Ask HN: How to Deal with a Conservative Family? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to Deal with a Conservative Family?

16 pointsmion41 comments

I'm an undergrad and my family is very conservative. For instance, my aunt who works at IBM thinks 'programmer' is the software equivalent of a construction worker. My grandfather tells me not to write open source software because I don't get paid for it and so on. Any attempt at explaining why my GPA is getting lower and lower as I focus on projects outside of class is futile: they see me doing something weird, going down a path so foreign and assume I must be wasting time or doing something wrong. I imagine many of you are going or have been through the same situation; what should I do?

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You seem like you have it all figured out - that you know "things" that your family doesn't, or that you think that your family's life experiences are old and stale and not relevant in today's modern world. It's funny to see this for me, as a 42yo man. I was that way too when I was 14-24. I'm not being critical of you - it's more a 42yo man bemusing how funny life is.

I read something yesterday that resonates here - it was a something like "Remember all those kids in school who always asked the teacher, 'Will this be on the test?' They were on to something. It's your job to know what the important metrics that you will be judged by, and it's your job to make sure those metrics are where they should be." Well, you know the metric - GPA - and you are letting it slide because you are doing side projects. Let's swap this out with music and see it from a different perspective: "Any attempt at explaining why my GPA is getting lower and lower as I focus on my music outside of class is futile."

The key point I'm trying to make is that you are distracted. You can say, "Yes, but I'm doing side projects that help me become a better programmer." Fine - that does make it better. But when your future prospective employer looks at your resume and compares it to 3-5 other candidates, will they cut you the same slack you are giving yourself?

"You seem like you have it all figured out - that you know "things" that your family doesn't, or that you think that your family's life experiences are old and stale and not relevant in today's modern world. It's funny to see this for me, as a 42yo man. I was that way too when I was 14-24. I'm not being critical of you"

Compare this to a quote of Socrates from thousands of years ago :)

"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."

It's always been like that and it's the only way our world keeps functioning, questioning current mindsets and disrupting existing boundaries.

Why do you grades necessarily get lower due to your side projects? Is it not possible to keep both up?

This is a good exercise in learning to communicate and to manage your image. Present things in way they can relate. For example, you can present open-source like getting involved in your local community or a local business organization. You do things for free (in real world organizations you have member events, volunteering, etc) and you gain valuable business connections and expertise.

The 'construction worker' analogy can be put aside if you can present them a career plan. Research the jobs you want to get, get information on salary and benefits, and explain to your family that this holds a good future for you.

I guess they don't, a more disciplined way of doing things could solve the problem. I see, thanks for the tip!

Your problem is not that your family is conservative. I don't know how "bad" your GPA is, but if it's trending downward, the problem is not your aunt/grandfather's views on the world, however outdated they may be. You don't necessarily need to change their view on programming / open source, but you should appreciate they are concerned for you, possibly for good reason.

pg has a PhD in computer science from Harvard. Do you think his undergrad GPA was low?

You have four years to get a decent GPA, you have your entire life to contribute to open source. You can possibly do both while in college, but the former might be more important.

Once you graduate, noone cares about your GPA

For one thing, he might not graduate at all. Ok, so he has his open source credentials. That might get him a job or give him connections to help start a company. But a bad academic record is not a positive indicator you are an open source genius awesomedude. Rather, good contributions to open source can make up for a bad academic record in the past.

Who knows, maybe the particular college is a bad fit, and there can be a million other problems. But explicitly sacrificing GPA for amorphous contributions to open source is like tithing when you can't feed yourself or your own family.

Maybe my own experience is outdated or not generally applicable, but one's grade in a computer science class is fairly indicative of how well you grasped the material. It is precisely the classes I did well in that I haven't needed to restudy (and vice-versa).

Once you get past the point that people care about your GPA, no one cares about your GPA.

You might need that GPA to get into a competitive academic program, to secure a research grant, to add another string to your bow when you try to convince an accelerator that you have the smarts to back up your charm and creativity, or simply to get a job at a competitive company.

No one cares about your GPA once you get past that point. That point is not necessarily graduation.

A low GPA can keep you out of a good grad school. (A low GPA can keep you out of officer school, if he wants to join the military as an officer.) 5 or 10 years down the road, yeah, it doesn't matter. But for his very next step after graduation, it probably does. (And next steps lead to next-next steps which lead to next-next-next steps.)

