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The question is: how much their partner/parents/nanny is taking on? Without someone who is always available to help, it's impossible to be free and successful with young kids. Simply impossible. You can't travel, you can't work late (in the office) you can't do offsites, you can't sleep, you have no weekends to work on side gigs, because your side gig are your kids. Which is great, but soooooo costly from all angles.

PS: I love my kids, but I'm basically working/living at 50% of my capacity since I got my first, and that is really hard to swallow.

You need to know the age of the kids too. 0-3 months and 1-3 yrs are probably physically the most demanding.

To be fair I was not working late even before the birth of my son… life is to short to waste it on work (and I do love my job… still there are so many nice things to do in life that is a pity to focus only on work). I never considered professional accomplishment worth the effort!

And there is the other guy having 11(?) kids and earned literally billions in multiple companies to play around with rockets and EV and stuff

Having kids is the easy part, participation and actually being around in your kids life the more tricky one.

Not saying successful people are not on one side of the spectrum per se but IMHO there is not outsourcing or substitute for actually spending time with them and it is quiet easy to forget

Technically 10, as one changed their name and doesn't want to ever interact with him again.

So, technically 11? Or is technically the new literally?

Literally correct. Literally the best kind of correct.

>I don't know what they do.

That's the secret. With some parents, when you find out you realize they probably aren't parents who spend much time with their kids.

I have a friend who founded a startup a year before becoming a dad. His spouse works for a startup as well. He lives in a different city so we rarely meet nowadays.

After about 2 years of listening to them talk about how adorable their kid is and all the time they spend with them, I found out that the kid is dropped off at daycare by mom at 8AM. Nanny picks the kid up from Daycare and puts him to bed at 8PM. Mom and dad basically only see their kid on weekends. Even then, dad is usually too busy and it's pretty obvious that the 3 year old kid has realized he can't rely on his dad for anything.

People can raise kids however they want. There are entire cultures and countries where kids are raised by maids and nannies because population density is high and labor is cheap. But they are more honest about who is raising the kids and that's why they can work 12 hour days and focus on their careers or themselves above all else.

Somebody has to have the time take care of those kids.

> No idea how he does it.

The magic phrase is "I'll have to leave early to pick up the kids, you take care of this".

For me the magic word was "he." Somewhere in the background there's a woman taking on the whole load of the labour.

What are their wife's doing? Maybe the chores are inequally distributed and they sacrifice more career wise

Given the (apparent) income level, the other option is hired help.

... or husband or partner ... but yes, almost always wife.

This, to me, is the real gamechanger. There is a often gigantic difference in family workload between the primary caretaker and the other parent (if any), even when they both work. Additionally, this workload is often wildly underestimated by secondary caretakers.

In my observations, a secondary caretaker will often think "I still drop off my kids in school, I read a story at night, I bring them to sports practice, I'm being a good parent.". And yes they are, they are helping and having great "quality time" with their kids.

But in terms of total time invested, if you actually count the hours (I have), it's a small fraction of a primary caretaker. Roughly between 1/3 and 1/2 for invested secondary caretakers, which makes a huge difference when we're talking about, say, 20 vs 40 or 60 hours per week.

Who feeds them? Dresses them up? Helps with homework? Stays home with them when they are sick? And that's without even touching on the mental workload.

my four year old can dress himself. my 10 year old can cook and make breakfast or lunch for himself and his little brother. not every day, only occasionally on weekends, but it helps. breakfast and lunch is also served in school. the older one helps with housework. the kids can wash themselves and go to bed on their own. that really takes care of most of the work.

i work from home. we spend plenty of time together. doing housework is family time.

there is no homework. if the kids come home with work that they need help with, then i'll have a talk with the teacher. homework is a practice that should be abolished. but if it is given, it should be tasks that the kids can do on their own in order to practice what they learned. if a child can not do their homework on their own, then by definition the teacher didn't teach them yet (or failed), and the homework was not appropriate. homework is not the place for the children to catch up what they didn't learn in school.

I wanted to ask too. These people seem to be very productive even without the kid part. So, how can they achieve that without compromising anywhere ?

Either their day somehow magically has more than 24 hours (maybe they live on venus?) or they are .. how to say this .. lying?

I can assure You they are making a lot of compromises. Add a little bit of compounding around skills and resources and they achivements can look magical, but most of it its just smoke and mirrors. And of course there is outsourcing of everything that is not essential to their image (that include child upbringing also). It's amazing how much time You can get back when You have Your private valet and helicopter pilot on standby (I have witnessed this first hand).

  manager of 70 people at FANG

Ultimately being a manager is a choose your own adventure, with an already running team, it is often possible to do almost nothing and claim credit for your staff's work.

The American Dream.

Even made a series about it: Mad Men.

Yeah I'm wondering about the childcare burden picked up by their partners, and how much disposable income they have for childcare.

> I don't know what they do. I'm single and feel like I have time for nothing :P But it's clearly possible.

It is likely that, for these people, their hobbies and extra time are plowed into these productive pursuits. Which likely means they use none or very limited modern time syncs like TV, video games, sports, youtube/tiktok, facebook/internet forums, etc. It's actually pretty amazing how much time we waste on these things.

Additionally, someone who is dedicated can often find 15 minutes here and there on a commute or while running errands to listen to a segment on a podcast about an industry or technology. And when you can't do that sometimes just thinking things through in those moments, changing a diaper or in the checkout line. I'm amazed how much about starting a company is about thinking through everything carefully, so you don't waste as much time running about.

Finally, constraints force people to get creative to accomplish what is important to them. It's not uncommon for very productive people to also have large time constraints.

Thanks for sharing. These positive experiences will help people be more convinced it can be done.

On the flip side, for the people who are struggling, this might make them feel even worse about themselves.

How can we help them?

Do you know any examples of people who struggled, but then turned it around?

I guess these guys you mentioned struggled at one point right

The advice I've been given by people similar to what you are describing is to ensure you have at least 80 hours of help per week from multiple nannies, au pairs, or family. Then it is a matter of how much of your time you want to carve off for the kids vs must carve off. I haven't tried this, but I'd consider something like an au pair if I had a larger home.

I used to work 100+ hours per week, and that got significantly reduced after having a kid. I have been mostly embracing fatherhood since I imagine after age 10 their interest in me will be negligible.

Richard Fairbank, Capital One CEO famously had 8 kids and seems to have spent enough time with them. Probably helps being a billionaire though....

Obviously Energy levels are not the same across the chimp troupe.

There is no need for a cactus to ponder about what a redwood tree is doing.

Ugh yeah. I’m naturally on the less energetic side, and generally need a decent amount of sleep (at least 7 hours) to really function optimally. I am envious of those who can get by with less.

I don’t have kids, partly for this reason. (I don’t have family nearby who could help.)

An hypothesis is that all these people have plenty of money to get nanny/cleaning help/food delivery?

> a manager of 70 people at FANG, has 2 side companies.

Is this even allowed?

They don't go out. Kids go to bed and now you've got from 7:30/8pm till bed time to do whatever.

> No idea how he does it.

They probably pay a nanny or an au pair.