7 ms·

Kids and Time

53 points by luu 6y ago

carlivar 6y ago
I think this is why it's no coincidence that people often become people managers around the same time they have kids. Not only are you consistently managing people at home and work, it tends to be a more steady 9 to 5 job with less late night passionate coding or such required. Or that could just be my experience.
- jefftk 6y ago
  For what it's worth, that hasn't been my experience. I've been working ~9-5:30 as a programmer for my whole career (2008-present) with essentially no late night coding. I think that's been very typical at the places I've worked (defense contractor, mature startup, Google, startup, Google). I do think the fraction of managers with kids is higher, but I suspect this is just explained by managers generally being older?
  - carlivar 6y ago
    Perhaps just different personality types. I have never worked well technically productive in an office. I view that as planning, reviewing, conversational time. I just love working on things at night. My brain feels optimized at that time. But kids stopped allowing me that window, which wasn't necessarily 9pm-2am or something. More like 3pm-midnight.
    - itsspring 6y ago
      I’m the same way. It’s like I am more awake after 3pm and ready to finally start working. I do drink caffeine, which helps
    - nerdponx 6y ago
      For me it's some combination of the darkness and less "other stuff happening". Otherwise I just want to go outside and otherwise get distracted by the hustle and bustle of humanity.
  - cerberusss 6y ago
    Yup, me too. I can count the number of times I had to work late on two hands. I live in Europe, though.
    - nerdponx 6y ago
      I almost never have to work late. But historically I've found myself doing it anyway, either due to poor personal time management, or being really excited about solving a problem, or just because I didn't feel like my brain was working properly during the morning. I've worked pretty hard to adjust my schedule to something I consider more stable and sustainable, but I know I'm not alone in functioning this way. I'm sure having kids is a powerful incentive to adjust more rapidly and more completely.
  - baxtr 6y ago
    Yes I agree. I think it is just a statistical coincidence
- battery423 6y ago
  I have never heard that before and plenty of my colleagues, developers, have family. I also know plenty of managers without family.
- ssss11 6y ago
  I went the other way! No more babysitting adults and spending all day and night married to work, more time for the kids.
- johnatwork 6y ago
  I've actually went the other way, soon after my first kid was born, I had to stop being a manager pulling late nights, mulling over company issues during off-hours, and having work issues get to me. I found it less stressful and better on my mental health to go back to becoming a programmer, although I have also made a bigger effort to leave work at work.
- watwut 6y ago
  In companies I worked in, the people who did late night coding were minority and they also tended to be people who come in very late in the morning. The kids force you to come to work sooner, so that you can pick them up at reasonable time. But unless there was systematic crunch, programmers tended to come and leave regularly. Systematic crunch also lead to big turnover, most people did not stayed in that situation. Management had less freedom due to meetings and calls with customers being at more random times.
- zeroonetwothree 6y ago
  I think it’s the opposite. Managers have more rigid schedules and less flexibility with remote work. If I want to be home at 2pm it’s much easier as an eng than a manager. Maybe depends on your employer though
082349872349872 6y ago
cf Barber, "Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years" Part of her thesis is that weaving and textiles have been stereotypical occupations for the distaff gender because they can be done in a single location and are interruptible, making them very suitable for child-rearing.
- garmaine 6y ago
  Speaking as an (amateur) archeologist, weaving and textiles are traditionally female jobs in most societies because it requires fine work by small, dexterous hands. I'd say a connection to child-rearing is reaching beyond the obvious.
  - thrwaway69 6y ago
    Men can't have small dexterous soft hands?
    - mbrameld 6y ago
      Only in the same way that women can't have beards.
      - anthk 6y ago
        And the same way men can't be pianists. Oh, wait...
    - adrianN 6y ago
      In the same way that some women can be stronger than average men, but female soldiers are very rare historically.
      - watwut 6y ago
        That is why males cant play in orchestras ... male hands being bigger and stronger does not imply them having less dexterity
  - 6y ago
jvvw 6y ago
I'd like to see his partner's figures too!
- jefftk 6y ago
  We've done time-tracking a few times as a couple to figure out whether we're splitting things fairly: * 2011: https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division (no kids yet) * 2015: https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division-ii https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division-ii (18m) * 2017: https://www.jefftk.com/p/december-2017-time-tracking https://www.jefftk.com/p/december-2017-time-tracking (3y and 1y) I think the increase in time has likely affected both of us similarly, but we haven't timed another week.
baxtr 6y ago
> Overall I'm enjoying having more time for projects, though I do miss some things about very little kids. I might have an idea to solve that one!
monkeydust 6y ago
With a 3 and 1 year old me and my wife are or on cusp of earlier bedtimes - will be a magic moment as our free time will shoot back up - we have told ourselves we will not just use it to talk about the kids or watch netflix ...lets see!
luxurytent 6y ago
I see a lot of new parents struggling to fit time in for code in those early days. The odd Ruby tweet mixed in with spit-up talk. It took me a good 3 1/2 years to finally get into the right routine, both physically and mentally. Our kid's great (another one on the way in Sept) but we really struggled with a consistent bed time routine that was healthy for all sides for a long time. We're in a good place now but I imagine, just like us, many parents fail to realize that every child has different needs and sometimes, you've gotta ride it out quite differently. As an aside, the pandemic sure has helped us get into a more rigid routine. We have the odd late night for our kid but otherwise, the house is clean (as can be) and kid's in bed by 8pm. A silver lining in all this mess.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  For what it's worth, two kids is not 2x the work. More like 4x. You will need to step up your game :).
  - war1025 6y ago
    We had twins for our second round, so we hopped straight from one to three. Infant twins are about the most exhausting thing I have ever experienced. But now that they're bigger (4, 2, and 2) they're pretty easy to deal with. I can see how having two might be a lot of work since you could feasibly try to maintain the same level of hands-on as with one. With three, that level of commitment is just impossible, so you learn to strategically ignore your kids and let them figure things out for themselves. It's pretty great though. Couldn't imagine a world without them at this point.
    - zeroonetwothree 6y ago
      My twins didn’t get easier till 4 or 5. 2-3 was actually even harder than infancy.
      - rootusrootus 6y ago
        I maintain that there is a vast conspiracy amongst parents not to tell new parents about the threes. Sure, we will chuckle about the terrible twos, but there is this implication that it will get better after that. Ha! The threes are just like the terrible twos, except now they have intent. If we told people what the threes were like, they might never have kids :). I'm only kinda kidding...
meristem 6y ago
We have twins in elementary/primary school--anything I say is couched on that reality. We found that having them sleep through the night, go to the bathroom in middle of night by themselves, and wake up themselves, freed some energy. They also are in bed asleep before 8:30, which frees some time. The primary issue for us in terms of "free time" is the quality of the free time. It happens when our circadian rhythms are in the downhill stage. And it happens in shorter chunks than the "ideal" chunk for creative and flow-driven work. The pandemic & having them at home has exacerbated these issues. PS: If you have young twins or are about to have them, it is true that feeling normal happens when they are 5, and not before. This is much later than if you are having one kid at a time, on average.
- war1025 6y ago
  > it is true that feeling normal happens when they are 5, and not before. As the father of a 4 year old and twin 2 year olds, curious what you mean by this. Feeling normal in what way?
  - meristem 6y ago
    Would love to answer-- can you tell me more about your curiosity?

