twojobsoneboss

That’s awesome but also a masters is a very different beast than starting a business IMO. It’s pretty defined (even with a thesis, in comparison) whereas trying to start a successful business is constant double guessing, pivoting, hustling when opportunities come by, needing to drop other things when opportunities come by, constantly strategizing/worrying when doing other things, etc

Still, that’s an achievement and kudos

That’s correct. I’ll add more details soon

Yes, all the "it's hard" that you hear from others – yeah you have no idea until you actually experience it.

So glad things improved for you. Really once you're a dad, the only choice is to adapt or divorce. Call it copium or what have you, but you do what needs to be done, you shift your mindset however it needs shifting, and do whatever helps you (and everyone else) get through.

Totally. I expected to feel this intense love that would help with the difficulty of it all, and it didn’t happen.

I also didn’t get any kind of surge of extra energy driven by this great new responsibility- you’ll have to make do with what you have folks.

I do love the baby a lot but I barely think about her when I’m not with her, unlike her mom which thinks about her all the time

Losing ~ALL your free time can hurt alot mentally, esp if you had very specific life goals like starting a business and escaping the 9-5 (vs generic ones like travelling the world etc), you likely have to give those up, and that can be very difficult mentally and emotionally

I went through a "grieving" process of my new fate in life. It helped more when the baby started smiling. It helped more when she started sleeping through the night. It helped more as I internalized and built acceptance more.

If anyone wants to reach out on this aspect of fatherhood please reply and would love to get in touch.

EDIT: And goes without saying, but try all you can to get into a job/role that's remote and not super time-consuming or stressful. You will find it really valuable to have some of that 9-5 time when there's childcare (and also away from your spouse depending on the situation) to recharge and do whatever the F you want :)

What he really meant is it’s a great career choice financially (see the supporting extended family sentence after that)

And utility? Come on now. Yes it might be doing much less actual innovation than before but compare that to building awful websites at an actual utility company. I’ll wait.

The amount of time and effort people spend looking at others instead of themselves is maddening

We need UBI and less dependence on private enterprises for basic human needs like income to survive and healthcare

Would give both companies and individuals more flexibility and dynamism

Many 9-5ers minds are always thinking of how to escape anyways, so at least you have something tangible to think about if you already have that business

You’ve just described almost all publicly traded companies and startups too.

Hate the game, not the players.

Try 175k, that’s more realistic in the current environment

It must be really weird both for the FAANGs themselves and their employees - if laid off there’s only a handful of other companies one can go to to get similar total comp, and worse, many of them aren’t hiring right now

So getting laid off from a FAANG is like twice as bad as getting laid off from <other tech company>

The fact that TikTok is still allowed to run amok when the PRC has their hands all over it and also shows completely different content to Chinese users is the greatest irony and crime here

How much of a TC cut did you have to take between Amazon and your current employer?

Even if you can find a sw Eng job, salaries have dropped to ~2019-2020 levels

Factor in inflation since then and it’s a huge effective pay drop

There are many cases (not all justified) where product work is too difficult to directly tie to financial outcomes, or, the lag time is very long

So then you get into all these murky waters of how to decide what to work on and how to go about it

I once as team lead had to preside over a product designer and senior dev (who used to be a CTO at a tiny startup) who never saw eye to eye, but the designer always had the final say, (unless there was a good technical reason to do something differently), because that’s what she was in charge of