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Since you asked, nope. I'm with really young kids, one an infant. So sleep is a luxury. ... and kids are a time sink. I'm also a senior engineering manager,

Since you asked, nope. I'm with really young kids, one an infant. So sleep is a luxury. ... and kids are a time sink. I'm also a senior engineering manager, I don't have to code again in my life if I don't want since I committed to and enjoy the management track. But with that said, here's a few tech I have learned as in really dove into in the last few years by myself that I didn't need to learn for work, golang, angular, typescript, kubernetes, some ML, scikit-learn, J(APL), couchbase, hybrid mobile development with ionic framework, these are just a few that I can think off my head. I started & run the k8s meetup in my city. In the last 5 years, I have probably build 20+ side software projects for the fun of it and currently have 3 brewing in my head right now. Besides wasting time on social media (twitter, facebook, reddit) and watching netflix/prime/hulu like normal folks, I also have the occasionally hobby of minor home repairs (My house is over 100+yrs old), fixing up my "classic car" 85 bmw, and teaching myself the piano. My typical work week is about 50-60hrs. Since March I have been the one to take care of the kids while WFH since my wife is an essential health care worker. So what's the point of telling you all this? I'm not single, not young, now north of 40+. I'm just a doer. Here's what I googled and read up on this weekend, how to repair rotted roof rafter tails because the garage needs work. I was looking at the repair manual of the broken elliptical to see if I can repair too. As for coding, I was building a daycare app before the pandemic put a lid to that and I shelved that for now. Since the pandemic, I have just written toy throw away sim codes to run simulation of whatever that came to my head, predicting the pandemic numbers, housing market, etc. Point is, I can somehow find out a little time here and there to play on the computer, most people can.