53 points by luu 6y ago

I think this is why it's no coincidence that people often become people managers around the same time they have kids. Not only are you consistently managing people at home and work, it tends to be a more steady 9 to 5 job with less late night passionate coding or such required. Or that could just be my experience.

jefftk 6y ago
For what it's worth, that hasn't been my experience. I've been working ~9-5:30 as a programmer for my whole career (2008-present) with essentially no late night coding. I think that's been very typical at the places I've worked (defense contractor, mature startup, Google, startup, Google). I do think the fraction of managers with kids is higher, but I suspect this is just explained by managers generally being older?
- carlivar 6y ago
  Perhaps just different personality types. I have never worked well technically productive in an office. I view that as planning, reviewing, conversational time. I just love working on things at night. My brain feels optimized at that time. But kids stopped allowing me that window, which wasn't necessarily 9pm-2am or something. More like 3pm-midnight.
  - itsspring 6y ago
    I’m the same way. It’s like I am more awake after 3pm and ready to finally start working. I do drink caffeine, which helps
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    For me it's some combination of the darkness and less "other stuff happening". Otherwise I just want to go outside and otherwise get distracted by the hustle and bustle of humanity.
- cerberusss 6y ago
  Yup, me too. I can count the number of times I had to work late on two hands. I live in Europe, though.
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    I almost never have to work late. But historically I've found myself doing it anyway, either due to poor personal time management, or being really excited about solving a problem, or just because I didn't feel like my brain was working properly during the morning. I've worked pretty hard to adjust my schedule to something I consider more stable and sustainable, but I know I'm not alone in functioning this way. I'm sure having kids is a powerful incentive to adjust more rapidly and more completely.
- baxtr 6y ago
  Yes I agree. I think it is just a statistical coincidence
battery423 6y ago
I have never heard that before and plenty of my colleagues, developers, have family. I also know plenty of managers without family.
ssss11 6y ago
I went the other way! No more babysitting adults and spending all day and night married to work, more time for the kids.
johnatwork 6y ago
I've actually went the other way, soon after my first kid was born, I had to stop being a manager pulling late nights, mulling over company issues during off-hours, and having work issues get to me. I found it less stressful and better on my mental health to go back to becoming a programmer, although I have also made a bigger effort to leave work at work.
watwut 6y ago
In companies I worked in, the people who did late night coding were minority and they also tended to be people who come in very late in the morning. The kids force you to come to work sooner, so that you can pick them up at reasonable time. But unless there was systematic crunch, programmers tended to come and leave regularly. Systematic crunch also lead to big turnover, most people did not stayed in that situation. Management had less freedom due to meetings and calls with customers being at more random times.
zeroonetwothree 6y ago
I think it’s the opposite. Managers have more rigid schedules and less flexibility with remote work. If I want to be home at 2pm it’s much easier as an eng than a manager. Maybe depends on your employer though