On the flip side: Linus Torvalds inventing Linux, or Guido van Rossum inventing Python has, I'm sure, benefited their own careers. I'm totally down with doing the "crazy, hippie, open-source thing" because it's your passion.

But: I'm guessing that Linus and Guido (and pg and others...) all did very well as undergrads. If you're destined to be an open-source badass (or a startup badass), then 4 years of good grades shouldn't be too painful.

(And, I'll just say it, anecdotally: finishing my physics degree made me into a smarter, better person. At the time, my quantum mechanics classes were the hardest things that I had ever done in my life. And now, my own hobbies are just as hard... and rewarding.)

edit: I'd like to mention that I didn't graduate college until I was 28. I can totally empathize with following an unusual path in life that your family doesn't approve of.

That's just absolutely not true. What is true is that not everyone in every situation cares about GPA. Also true is the idea that your GPA matters more and more if you on the extreme side of things (very high or very low). Someone who graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard, for example, will want to show that to prospective employers even if they are 55 years old. Someone who graduated with a 2.2 from Podunk U will try to hide that even at 23 years old.

Who knows what will happen to OP over the next 10 years? Who knows what opportunities s/he may be in that would or would not require GPA disclosure? You don't. I don't. But to tell an unknown person who you know only 2-3 sentences about that "noone cares about your GPA" is just irresponsible. Perhaps no one cares about your GPA but those are reasons unique to you or your life.

My family isn't quite to that level but no one really understands what I do or where I want to go. I feel like this goes for a lot of startup people. Most people don't see what we see or understand the opportunity.

One thing that I've decided is to stop worrying about what they think. Ya they are your family but don't let them dictate your life or dissuade from what you want to do. I live in Missouri, and plan on moving to SF when I graduate. No one in my family is happy about that, but it isn't going to change anything. You still love them, they still love you. They obviously are concerned about your future. That's excellent because the startup path is not an easy one and encouragement is welcome.

As far as grades go, they aren't the most important thing, but don't let them tank. Keep them manageable. They have taken a lower priority for me but I am still able to keep them to about half A's, half B's. That's fairly sufficient for anyone as long as you have a lot of side work so show for the rest of your knowledge. I can tell you I've learned more on my own than I have in any of my classes.

Overall, don't worry about your family's perception of you because it will improve and they will eventually see where this path leads. People see startups as a big failure, but simply put you fail to succeed. Just keep pursuing your passion.

My family are not particularly conservative, but they would still be concerned about a falling GPA.

Perhaps you are misdiagnosing the problem?

Maybe too. But I guess I didn't explain it well enough for the sake of brevity. What I mean is, when you do the startup thing, you may end up neglecting certain things, in my case collge. How do you let them know that you're not wasting time when in fact you're investing in a path they do not understand?

How do you know you're not wasting time? How did you convince yourself? once you have laid out the arguments you use on yourself - can you figure out why they don't work on your parents? For instance - are you assuming a higher likelihood of success for your startup than they are? Or an easier route back in to college if you get kicked out for failing? Do you know something they don't (or perhaps vice versa)? Do they think college is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and startup ideas will always be there, but you think the opposite? Or is it perhaps a conflict of principles, like you don't care if you do end up working in fast food so long as you gave the startup your best effort, and they think this would be a terrible failure of everything they ever wanted for you?

I got my current mindset after reading many books, articles, pg essays, talking to people and so on. When you become obsessed with something you suck in all the information about the subject out there. I wish I could just show them a 'memory dump' of my brain.

In other words: brainwashing.

That's what happened when you read similar books, followed like-minded people (and have an unhealthy obsession), do discussion with like-minded people or even steer the topic toward your own pont of view.

Be careful. You are living on your own bubble.

"pg essays"

Oh dear. You heard the piper's tune and now nothing else matters. I wonder, does PG still program, or does he make money another way now. There's the clue.

That's great, but if you can't literally write out explicit answers to each of my questions, and explicitly in sentences identify why your parents disagree with you, then you don't know what you're doing and you're just following the crowd. If you can't explain it, you don't know it.

Imagine you were actually trying to convince pg to fund you after he said 'I think you'd be a better founder if you finished college first'. What would you tell him?

