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Comment by hardwaresofton | Hacker News Reader

Why doesn't OP move to Boston? If your daughters are the most important thing in your life, then moving across the US to be close to them seems like a no-brainer. One of the great thing about tech is that it's pretty easy to switch jobs/work remotely/branch off and do your own thing.

Maybe there were some reasons that couldn't be stated in the article, and maybe I'm being callous, if so, I apologize. Also, if OP was considering that but wanted to wait till he got a better grip on himself, that's fine too.

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> Why doesn't OP move to Boston? If your daughters are the most important thing in your life, then moving across the US to be close to them seems like a no-brainer.

My (future ex-)wife is the same. She says she loves her 3 children more than anything, and she misses them when she's abroad for work, but still, she chooses not to be with them.

Either they love their work more than anything, but don't want to admit it, or they love their children but don't feel the need to be with them as much as any other person.

Maybe it was a mistake for such a person to have children.

Sorry if I sound too harsh, but being recently in the same situation, but on the other end, is pretty rough :(.

My (future ex-)wife is the same. She says she loves her 3 children more than anything, and she misses them when she's abroad for work, but still, she chooses not to be with them.

People are different. Lots of people get lengthy deployments on oil rigs, in the armed forces, or even high pressure international sales gigs - I don't think these folks love their kids any less than me.

I love my wife and kids loads, but I also love being away from them for brief periods of time (only up to a week in my job). It makes it so much better when I return. We are all wired up differently emotionally - absence truly does make the heart grow fonder in my case.

Not equivalent scenarios: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10471249

As the ex - He is in the process of healing, dealing with doctors, finding himself and probably in some ways, some of the physical distance might be good thing. What folks don't know is that we co-parent even from a distance. Yes the girls miss him. Miss his hugs, his close presence. However they understand that their Dad is still there for them. We have a good schedule to ensure that during extended breaks he gets to see them, either here or there.

One day we do hope he will come back here as this is where the girls have called home. However can remain patient and nonjudgmental until that time.

> One of the great thing about tech is that it's pretty easy to switch jobs/work remotely/branch off and do your own thing.

Really? I'm not sure this is really true (though it seems to be a popular HN trope). There may be jobs everywhere if you want to "disrupt online kitty litter sales" or if you want to work for "1/2 pay but KILLER equity after 4 years, bro!". However, is the market for normal, steady, secure tech employment really that healthy? As someone with a family and a mortgage, the number of companies I'd consider working for is shrinking day by day, and those companies are still very picky. I don't feel like it's even close to 1999 these days.

Is it really that easy to just go do your own thing? Where do you get your start-up capital? If "do your own thing" means be an independent contractor, where you you get your first client? Calling it easy is kind of a stretch.

I agree. But Boston is one of the few places where there are a decent number of such opportunities. Most of the big tech usual suspects have engineering offices there, and RedHat has an office there as well.

So I actually don't live in SV, and very much live outside the VC/SV hype train.

What I mean is that you have these options:

- Odesk (yes, it's terrible, but it's an option)

- Remote work (weworkremotely.com)

- Finding a single business in whatever town you're in that has a website, and wants it to be better, and is willing to pay you to do that

Also, when I mentioned doing your own thing, I meant bootstrapping something. Find some inefficiency either you know about, or something someone you know knows about, and charge people to solve it. While creating that service, you can work other jobs to pay bills, but again, the probability that you:

1) Actually make a successful business

2) Gain skills that enable you to remote work/do something else in the field

is wayyyyy higher than just about any other field (right now).

No matter where you are, the cost of starting an internet business is so much lower than a traditional one that even if 9/10 fail it might still be worth it.

And a reply from my ex (and good friend) whose account got flagged "dead" (dnoller13) to you:

One day we do hope he will come back here as this is where the girls have called home. However can remain patient and nonjudgmental until that time.

Those comments were killed by a spam filter. Those are tuned more aggressively for new accounts. We marked dnoller13's account legit so it won't happen again.