haolez 6y ago
You've made time to learn J! That's some commitment. I'm waiting for my first child right now and have recently been into J in my spare time. I'm also a manager now (CTO at a non-startup company).
- segmondy 6y ago
  Yeah, someone mentioned it on here a while ago and I decided to give a go. jsoftware has really amazing resources/free books if you dive into it. It's really enjoyable if you use jupyter cuz you write in literate style so you can remember what the heck you just wrote months down the line. lol. https://github.com/martin-saurer/jkernel-docker https://github.com/martin-saurer/jkernel-docker. yeah for a few months I was addicted to it, and it's the only language where I feel like a sculptor since you are literally sculpting and transforming the array to yield your solution. For me the saddest thing was that I can't bring that experience to other languages,
  - gugagore 6y ago
    MATLAB, NumPy, and a lot of GPU programming (not to mention, Julia) relate to APL and J. You might be surprised by how important what you're learning is to express an efficient computation on a GPU in terms of array operations.
    - segmondy 6y ago
      Yeah, I know NumPy, but what I really enjoy about APL/J that you can only get from those languages is "notation as a tool of thought", something is lost in high level expressive languages.
ivojp 6y ago
Don't forget the part where you translated all 7 Harry Potter novels into flawless Latin because you've been both leaning Latin and brushing up on wizardry on the side.
- segmondy 6y ago
  lol, it's okay, never read harry potter. p/s, I believe I'm very terrible with time management and wish my "ADHD" can keep me focused, but hey, maybe it's what get's me sampling everything.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
aprdm 6y ago
Congrats on "being a doer" but trying to imply that people who aren't are worse developers than those who are is trying to measure the world by your scale. You aren't necessarily a better developer (or person) for doing all of that than those who played videogame for all those hours.
- ghego1 6y ago
  I think he has a good point actually. The word developer itself means someone who builds. So it is natural to assume that someone who enjoys building stuff, even for fun, is a better developer also at work. As any rule, this has exceptions and it's not universal, but it makes sense to think so. And since he's a manager, it perfectly makes sense for him to think so.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Is developer productivity now a binary thing that's 100% if you participate and 0 if you don't? Spending many hours on doing software development does, in fact, make you better at software development than someone who, ceteris paribus, spent that same time playing video games. I feel that "not necessarily" is becoming the 21st century version of "but there's still a chance, right?"
  - aprdm 6y ago
    What is it being better at software development even? There are so many different skills involved in being an effective software developer in a team. I would say for senior+ levels the softskills start being much more important than the technical skill. Plus if you have been doing it for 10 years+ how much more are you going to improve really by coding more hours?
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Software development being a complex, multidimensional skill set makes it even more true that work you put into getting better at it, the better you get. The field is so wide that you could be doing it for 100 years and still keep learning new things that would improve your work. And for senior+ levels, where soft skills start to dominate, you still need to have already become competent at the hard things. Soft skills are means for making things happen, but you have to have a clue which things need to happen, and which don't.
scanny 6y ago
Why do you think that others should live their lives according to the way you live yours?
- EvilEy3 6y ago
  Why do you think that others should adjust to the way you live? Surely kids are a choice. And if you choose kids of career thrn you're bound to be less effective than someone who chose otherwise?
  - zwaps 6y ago
    What if I have kids but am a much better coder than you?
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      What then? Plural of anecdote is not data. The principle that "the more work you put into something, the better you get at it" works in general.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- segmondy 6y ago
  I never implied that, I'm amused at how polarized my comment is, where did I imply that? You can live your life any how you see fit, you don't ever have to code afterwork or touch the computer. I'll just be suspicious about your ability until you prove so
  - scanny 6y ago
    I think it is fair enough that in order to judge someone's competency you need concrete evidence of their ability, I completely agree with you there. Side-projects are useful for doing that, but there are other ways as well. It is entirely reasonable to provide programming tasks or whiteboard interviews or whatever in lieu of going through someones personal project. Using your own lifestyle and tastes as a benchmark is what riles people up. If side-projects are the measure of the man, then there is an expectation of how people should spend their free time. I believe the polarization is coming from how this is expressed, specifically pegging side-projects as the determining factor. People can find joy in their work (programming in our case), but not necessarily want to do the same thing in their free time. This is likely biased as it is coming from someone with no personal projects though :)
civilized 6y ago
The kids aspect of that spiel was incredibly short. Maybe some people have more demanding children than you. But whatever, right? Judge people based on your own life if it works for you. It's as superficially impressive a hobby as any of your others. Of course, I could equally judge you based on my own life experiences. An engineering manager? Pfft, managers are overpaid babysitters who add no value. And I've supervised ADHD dabblers - on the side, while working primarily as an IC. Their flurries of little shiny projects sure do look impressive, especially in meetings and on resumes, but when it comes to building something genuinely new and difficult, and persisting to a high quality finish? MAN, they sure require a LOT of hand-holding. There are plenty of people out there who are completely different from you and yet contribute as much or more than you do. Get over yourself and appreciate human diversity a bit more.
- segmondy 6y ago
  On the kids part, if you need details, bottle feeding multiple times a day, diaper change, shower, meal prep, feeding, reading, coloring, nursery rhymes, you know, the regular child stuff with young kids... Sure, for our last project, I wrote 90% of the e2e integration test because of time crunch, so yeah, I still code if need be. I pretty much stay out of the way since the team understands the details and I pick up the really boring piece. With that said, Im sorry you have had overpaid babysitters that add no value. Go kick rocks because I never said that folks shouldn't have a life outside of coding.
  - civilized 6y ago
    The point, if it wasn't obvious, is that you would find yourself on the receiving end of some pretty unfair judgments if everyone else judged others the way you do. Just because you like to dabble in software in your free time doesn't mean it's the standard everyone should be held to.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kamaal 6y ago
>>So sleep is a luxury. >>My typical work week is about 50-60hrs. >>I'm not single, not young, now north of 40+. I'm just a doer. You are at least 2 decades late to having kids. But that's ok, better late than never. But I'd absolutely recommend partitioning some part of your 60 hour work week and late night Googling, and allocating it to exercise, sleep and relationship. Stuff like heart attacks, brain diseases and divorces tend to wipe out gains made over 30 years. At the end, any amount of hyper productivity makes sense only if its beneficial and sticks to us in some way, like on the longer run. I've been delaying learning ML for a while now, it doesn't seem to matter, basically delaying doing lots of things without payoff many of which will be irrelevant in 5 years. I can't say the same for exercise though.
- segmondy 6y ago
  You're absolute right, I'm doing terrible on the sleep and exercise front and need to do more of those.
haakonhr 6y ago
You aren't a software engineer though. I found that the main thing for me is that what I do after work or for fun has to be different. If I'm working as a software engineer I enjoy not being behind a screen in the evening, whether that means bike maintenance, reading or cooking. Whenever I have had other jobs where the demands were different (more meetings, more operational or just physical jobs) I often want to do programming-related stuff for fun.