You only have one degree, whilst you have plenty of years. Spend a bit of the next 2 or so years making sure your degree is the best you can get. It'll be handy when your startup fails (everyone fails, it's not a reflection on you) and you need a job!

Honestly, I went through the same thing with my parents ("When are you going to get a real job?") during my gap year freelancing. As people have said before, you can show them your success... but your degree is definitely part of that, and you'll rather you had spent $100k on a 4.0 than a "just scraped by"

Well, other people drop out of uni to pursue a startup. If your GPA falls, it's not really that bad.

Horrible advice. You've read a paragraph about the kid and you're telling him that it's okay for him to dropout of college. Maybe it worked for you, or those "other people" but that doesn't mean it would work for OP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Yes you didn't explain it very well. Are you working on a startup, or are you contributing to random open source projects? Your family isn't necessarily "conservative," just experienced. But it almost sounds like you are wasting your time going to college. If you aren't getting the most out of your college tuition, then you are wasting time and money. Perhaps you should take some time from college (it isn't for everyone) and do something else. Of course it is very difficult to get a job with a company (startup or otherwise) without experience or a degree, or both. And contributing to an open source project without a degree might not be enough.

Your family is right: 'programmer' is the software equivalent of a construction worker, and you almost certainly do not get paid for writing open source software.

Whether these truths are bad things is another matter though. Where would the world be without construction workers? Can you imagine what a building would cost if the architects also had to do the actual construction? And would it be a better building for it? And who would have heard of Linus Torvalds if he hadn't written some open source software? Your name on a popular project is a great advertisement for yourself. It gives you a broader choice of employers and it helps your salary negotiation.

> My grandfather tells me not to write open source software because I don't get paid for it and so on.

Many employers give more weight on open source work than on GPA. I guess you could try to explain him that (you could use architects as an analogy: would he hire an architect with a great GPA but no portfolio or an architect with a great portfolio but a bad GPA?).

Show them they're wrong by being successful at what you do.

Of course that's going to take a while, and it could get really annoying if they keep nagging all that time. It would help a lot if you could get the idea across that real skill trumps GPA. Find some examples of highly successful programmers that didn't graduate.

It does take time! I can try that too, though I'm afraid they'll say they got lucky or something

A lot of the best known success cases did get lucky. For example, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, but Microsoft was a tiny, obscure company (they wrote BASIC compilers and such) until they got the contract to supply the operating system for IBM's PC. This happened, in part, due to the missteps of their competitors (like Digital Research). IBM's ineptitude also helped make Microsoft successful: IBM let Microsoft keep the rights to the software because they couldn't imagine how valuable it could be; they were still in the mainframe mindset where the software was ancillary to the huge, expensive hardware. Also, Microsoft didn't write MSDOS themselves; they bought an OS called QDOS from some other company for $50K (who also didn't know what it was really worth). So, yes, Gates got very, very lucky.

The vast majority of new businesses fail, even the ones that get VC funding (VCs have about a 10% success rate; a handful of big successes pay for all the failures). So your most probable startup outcome is failure, in which case you'll need to make a living by working for somebody else. A lack of a college degree or a poor GPA would make that path much harder.

Presumably if you're an undergrad you're an adult? Part of growing up is learning to make your own way. You family were the people giving you direction as you were growing up and now you're on your own - you decide what's good for you and take the responsibility to explain your decisions. It's great if you can still get advice from your family, but if you don't think it's good advice that's fine. Everyone goes through this phase. It's particularly hard in the beginning, when you're just starting to make your way in the world, but it gets better with time. Listen to your family, make an effort to explain yourself and also be very clear with yourself and with them about where the line between their giving advice and your deciding for yourself passes.

I think your relatives may be right, assuming you are only "contributing" to open source, rather than leading a substantial project, or wrapped up in potentially important research/innovation.

It's just a hobby, especially if you are neglecting your "day job", that is, your grades.

Painful though this may sound to the HN community, it has always been the case that people who command or deal with "things" are considered lower class than people who command or deal with other people, and I believe this is still the case, even in tech circles. For example, I don't believe any of the current wave of "tech stars" have achieved what they have through technical skill alone. It's mostly been about business acumen, marketing, timing, assembling a good team, and so on.

