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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 tha

by laoba 10y ago

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.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
This was the specific comment I was scanning in the thread hoping to find! Well put.
rev_bird 10y ago
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.
- wy100101 10y ago
  I would be worrying about the nature of the job I had if it wasn't allowing you actual career growth from doing your job. Maybe this is the exception, but the challenges I've had to solve at work dwarf anything I've done outside work. It feels like people get too hung up on keeping up with the new shiny when honestly, it is all about fundamentals. Anyone can pickup a new technology if they understand the design and architecture of systems/software.
- ern 10y ago
  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.
  - rev_bird 10y ago
    I'm way late to your response, but just wanted to thank you for taking the time to write this out. It's probably the most convincing argument against "BS status signaling" I can remember reading.
  - cholantesh 10y ago
    >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.
    - thatwebdude 10y ago
      You're right, it is pretty fucked up. A rat race, really. I appreciate what parenting has done to me, it's re-prioritized things for me, but it's also shown me that I should make an exit in the next five years, to save myself some sanity.
snuxoll 10y ago
Most people on HN spend 8 hours or more a day writing code, myself included. I enjoy programming, but there's things I'd rather be doing with my time after I've clocked out most days. Being with my daughter is probably one of the reasons I love my job, I get to work from home and my wife and daughter stay at home with me so I get to hang out with them on break/lunch, and there's no time lost with them on a commute. I don't work for the sake of work, but so that I can enjoy the other ~67 hours a week I'm awake with my family.
- deckiedan 10y ago
  Well, I think many of us on HN would not mind too much spending 8 hours a day writing code, but actually end up maybe if we're lucky spending 2 hours a day maximum writing code, and the rest is meetings, rebooting computers, trying to reproduce ill-written bug reports, reviewing others' code, reading docs, watching a test suite run flawlessly and then cursing because it's not catching a bug we know is there, installing software updates, reading some awful wordpress plugin code that the boss installed on the team blog to figure out why it broke on firefox but not IE8... Coding is quite fun. A lot of the related guff that is part of software engineering in 'the real world' is quite frustrating.

by laoba 10y ago

toomuchtodo 10y ago

This was the specific comment I was scanning in the thread hoping to find! Well put.

rev_bird 10y ago

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.

wy100101 10y ago
I would be worrying about the nature of the job I had if it wasn't allowing you actual career growth from doing your job. Maybe this is the exception, but the challenges I've had to solve at work dwarf anything I've done outside work. It feels like people get too hung up on keeping up with the new shiny when honestly, it is all about fundamentals. Anyone can pickup a new technology if they understand the design and architecture of systems/software.
ern 10y ago
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.
- rev_bird 10y ago
  I'm way late to your response, but just wanted to thank you for taking the time to write this out. It's probably the most convincing argument against "BS status signaling" I can remember reading.
- cholantesh 10y ago
  >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.
  - thatwebdude 10y ago
    You're right, it is pretty fucked up. A rat race, really. I appreciate what parenting has done to me, it's re-prioritized things for me, but it's also shown me that I should make an exit in the next five years, to save myself some sanity.

snuxoll 10y ago

Most people on HN spend 8 hours or more a day writing code, myself included. I enjoy programming, but there's things I'd rather be doing with my time after I've clocked out most days. Being with my daughter is probably one of the reasons I love my job, I get to work from home and my wife and daughter stay at home with me so I get to hang out with them on break/lunch, and there's no time lost with them on a commute. I don't work for the sake of work, but so that I can enjoy the other ~67 hours a week I'm awake with my family.

deckiedan 10y ago
Well, I think many of us on HN would not mind too much spending 8 hours a day writing code, but actually end up maybe if we're lucky spending 2 hours a day maximum writing code, and the rest is meetings, rebooting computers, trying to reproduce ill-written bug reports, reviewing others' code, reading docs, watching a test suite run flawlessly and then cursing because it's not catching a bug we know is there, installing software updates, reading some awful wordpress plugin code that the boss installed on the team blog to figure out why it broke on firefox but not IE8... Coding is quite fun. A lot of the related guff that is part of software engineering in 'the real world' is quite frustrating.