082349872349872 6y ago

cf Barber, "Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years" Part of her thesis is that weaving and textiles have been stereotypical occupations for the distaff gender because they can be done in a single location and are interruptible, making them very suitable for child-rearing.

garmaine 6y ago
Speaking as an (amateur) archeologist, weaving and textiles are traditionally female jobs in most societies because it requires fine work by small, dexterous hands. I'd say a connection to child-rearing is reaching beyond the obvious.
- thrwaway69 6y ago
  Men can't have small dexterous soft hands?
  - mbrameld 6y ago
    Only in the same way that women can't have beards.
    - anthk 6y ago
      And the same way men can't be pianists. Oh, wait...
  - adrianN 6y ago
    In the same way that some women can be stronger than average men, but female soldiers are very rare historically.
    - watwut 6y ago
      That is why males cant play in orchestras ... male hands being bigger and stronger does not imply them having less dexterity
- 6y ago

jvvw 6y ago

I'd like to see his partner's figures too!

jefftk 6y ago
We've done time-tracking a few times as a couple to figure out whether we're splitting things fairly: * 2011: https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division (no kids yet) * 2015: https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division-ii https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division-ii (18m) * 2017: https://www.jefftk.com/p/december-2017-time-tracking https://www.jefftk.com/p/december-2017-time-tracking (3y and 1y) I think the increase in time has likely affected both of us similarly, but we haven't timed another week.

baxtr 6y ago

> Overall I'm enjoying having more time for projects, though I do miss some things about very little kids. I might have an idea to solve that one!

monkeydust 6y ago

With a 3 and 1 year old me and my wife are or on cusp of earlier bedtimes - will be a magic moment as our free time will shoot back up - we have told ourselves we will not just use it to talk about the kids or watch netflix ...lets see!

luxurytent 6y ago

I see a lot of new parents struggling to fit time in for code in those early days. The odd Ruby tweet mixed in with spit-up talk. It took me a good 3 1/2 years to finally get into the right routine, both physically and mentally. Our kid's great (another one on the way in Sept) but we really struggled with a consistent bed time routine that was healthy for all sides for a long time. We're in a good place now but I imagine, just like us, many parents fail to realize that every child has different needs and sometimes, you've gotta ride it out quite differently. As an aside, the pandemic sure has helped us get into a more rigid routine. We have the odd late night for our kid but otherwise, the house is clean (as can be) and kid's in bed by 8pm. A silver lining in all this mess.

rootusrootus 6y ago
For what it's worth, two kids is not 2x the work. More like 4x. You will need to step up your game :).
- war1025 6y ago
  We had twins for our second round, so we hopped straight from one to three. Infant twins are about the most exhausting thing I have ever experienced. But now that they're bigger (4, 2, and 2) they're pretty easy to deal with. I can see how having two might be a lot of work since you could feasibly try to maintain the same level of hands-on as with one. With three, that level of commitment is just impossible, so you learn to strategically ignore your kids and let them figure things out for themselves. It's pretty great though. Couldn't imagine a world without them at this point.
  - zeroonetwothree 6y ago
    My twins didn’t get easier till 4 or 5. 2-3 was actually even harder than infancy.
    - rootusrootus 6y ago
      I maintain that there is a vast conspiracy amongst parents not to tell new parents about the threes. Sure, we will chuckle about the terrible twos, but there is this implication that it will get better after that. Ha! The threes are just like the terrible twos, except now they have intent. If we told people what the threes were like, they might never have kids :). I'm only kinda kidding...

meristem 6y ago

We have twins in elementary/primary school--anything I say is couched on that reality. We found that having them sleep through the night, go to the bathroom in middle of night by themselves, and wake up themselves, freed some energy. They also are in bed asleep before 8:30, which frees some time. The primary issue for us in terms of "free time" is the quality of the free time. It happens when our circadian rhythms are in the downhill stage. And it happens in shorter chunks than the "ideal" chunk for creative and flow-driven work. The pandemic & having them at home has exacerbated these issues. PS: If you have young twins or are about to have them, it is true that feeling normal happens when they are 5, and not before. This is much later than if you are having one kid at a time, on average.

war1025 6y ago
> it is true that feeling normal happens when they are 5, and not before. As the father of a 4 year old and twin 2 year olds, curious what you mean by this. Feeling normal in what way?
- meristem 6y ago
  Would love to answer-- can you tell me more about your curiosity?