The "redeeming feature" with software is that programming is actually quite a complex skill, still open to innovation, and the demand for it is apparently currently higher than the supply. However I believe Obama, and other figures in powerful positions, are attempting to rectify that situation with their "everyone must learn to code" initiatives, and combined with potential innovation in automation and so on, the ground could quite easily shift.

So while your open-source contributions may also be contributing to your resume, you have to consider the bigger picture of economics, and human nature, and decide if your current hobby is really viable as a lifetime career, and whether it can trump the "official" route to success or not.

What to do? Charge for your time. If you're any good, someone will pay. You will learn what programming, in the real world, is all about, and your relatives will see someone practicing "grown up" skills rather than merely indulging a hobby.

And finally ... "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." Mark Twain. perhaps shift the quote by a few years.

I'm not sure why you feel your family is conservative. Remember: these political terms have very fluid definitions. If you stuck a gun to my head, I might define "conservative" as "folks who don't want to change anything because it works good enough already" while liberal would be "folks who want to change things that aren't broken" That's just a SWAG, though. I'm sure all my conservative and liberal friends would disagree!

So I know a lot of conservatives who do open source, who do all sorts of new things -- after they've been around for a few years. I guess die-hard conservatives might wait 50 years or so before trying new stuff? Usually these guys aren't in IT, though. You have to remember that in IT something like 80% of what we use refreshes every couple of years.

I had a very similar problem with my parents who were very liberal! To them there were established ways of trying new things. It wasn't an issue of trying new stuff. It was that they had a different mental model of reality than what I was experiencing. It took a long time before they finally figured out what I was telling them.

There are a lot of conservative people who teach interpretive dance, improvisational acting, or creative writing. Likewise, there are a lot of liberal people who are lifers at various BigCorps, are lawyers for the man, and so on. Don't confuse the comic book definition of things with how things actually work.

So the problem here is, at least from your brief description, is not that your family doesn't want you doing new-fangled stuff. It might be that they don't understand how the technology field works. It also might be that somebody is paying for college and you're spending your time chasing stuff that doesn't look like college to them. Could be a lot of things, actually. I think more information is needed.

It's one thing to want to freeform chase your dreams. It's another thing to commit to a structured regimen of training. Sounds like your family is expecting one thing from you and you want to do another. As long as they aren't writing the checks and you're not making a mistake by going in debt for something you're not using, sounds to me like you get to decide. Time for an honest talk.

Also, and this is tricky for tech folks, you just may never be able to convey what the tech world looks like to them. IBM lifers have a much different view of tech than SV types. (Each tends to disdain the other, but that's a story for another day)

Buck up, kid! If you want to spend your evenings building free software to change the world, go for it. But that means you have a communication job ahead with the family -- one that might take many years to accomplish.

This is just a hunch, but I don't think your family would be too worried about these things if you kept your GPA up. They are trying to find the reason for the falling GPA, and blaming what they can find.

What does "conservative" have to do with your question?

> My grandfather tells me not to write open source software because I don't get paid for it

Yeah, these are the values of the rat race culture we've been nurturing so far. And look where that has taken us. Sanity?

- Just keep your head up and continue to follow your heart.

It's always like that and it would be weird if it weren't. You're 100% going in the right direction. If you want to be an entrepreneur and change the world, you will receive a lot of adversity, also for no apparent reason.

But if you do, you know you're on the right path, so go out there and kick ass! :)

I thought so, thanks man :)

This idea that people objecting to you means you are on the right path is also known as "they laughed at da Vinci, they laughed at Edison, and they laughed at bozo the clown" - don't just assume you're not the third one.

You're right, so I sought out and acquired a lot of information to make sure I'm doing anything too stupid.

That's the most important point. Don't drop everything just for a project. But if you have looked at your idea from all angles, and you are just so convinced that it will work, then give it your all and go all in.

Have a look though that you still take care of yourself a bit and don't let your endeavors affect your family or friends too much/someone other than you, then it's all good.

I appreciate the positivity of your message, but I would be more cautious in giving advice to strangers on forums.

How can one know that the poster is going 100% in the right direction without knowing more specifics than what is written in a 3 line post?

"If you receive adversity, it means you are on the right path" can also be dangerous advice without more information.

No kidding. We don't know OP at all so for anyone to say OP is "100% going in the right direction" is just not an informed statement.

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