 where I coached little league, ran the LL skill building clinic, head coached a travel team (10u) and assistant coached my older daughters 14u team.

I'm starting jiu-jitsu next week with my son. I've reduced the amount of coaching down to just two teams total. No head coaching.

My advice: prolab caffeine pills!

I work at Google and usually taking parental leave or even simple paid time-off are not supposed to be penalized. Come performance review season, if you've been absent for 4 out of 6 months in that review cycle, you are usually prorated and evaluated for the 2 months you’ve been around as if that work has sustained for the whole cycle. How much of this we can prove (that it doesn't impact ratings or promotions)? Probably not a lot. You’ll find that no company is willing to share that data to save their bacon.

What's interesting is that I have observed the opposite in my career. I have often seen that employees who have children are afforded more flexibility, shorter hours, and less work than those who do not have children. While I understand these are necessary if you have children, a disproportionate amount of work and higher expectations are given to those without children in my office. For example, if you have a child, that is a perfectly acceptable reason to work from home, but simply wanting to work remotely is not accepted. Do I need to have a child to work from home (especially because I can't have children...lol)? Anyway, this is obviously not a universal experience across companies (and trust me I'm happy that parents have these perks at my company), but I do find it frustrating when someone is expected to stay at the office until midnight because "what else would they do" if they don't have children lol. Basically, everyone should have less work, more flexible schedules, and realistic expectations given to them regardless of their personal life.

Not for me. It's turbocharged my career. It helps that I'm at the level where management isn't seeing my contribution as hours in a chair. Having kids gave me something in common with all of our senior management. Anecdotally, that improved relationship has been a hell of a boost for my career success.

It certainly will depend on your individual situation. If your management is all childless workaholics, I can see how it would totally count against you.

When you start the actual construction of a structure you may begin to fret that the amount of time you are able to devote to erecting the scaffolding around it is now in decline.

This is by design. The structure was always the goal.

"watch the kid" -- I think you spelled "be a parent" wrong.

I don't know where you are in your career, or what your expectation is of a career, but there are lots of companies out there where you can do interesting things, be well paid, and have time to balance your work and family life. You just need to look for it just like you were looking for a higher salary, more responsibility, or even use of a particular technology.

Asking about it at an interview may get you an answer, or rather, anything but an emphatic "yes" with some examples may be a strong negative sign. But I think the key thing is to decide what you want out of both a career and a family, and to find the job that puts you on that path.

who gives a fuck about making the man money. Enjoy your life, nobody who matters gives a shit about your job title.

I think too many people are obsessed with making "all of the money", when just "some of the money" leads to a better lifestyle.

That being said: People with kids get fired much more rarely, tend to get the promotions, have much more understanding around missing work, and parents tend to watch out for eachother.

I would not obsess about your employer's rating too much. Look at the economic perspective. I did this as an economic analysis some time ago for myself. (It was not kids, but another commitment in my case.) Your employer is a just a customer for your services. A lot of people forget that not only has the employment relationship to be beneficial to your employer, it has to be profitable to you as well. And profitability in your case, is not just the net money you make from the job. It is also the hedonic value you derive from NOT working, but instead spending that time with your kids. And the value of that you will find is very large. Not only will you derive enjoyment from the hours actually spent with them, you will be setting up the kids to have a happy healthy and productive life in the future and a having a great relationship with you. The economic value of helping raise a successful, well-adjusted adult is very very large. Compare that with the economic value of a slightly better rating. Even in economic terms, paying attention to your kids should be a no brainer.

But for kids, what is the point of a career?

Perhaps my POV is old-fashioned, but real honestly, the only reason I went to school, obtained a professional degree, and made fat stacks of Benjamins was to get a good wife (and then kids, etc.)

If that was not my plan, I would have lived in a shack on the beach and smoked dope all day.

Of course they do! You want to spend every minute you can with them and start cutting whatever corners you can with everything else.