Ask HN: Engineers with family, how do you manage it?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7328006

by xbeta • 12 years ago

6 13 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hello all,

I'm having a new born coming up and I'm somewhat struggling to manage the new challenges coming at my family now as my wife cannot work anymore, and we are getting prepared for the new born. With the raising housing price in SF bay area, things are getting tougher as I'm a new dad who makes a single income working in a startup in SF.

The nature of the engineering job is like that we need to spend tons and tons of time coding, learning new things, trying things out. I'm not sure how I can manage that now with a single income, and my wife constantly need my attention. Well, as a husband I can totally understand her frustration on missing her career for the new born too. Things are just difficult and it seem like there's no way out and will get worse.

I know I can't be the only one in the industry to work and to have a family. I would like to know how you guys manage time and needs in the family, yet still able to stay relevant in our rapidly changing tech industry.

I'm aware that most of us on HN are probably single, and just started their career from school. And some founders probably don't want to hire a guy who has to support his family. I know it is difficult for most of you to understand why it is difficult for a person to be spending the time on weekend to run errands, but not hacking things with a group of friends.

I have couple things that I would like to do, but I guess I need to put them on hold now and not sure when I will have a chance to touch them again. I love technology, I love engineering, and I love our tech culture and how it changes the world. And I wouldn't want to leave this industry to give up my dream.

For those who has to manage a family, how do you do it?

quarterwave• 12 years ago

Many moons ago I've been exactly where you describe, so listen to uncle.

You are already incubating a start-up - it's your child.

Your sole task is to keep the cash register chiming bimonthly. Focus on the job that pays you, if you have extra time then work harder for your current employer. Pile up some good karma.

Run those errands, be with your spouse, speak much less than spoken to, & forget your buddies.

Also be on excellent terms with your in-laws.

sillysaurus3• 12 years ago

Is the only solution really to give up on your own desires? (Or to force yourself to desire the things you list?)

xbeta2• 12 years ago

I think what he/she is trying to say: - if you have to choose between your kids vs your career, pick your kids - if you can have both great career + raise a great, loving family, then awesome!

I do have a dream to run my own startups, but I guess I'm "too old" for that now and I didn't see anyone in the age of 40+ founding their first startup in the valley.

I guess I'll have to give up my desire now

gexla• 12 years ago

So, you figured out that you can't do everything. This is true with kids or not. Your time will get further crunched with kids, but did you have enough time for everything pre-newborn? You have start-up ideas, why didn't you work on those? Not enough time?

Maybe you just need more focus and better manage the time you have.

If you are a good engineer, then you will have a job. If not at your current employer, then somewhere else. Do the work for your employer at your job, not on your own time. This includes learning new things. You learn by doing, so if you need to evaluate X as a possibility of solving Y problem, then do it on the job. If it's not valuable enough for your employer to be paying you for this time, then why bother evaluating it? If X is something none of your devs know anything about, should you really be using it? Maybe there is something less sexy which already well serves that purpose. Maybe you should hire someone who knows X well. Or maybe hire a consultant. If you find yourself regularly having to devote more than a typical 40 hour work week to your job, then maybe that's a result of bad management from your employer. In this case, find a different job. Let the founders slave away at their business, it's their baby, not yours.

For your start-up ideas, maybe you need more focus. The Apple approach is to start with the customer experience with the product and work backwards to the technology. It sounds like you might be too wrapped up in the engineering side. Think of one thing that people will love or that will really help people and work backwards from there. Try selling the thing before you write a single line of code. Put aside a block of time every night when the child (and mother) is sleeping. You can probably accomplish a lot more with a heavy focus put into two hours of time than you can with little focus in a whole day. Repeat this every day and I bet you would be amazed at what you could accomplish.

The tech culture is great, but more important is probably the culture of the people you are trying to sell to. Find your customer and you find the culture you should be immersing yourself in. You can probably find that culture outside San Francisco, so move and save some money.

WhatsApp was bought for billions of dollars because they built something people could use on feature phones. That's the type of phone the world uses. There are all kinds of problems to solve outside of San Francisco, to understand these problems, move there.

Once you get your life back, take a look at your start-up ideas. Pick one. What's the next step? What's the first excuse for not doing it? That excuse is the first item to tackle. By the way, that first step probably isn't to start writing code. Finding customers should probably be near the top of the list.

This is from someone living in the Philippines with lots of kids. Houses in my area are as cheap as $100 / month. I could literally live the 4 hour work week through client work. Luckily in my case, the oldest kids are old enough that they help a lot with the younger kids. I give them a long leash to explore life without me getting in their way. There are lots of problems here which could use a good engineer.

So, don't be an engineer for engineers. Go out into the outer world and become an engineer for the people. Being among those people is where you will find your start-up ideas.

codeonfire• 12 years ago

This comes up in office politics. Try to band together with the other married people in your office. Convince your (also married) boss to dump all the work on the single people on your team. Have your spouse call you at 5PM to give you cover to leave or, better yet, have them pick you up at the office so you MUST leave immediately.

