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This is why the best thing I ever did for my software career was be a stay at home dad for three years. If you can make your gaggle of kids keep making forward

This is why the best thing I ever did for my software career was be a stay at home dad for three years. If you can make your gaggle of kids keep making forward motion towards some arbitrary goal, you can do the same with a gaggle of software engineers. Judging what people aren't saying but are feeling; assessing hunger and irritation that rule out rational conversation for the time being; framing things in a way designed to get "yes," etc. etc. The learnings are infinitely useful. Plus of course, even tho my gaggle has grown up to opinionated young adults, we still seem to enjoy a warm and fulfilling connection which I enjoy quite as much as a refactoring that shrinks the code base. Also you learn the importance of self-mastery, of taking care to keep yourself in your rational side where you can provide the missing pieces, of support, creativity, steadfastness or flexibility, that the group needs for happy outcomes.

topkai22 5y ago
I totally relate to this. I didn’t take time off, but I am the stay at home parent/primary care giver. Having children also led me to volunteer teaching ski lessons to 4-5 year olds and occasionally help out in the classroom. The things I’ve learned on how to cajole, incentivize, and motivate my/others children transfers surprisingly well on how to deal with adults. After a brief dip in very early childhood (AKA the sleepless time) it felt like my career took off after children, as I gained a reputation for being a leader people wanted to work with/for. Now correlation is not causation, but I definitely think I gained experiences having and raising kids that made me more capable as a leader.
- earleybird 5y ago
  As another point of anecdata - kids did help when working with direct reports, and, flipping the arrow categorically, there came a time when leading a team helped with my children as young adults.
hinkley 5y ago
I think the last episode of The Rookie has a scene where a lady is trying to talk to one of the main characters while they're trying to wrangle a daylight drunk individual. The lady intervenes and gets the drunk to sit quietly on the curb. Then announces, "I teach fourth graders," by way of explaining how that worked.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
My mother has an associate degree from a community college in early childhood psychology, and was a kindergarten teacher for a couple decades. Eventually it got physically tiring, so she left to take a grunt-level desk job at our local ISP. She immediately rocketed up the corporate ladder. Even as a middle-aged woman with zero relevant experience and no bachelor's degree, she was put in charge of ~100 people within a few short years. She said the same thing as you: many of her learnings about how to manage a classroom of young children also happened to apply to managing a team of full-grown adults. (She was also killer at speaking in front a group because she'd been doing it for decades in the front of a classroom.)

topkai22 5y ago

I totally relate to this. I didn’t take time off, but I am the stay at home parent/primary care giver. Having children also led me to volunteer teaching ski lessons to 4-5 year olds and occasionally help out in the classroom. The things I’ve learned on how to cajole, incentivize, and motivate my/others children transfers surprisingly well on how to deal with adults. After a brief dip in very early childhood (AKA the sleepless time) it felt like my career took off after children, as I gained a reputation for being a leader people wanted to work with/for. Now correlation is not causation, but I definitely think I gained experiences having and raising kids that made me more capable as a leader.

earleybird 5y ago
As another point of anecdata - kids did help when working with direct reports, and, flipping the arrow categorically, there came a time when leading a team helped with my children as young adults.

hinkley 5y ago

I think the last episode of The Rookie has a scene where a lady is trying to talk to one of the main characters while they're trying to wrangle a daylight drunk individual. The lady intervenes and gets the drunk to sit quietly on the curb. Then announces, "I teach fourth graders," by way of explaining how that worked.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago

My mother has an associate degree from a community college in early childhood psychology, and was a kindergarten teacher for a couple decades. Eventually it got physically tiring, so she left to take a grunt-level desk job at our local ISP. She immediately rocketed up the corporate ladder. Even as a middle-aged woman with zero relevant experience and no bachelor's degree, she was put in charge of ~100 people within a few short years. She said the same thing as you: many of her learnings about how to manage a classroom of young children also happened to apply to managing a team of full-grown adults. (She was also killer at speaking in front a group because she'd been doing it for decades in the front of a classroom.)