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Comment by karmakurtisaani | Hacker News Reader

Just wait until you have kids. Your mental capacity will nosedive and you have no time to worry about it. Just hope that no one notices!

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I am this stage currently.

Amazon recruiter has been asking me to take a technical assessment for weeks. I have no will power at all. Frankly, I am at a point where I won't study leetcode at all. I'm willing to make a move but will not grind.

Working on CRUD doesn't help the situation but at least I can do it with my tired and fried brain.

> I'm willing to make a move

To Amazon? To be fair, I know people who thrived in the Amazon culture, but a lot don't.

> CRUD

It's all CRUD and ETL one way or another.

If it helps, I did like 2 easy leetcode exercises and still got into Amazon lol. I've done nothing but business applications for my entire career, so I don't know jack about data-structures nor algorithms. Most of the interview is about your work history and "leadership" questions.

EDIT: btw Amazon is NOT a good place for busy parents IMO. The on-call rotation can be brutal. YMMV based on where you land in the company, but if they will try to sell you hard on the positive aspects of the company and downplay the negatives, so beware.

Thanks for the heads up.

I have found the opposite actually. I have three young children and I feel like they have forced me into much better time management habits, which has helped my productivity a lot. The caveat to that is that I can't put in as much time into work anymore, so while I'm more productive, I don't have as much time to be productive. It ends up being a wash.

+1. For people without kids yet, pay close attention to this comment. If you have big dreams, better get on them now.

For OP's #3 question: Reducing inputs has helped me tremendously. You don't need to pay attention to everything. You don't need to stay abreast of everything.

The capacity nosedive from having kids goes away as they grow up and become independent. And the coping skills you learned to deal with having less energy become almost super powers once your energy comes back. Likewise, the skill of having dealt with children through all ages and stages makes it easier to relate to difficult co-workers. I'm not saying work is easier once your kids are older... but your capacity to manage the work and deal with challenges definitely bounces back higher than it started before having kids.

So I'd say follow your dreams early, or follow them late. Just don't try them at the same time as raising kids.

Thanks for posting this. My kids are getting to their teens and the fog is lifting somewhat.

I couldn't think of an elegant way to mention that and suggest that OP should still attempt to maintain their mental faculties (nutrition, sleep, reading, learning within capabilities), so they aren't caught with their proverbial pants down when the kids get older.

Glad it's not just me. Kids are my kryptonite. I was superman, now I'm normal man. Thankfully there's a lot more to building systems than the pure code skills and those skills are greatly boosted by having kids (multi-tasking, communicating!) but the change is jarring.

I now understand why my father and his father's generation forced the women to stay at home with the kids.

Probably correlated

https://www.science.org/content/article/fatherhood-decreases...

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