haolez 6y ago

You've made time to learn J! That's some commitment. I'm waiting for my first child right now and have recently been into J in my spare time. I'm also a manager now (CTO at a non-startup company).

segmondy 6y ago
Yeah, someone mentioned it on here a while ago and I decided to give a go. jsoftware has really amazing resources/free books if you dive into it. It's really enjoyable if you use jupyter cuz you write in literate style so you can remember what the heck you just wrote months down the line. lol. https://github.com/martin-saurer/jkernel-docker https://github.com/martin-saurer/jkernel-docker. yeah for a few months I was addicted to it, and it's the only language where I feel like a sculptor since you are literally sculpting and transforming the array to yield your solution. For me the saddest thing was that I can't bring that experience to other languages,
- gugagore 6y ago
  MATLAB, NumPy, and a lot of GPU programming (not to mention, Julia) relate to APL and J. You might be surprised by how important what you're learning is to express an efficient computation on a GPU in terms of array operations.
  - segmondy 6y ago
    Yeah, I know NumPy, but what I really enjoy about APL/J that you can only get from those languages is "notation as a tool of thought", something is lost in high level expressive languages.

ivojp 6y ago

Don't forget the part where you translated all 7 Harry Potter novels into flawless Latin because you've been both leaning Latin and brushing up on wizardry on the side.

segmondy 6y ago
lol, it's okay, never read harry potter. p/s, I believe I'm very terrible with time management and wish my "ADHD" can keep me focused, but hey, maybe it's what get's me sampling everything.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

aprdm 6y ago

Congrats on "being a doer" but trying to imply that people who aren't are worse developers than those who are is trying to measure the world by your scale. You aren't necessarily a better developer (or person) for doing all of that than those who played videogame for all those hours.

ghego1 6y ago
I think he has a good point actually. The word developer itself means someone who builds. So it is natural to assume that someone who enjoys building stuff, even for fun, is a better developer also at work. As any rule, this has exceptions and it's not universal, but it makes sense to think so. And since he's a manager, it perfectly makes sense for him to think so.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Is developer productivity now a binary thing that's 100% if you participate and 0 if you don't? Spending many hours on doing software development does, in fact, make you better at software development than someone who, ceteris paribus, spent that same time playing video games. I feel that "not necessarily" is becoming the 21st century version of "but there's still a chance, right?"
- aprdm 6y ago
  What is it being better at software development even? There are so many different skills involved in being an effective software developer in a team. I would say for senior+ levels the softskills start being much more important than the technical skill. Plus if you have been doing it for 10 years+ how much more are you going to improve really by coding more hours?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Software development being a complex, multidimensional skill set makes it even more true that work you put into getting better at it, the better you get. The field is so wide that you could be doing it for 100 years and still keep learning new things that would improve your work. And for senior+ levels, where soft skills start to dominate, you still need to have already become competent at the hard things. Soft skills are means for making things happen, but you have to have a clue which things need to happen, and which don't.

scanny 6y ago

Why do you think that others should live their lives according to the way you live yours?