In the meantime, HN users restored both of those comments by vouching for them. We added this feature recently: alongside 'flag', you will see a 'vouch' link if a comment is dead. If enough users click 'vouch', the comment is restored.

thank you

I got the impression that an unspoken subtext of Jesse's essay was that, in the community he's describing, people always think they have the right answer (instead of considering that being humane is more important than being seen as an expert - cue the guy calling him out about PyCon).

It looks like your comment does exactly that again.

So, although I think you meant well, your comment is indeed callous as I read it.

But is that advice less callous/from-the-internet-abyss if a therapist were to give it? (I am not a licensed therapist or anything).

I got the feeling from the article that it was more like someone sending a drive-by email along the lines of "wow this code is bad, I could have done it completely different, you're not even that good of python" after he submitted some patch that a less toxic person would have thanked him for or something.

Nooooooo - it wasn't a drive by email about a patch. It was rot from personalities and bad actors questioning every aspect of being part of a community, trying to push for change, lead, etc.

Luckily, I am in fact talking to a licensed therapist and they disagree with your assessment provided additional context and that's ok. The internet is a hard place for empathy.

It's always easy to say this sort of thing as an un-invested third party, but it's not super constructive. I'm sure Jesse considered it before choosing not to.

Reading into it a little bit I think landing the Rackspace gig was a Really Big Deal. I know it would be for me.

I can definitely see that it's not super constructive, but the article presented only two choices (and explained why neither were great), I found this choice conspicuously missing and wanted to ask, honestly hoping OP would read it...

Here you are valuing your desire to know something above the potential impact on him. It's thoughtless. Here the guy pours his heart out, and specifically writes:

> However, “community” is not the gift that keeps on giving, it is the gift that keeps on taking and taking and taking. If you don’t set clear and absolute boundaries, it will drain you dry and move on.

Your comment here is exactly that sort of taking.

Callous? Yes, no? I haven't finished the 3(!) followups to this, so by way of empathizing with your end-result (e.g. just move) with the information I also have I can say "it is not a binary choice".

Factor in the following: my ex and I are still best friends and confidants. As we went through this little slice of hell, what was best for our kids above what was best for us was top of mind.

Now, factor in the following: I've learned - the hard way - that investing yourself into certain things can net you things you didn't have. For example, without dumping all into the community, I wouldn't be where I am in my career, and I would not have discovered things about what I want to do in that career.

Now factor in what I described is the sign of an extremely obsessive, insecure, and potentially depressed personality with no actual definition of "self" outside of community, work, and kids. Literally - now that I've set boundaries I'm busy looking around saying "Uh. Shit. Who am I?"

Now factor in the strict clinical definition of what you go through in a divorce - it's akin to significant loss (e.g a death in the family). You go through (as I am) many stages of that including grief, depression, etc. I'm somewhere in the no man's land without an end in sight just as of yet.

Now factor in the severe anxiety and depression that comes with all of that. Yes - I could quit my job and move just to be near my girls. However not being physically or mentally fit outside of my definition of self in my career I would be throwing myself into a position of not "not moving on my own terms".

Think of it like this: I agreed, with my ex, that this would be the best course of action for now. Just up and moving wouldn't solve the root cause of why we separated, it would just solve one aspect of "me". This would result in a probable mis-directed resentment on my part towards my ex, my children and others.

Therefore, while given the information you gleaned you may be correct albeit callous, you are right that there are many more factors in a situation like this to be taken into account.

Net-net - mental health is hard. Recovery is hard - you can't tell a depressed person to "just don't be sad" and you can tell a person with an addiction (such as I've gone through) to just "give it up" without a goal, or a process by which to solve the root cause.

Thanks a lot for responding - it's clearly a rough time for you but I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my random internet comment.

I look forward to reading the followups! I can't say I totally understand (as probably no one can), but wish you the best overcoming this addiction, and getting back to your sense of "you".

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