Ask HN: How ambitious were your parents on you?

I know friends who were class/school toppers who either chose differently (joined the family business by choice or pressure) or fate intervened (death in the family) and they had to get to work way too early and pretty much abandoned the option of a education based career.

Over a long run of decades, life is quite crazy. And in some places / circumstances, you do not get much of a choice. Life takes you places before you can think of what to do with it.

It's also the type & direction of ambition that matters, in combination with the child's personal direction of ambition x scaling-influence of the parent's ambition-direction.

A good example of direction would be inward vs. outward. Go make a splash in society! Just DO it!!! Outward-focused, a little bit more shallow at times because it's action & change that matters.

vs.

Look, it feels great to really go to work on yourself, become somebody you can be proud of based on how you respond to what life throws AT you. Inward-focused, a little bit more creepy at times because it's depth and development that matters.

Object focus vs. subject focus.

Then modify each by various aspects. Creativity, social roles, capacity for organization, health.

So just using that as an example, you have 8 types of ambition to refer to. Parents will then be caught generally focusing on one of those 8 types more than others IMO. It is usually their personal area of focus and strength.

If they don't see anything worrying in that ONE area they will generally not care too much--the kid will be alright in their eyes. When you meet people who are really similar to you in terms of strengths and gifts, you tend to breeze right by them, without noticing much.

(Camera then switches to a different household, where parents scream at a kid who's got it all backwards, in their mind)

Despite that I turned out to be ok, got a Computer Science bachelor and master in a really good university via scholarship thanks to good high school grades, immigrated by myself to the USA (San Francisco) from a Mediterranean European country, went through many immigration visas, green card and ultimately citizenship, got several jobs in tech and finance including a FAANG job where I’m currently making > $1M/year, and a very healthy investment portfolio setting me up for financial independence and early retirement (knock on wood).

My brother grew up in my same family, same values and is a lazy bum who in his mid 30s still hasn’t been able to hold a (low paying) job for more than a few months. I love him btw and I do not assume I live a better life than him, he is quite chill while I tend to be constantly stressed. He is a genuine good person.

So go figure if my parents’ approach to raising children was good or not.

My parents were somewhat promoting ambition but not crazy. Required me to get all As and Bs, promoted college, told me I need to get a $100k job out of college (10 years and an MS later I finally make it... in total comp anyways).

However, caretakers urged reading, so I read.

From India.

Parents are high achievers and rather wealthy.

Though I have a cushy job, I personally haven't reached upto my own expectations.

I suspect even my parents think I can do better though they never explicitly said that.

I have two older sisters — one of them was at FAANG in another country. The other is a doctor.

And I'm... a coder here :/

My ambition is FAANG or similar though.

I feel I'm wasting my life.

(FWIW, I went to college in USA).

Of course, my parents wanted me to be a doctor. As a software engineer, I have disappointed them for a life. It doesn’t bother me anymore, they are from different generation where security especially financial security was hard.

There were other pressures too like as kids we were constantly reminded about our duties to take care of them when they are in their old age. And how we will never be able to take care of them because of our average grades, which means we won’t get decent jobs, which means we won’t have enough money to take care of them. I used to worry so much about that I never spent my pocket money. Still bitter about it.

They pressured us but never provided any support. Other kids who did good in the school had tutors, parents were very involved in their lives. My parents just yelled and said work harder.

Same with sports, never played cricket with us. Never even taught us how to play it. But expected 5-7 years olds to know how to play cricket when we met up with our cousins in Pakistan.

But they did want me to be... something. A person who studied hard. A person who had integrity in dealing with others. A person who wasn't getting in trouble. A person who was capable of doing a fair number of things. A person who understood money and handled it fairly wisely. Those were their ambitions for me.

Now that I think of it, that wasn't a bad set of ambitions to have for your kids...

My parents didn't go to college. I was vaguely encouraged to go, but mostly as the token smart child (which itself led to ridicule and isolation from my peer group). I had some teachers guide me into a "gifted" program, but this didn't result in much because the schools in my town had so few resources. My parents were never involved in my schooling/homework, and even actively discouraged some extracurriculars.

Any encouragement I did have seemed to be from antiquated notions of success. E.g. "you'll never become anything if you don't go to college". I think many of our parents genuinely don't understand the world today and, even if they have good intentions, can sabotage their children.

What freaks me out is that I had the same exact upbringing as all of my siblings/peers, but turned out way different because of <unexplained??>. I disowned my family, moved to the big city, I'm in a loving long-term relationship and staring at a cool $1m+ in the bank. And I'm not even 30! I'm proud of me.

Using a throwaway acct. I like telling this story but it's a little too personal.