EvilEy3 6y ago
Why do you think that others should adjust to the way you live? Surely kids are a choice. And if you choose kids of career thrn you're bound to be less effective than someone who chose otherwise?
- zwaps 6y ago
  What if I have kids but am a much better coder than you?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    What then? Plural of anecdote is not data. The principle that "the more work you put into something, the better you get at it" works in general.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
segmondy 6y ago
I never implied that, I'm amused at how polarized my comment is, where did I imply that? You can live your life any how you see fit, you don't ever have to code afterwork or touch the computer. I'll just be suspicious about your ability until you prove so
- scanny 6y ago
  I think it is fair enough that in order to judge someone's competency you need concrete evidence of their ability, I completely agree with you there. Side-projects are useful for doing that, but there are other ways as well. It is entirely reasonable to provide programming tasks or whiteboard interviews or whatever in lieu of going through someones personal project. Using your own lifestyle and tastes as a benchmark is what riles people up. If side-projects are the measure of the man, then there is an expectation of how people should spend their free time. I believe the polarization is coming from how this is expressed, specifically pegging side-projects as the determining factor. People can find joy in their work (programming in our case), but not necessarily want to do the same thing in their free time. This is likely biased as it is coming from someone with no personal projects though :)

civilized 6y ago

The kids aspect of that spiel was incredibly short. Maybe some people have more demanding children than you. But whatever, right? Judge people based on your own life if it works for you. It's as superficially impressive a hobby as any of your others. Of course, I could equally judge you based on my own life experiences. An engineering manager? Pfft, managers are overpaid babysitters who add no value. And I've supervised ADHD dabblers - on the side, while working primarily as an IC. Their flurries of little shiny projects sure do look impressive, especially in meetings and on resumes, but when it comes to building something genuinely new and difficult, and persisting to a high quality finish? MAN, they sure require a LOT of hand-holding. There are plenty of people out there who are completely different from you and yet contribute as much or more than you do. Get over yourself and appreciate human diversity a bit more.

segmondy 6y ago
On the kids part, if you need details, bottle feeding multiple times a day, diaper change, shower, meal prep, feeding, reading, coloring, nursery rhymes, you know, the regular child stuff with young kids... Sure, for our last project, I wrote 90% of the e2e integration test because of time crunch, so yeah, I still code if need be. I pretty much stay out of the way since the team understands the details and I pick up the really boring piece. With that said, Im sorry you have had overpaid babysitters that add no value. Go kick rocks because I never said that folks shouldn't have a life outside of coding.
- civilized 6y ago
  The point, if it wasn't obvious, is that you would find yourself on the receiving end of some pretty unfair judgments if everyone else judged others the way you do. Just because you like to dabble in software in your free time doesn't mean it's the standard everyone should be held to.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

kamaal 6y ago

>>So sleep is a luxury. >>My typical work week is about 50-60hrs. >>I'm not single, not young, now north of 40+. I'm just a doer. You are at least 2 decades late to having kids. But that's ok, better late than never. But I'd absolutely recommend partitioning some part of your 60 hour work week and late night Googling, and allocating it to exercise, sleep and relationship. Stuff like heart attacks, brain diseases and divorces tend to wipe out gains made over 30 years. At the end, any amount of hyper productivity makes sense only if its beneficial and sticks to us in some way, like on the longer run. I've been delaying learning ML for a while now, it doesn't seem to matter, basically delaying doing lots of things without payoff many of which will be irrelevant in 5 years. I can't say the same for exercise though.

segmondy 6y ago
You're absolute right, I'm doing terrible on the sleep and exercise front and need to do more of those.

haakonhr 6y ago

You aren't a software engineer though. I found that the main thing for me is that what I do after work or for fun has to be different. If I'm working as a software engineer I enjoy not being behind a screen in the evening, whether that means bike maintenance, reading or cooking. Whenever I have had other jobs where the demands were different (more meetings, more operational or just physical jobs) I often want to do programming-related stuff for fun.