Sadly, this is how many people manage a family and job.

xbeta2• 12 years ago

so I guess you mean a family OR a career, pick one? :-(

bobfromhuddle• 12 years ago

I get the sense that you're concerned you won't be able to keep up with technology trends. This is a non-issue. 95% of what you read on Hacker News is essentially froth, the ephemera of technology. You can ignore it all. The problem is that technology is both your job and your hobby.

I had my first son when I was 22 (now 31), and my career has continued to go from strength to strength. There is adequate time in the evenings, or on commutes, to read and ponder, and I find time at work to investigate technologies that will have a positive effect on the business, because that's my job. Since then I've learned three or four new languages, taught myself a whole bunch of crypo-stuff, got down with the Agile crowd, implemented machine learning and search techniques, and become a software architect.

I think you'd be surprised at how many employers would rather employ happily married young men with children, because they know that they're less likely to be job hoppers; you might be right that early-stage startups are no longer a viable choice, though, unless you're sure they're going to be around for at least a couple of years.

Having said that, I joined my current company six years ago as employee number 5. It was founded by a mid-thirties guy with a wife and kids, who re-mortgaged his house to get the capital he needed.

Having children needn't prevent you from doing meaningful and interesting things with your career, you just need to distinguish between what's important, and what's recreational. After a few months, once you and your wife have started to get a handle on this whole parenthood thing, you'll find more time to do the things you love.

Of course, you might find that you'd rather spend the time playing with your kids :)

devb0x• 12 years ago

Its tough man. When we had our child, tech took a back seat. I worked as I needed to, sometimes a little late but I made family come first. Your wife will need you, family first. As your little one gets older you'll get back to normal, but for now focus where you know you need to focus.

Congrats!

winaash• 12 years ago

I had my daughter when I was 27,and I was employee number two at a startup.

The most important thing you can do is spend time supporting your wife though the first one year, women can get very depressed in the early months and you being there makes a lot of difference.

The hardest part lasts around a year, and it gets easy as time passes, by the time your kid starts walking confidently, she will be too busy for you :).

Learn to sleep when your kid sleeps, she will sleep 14-18 hours a day, and plan your day around it. My kid used to sleep very late, 2 pm - around 10 am, so I convinced my boss that I will be working from 12 pm to 9 pm and I would work from home twice a week. You can also split tasks with your wife, I used to bathe the baby alternate days and we took turns changing the nappies. If you get it down to a schedule, I think you can have enough time for yourself.

On the money front, Babies dont ask for much and if you dont go around spending money on needless luxuries, then you should be fine.

Rather than getting depressed, I think you should try to cherish the experience, This time will never come again in your life.

notduncansmith• 12 years ago

I'm 21 and my son turned 1 in February; I know what you're going through :)

If there's one thing I've learned over the past year, it's that any employer worth working for will understand and support your need to spend time with your family. No sane founder would ask their employee to put the startup above their family.

A few other tips:

- Take 15 minutes to yourself every morning, get a cup of coffee or tea, and read HN.

- Listen to industry podcasts on your commute. I'm a big fan of ShopTalkShow (front-end dev), This Week In Startups, and Javascript Jabber (between these three I almost always have something to listen to between work and home).

- Twice a week (YMMV) wait for the baby and lady to go to bed, then hack for an hour or two. Don't do this more than a few times a week though - I used to never go to bed with my fiance (always working), and we started growing distant and fighting more.

- Use time at work (especially lunch breaks) to play with new technologies

- Help your wife with the baby wherever you can. She put her career completely aside for your child, so she'll need to see that you're making sacrifices too and giving it 100%. Your relationship with your partner is invaluable.

I'll end this list with one final piece of advice: cherish the time you spend with your family, and hold it sacred above all else.

I'm currently in SF doing some contract work with an early-stage startup, about halfway through a 1-month tour. It's been harder than I could have imagined; and while I FaceTime with my family every day, the extent to which I miss them every day has really helped remind me what's most important.

I hope this helps, and if you ever want to talk some more (or hang out, since we're both in SF for now), send me an email: address is in my profile.

isuraed2• 12 years ago

Extremely good advice. You sound very balanced and mature for 21!

isuraed2• 12 years ago

Your family comes first. Let go of the idea that you can continue to put in extra time at work, do hobby projects, and learn new technologies. You will have to do those extra curriculars during the 8-9 hour work day. Home time is family time (for the most part, of course you should find a few hours a week just for yourself). Forget about programming when you get home. Babies and new moms need a lot of attention and help. That should be your #1 priority for the next year minimum. It gets easier after year 1.

There is more to life than work and programming. Don't sacrifice time with your new baby. It never comes back. You will have plenty of time to advance your career and reach career goals.

Ask HN: Engineers with family, how do you manage it?

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