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How do you remain on track with toddlers onboard? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have been working in the industry for 8 years and am now considered a senior developer, also as a team lead.

Three years ago, my first child was born, and a few months ago, a second one arrived. While I don't regret my decision to have kids at all, I do feel bad about how the lack of free time affects my career and how my knowledge falls behind the industry.

Before having kids, I used to spend a few hours a week on never-ending personal projects to learn new things. However, now I neither have the time nor the energy for that.

The only way that has worked for me is to read some tech books, which are often not about coding, and to read some blogs or subs like this.

However, I feel like this approach is too passive and is not providing the best outcome that I would expect.

Any tips there, perhaps from someone who was is similar situation?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I’m a staff engineer with a toddler and went through (am going through?) a similar thing. At the end of the day, I’m just tired and want to veg, not necessarily try to learn something new about programming. There were a few things that helped me though:

The biggest thing was just to recalibrate my expectations. I talked with other dev parents who all said that, until the kids are able to play a bit more independently (eg 6 or so), you just have to accept that your self enrichment time is going to be limited.
For my off hours learning, I stick to mainly portable skills. Ways of thinking about technical debt, etc. Things that are both widely applicable, and can be learned more passively.
I try to carve out time to learn during work hours. I’m lucky in that the company I work for allows for a lot of independence, so my team actually instituted an “investment day” where we work on whatever we want, with the only goal being that you should try to do something that you’ll learn from.