[kody]

I'm really curious, how do you factor in time to learn ("up skill")?

I'm a self taught dev with 2 young kids. I've always had a healthy approach to work, but now I'm feeling quite a lot of pressure to learn new things on my own time, whether to make sure I'm prepared for the interview circuit if I get laid off, or to patch my skills that are needed at work.

I'm starting to feel burnout creep in, getting an hour of study in the morning, taking care of family, and then working 8 hours.

I appreciate your insight.

[Baeocystin]

You do it during work hours. Period.

Your brain only has so many truly 'on' hours in a day, and it's already less than 8. Trying to burn even more in the pursuit of complex knowledge isn't just robbing Peter to pay Paul, it's eating the seed corn and wondering why your harvest failed.

It's a scary thing to realize, and can be hard to stick with. But limits are real, and respecting them gets more work done in the long run than not.

[livearchivist]

100%

This is so important. I have a 3yo and wife, I currently work for a series-A startup - It's incredibly easy to do things out of hours, answer messages, train, lab things up, etc... But at the end of the day that is a part of my career.

So except for when I'm traveling for work, I don't do a GD thing past 5pm, unless i choose to. When I choose to, it's likely because a lot of my team is in IST time zone rather than EST.

When you're a family person, your job is to be there for yourself first, your family second, your other commitments after that.

I have a weekly 4:30p friday call. Would i rather have that at 1:30p? Yes. But i've chosen to work remotely in Ohio instead of move to Cali like the last four companies have asked. So I take that friday 4:30p call.

But you better believe that i check out until monday after that.

During the week I'll take odd hour calls for my counter-parts in IST, but that's nearly entirely out of courtesy than necessity.

Take care of things in the following order: 1. You, as a human, holistically 2. Your family, spouse first, kids second 3. Your work 4. Everything else

It's reduced a huge portion of stress from my life by doing this.

[jaredhallen]

You've said it twice, and I'll reiterate it a third time. Your own well being has to come first. You can't deliver on the rest of your commitments if you neglect your own needs. Being a martyr does not serve those who depend on you.

[antimemetics]

If you can’t love yourself how are you going to love someone else?

[space_oddity]

People are capable of giving and receiving love, even while struggling with self-love. In fact, relationships can often be a source of healing

[devanil]

Can I Get an Amen?

[sandeep1998]

I am trying to move to a country where this is a reality... I just need a life outside of work (and some quiet and peace and fewer people around me all the time) I want to be able to sit down in the park, stroll around the neighbourhood, ride cycle, swim, cook, etc without the worry of job looming over my head all the time. I want to live for myself.

[djsamseng]

Come to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Start your day with a sunrise walk to the gym ($40/month). Grab an omelette and coffee for $3. Head home by 9am before it gets too hot. Work/learn/read/nap in the AC until 5pm. Take a sunset bike ride through the temples of Angkor Wat. Grab dinner downtown at the open breeze restaurants while people watching ($2-3 for a healthy meat and vegetable stir fry, $1 for pancakes, $2 for fried rice). Grab some drinks ($1) and play billiards with some friends. Head home to your modest 1 bedroom apartment for the night ($300/month). Not to mention the locals are really friendly here and if you’re in to helping out in some of your free time, you will be greatly valued and appreciated!

There’s a few other expenses and some cons of living here but some research and YouTube videos will help you figure out if it’s right for you. And of course you can ask me :)

[sandeep1998]

email? I am ([e-mail])

[pnut]

I say this as a person who emigrated away from the US in my late 30's...

The hedonic treadmill exists in all countries, stepping off it is a personal priority and discipline regardless of where you live.

[sandeep1998]

Fair point. I'm not chasing happiness, but rather seeking a lifestyle that is more in line with my personal preferences and values, such as quiet/peace, fewer people, and cooler weather. On days when I get to experience these, I feel very content with my life and more in control of it, All the other problems don't bother me much when these basics are right...

[ddingus]

Very high value, lucid advice.

My experiences were similar, however I must add when your day job is not related to skill building activities, you may find your "on" time to be greater.

Still, be careful.

In my case, my day job was manufacturing and I was an effective prototype mechanic. Loved the work, hated the pay, so...

I used a percentage of my free time learning more computer related things.

When the time was right, I was ready to take the jump.

Landed nicely, and have no regrets.

Now, later in life I find the dynamics above are in play and we all ignore them at our peril.

[beaglesss]

All hours spent with kids under 5 is basically 'on'. Which would leave most mothers I've met at zero 'on hours' left for work. A reason for the 'gender pay gap'?

[BobaFloutist]

Childcare is skilled, necessary labor, and should be subsidized by the government at the level that food production is. Maternity leave and paternity leave in the United States are also woefully insufficient.

[beaglesss]

Proposal rejected by society. You will raise the child into a productive citizen, then society will tax the shit out of them while yelling "we paid our property taxes for our shit schools, so we deserve a slice."

Then the social security cut gets distributed regardless of preference to who raised the kids who now pay the taxes.

It's a classic tragedy of the commons, offload almost all the cost on moms then socialize the taxed gains.

[BobaFloutist]

It works great until women have control over whether or not they have children.

[parpfish]

If you’re learning a thing that you actually do for your job (eg, new language or tech), do the studying and training during work hours

[brailsafe]

I'd agree with what others have answered (do it on company time if it's company related), but although I don't have kids, I've burnt out quite badly 2 or 3 times. Apathy is the scar tissue you get from burnout, it's helpful in avoiding it after recovery, but it's best if you don't include your family in that. If possible (probably if you try hard enough) I'd suggest separating the things you want or feel you should learn into the things you're learning for yourself and things you're learning for your job, and then allocate a deliberate day or significant block to just that. Ask for help from your family if possible in letting you occasionally just isolate and immerse. Jon Carmack does this, and although I'm just an average guy or w/e, I've found it to be the only way to give hard subjects the attention they actually require. For example, the Nand2Tetris project, Swift programming, Postgres, they really take some tinkering time and deliberate practice. Nothing super valuable comes from passively digesting podcasts while driving imo either, or walking down the street, or buying groceries, so take those airpods out if you're doing it, and let your brain take a break in those moments.

[reaperducer]

Ask for help from your family if possible in letting you occasionally just isolate and immerse.

My family wouldn't understand that, so I play hookie.

Twice a year, I schedule a vacation day that I don't tell my family about. I act as if I'm going to work like normal, but I spend the day at the art museum or sitting in the park reading, or something else that doesn't involve anyone else.

[dyingkneepad]

And then some day someone will recognize you somewhere, tell your wife "hey, I saw reaperducer at the park today!", and then she will think you're cheating on her.

[brailsafe]

I mean, that sounds great, I can totally get behind this in a way.

My big thing is being able to protect my sense of autonomy, even when I'm responsible for things or obligated toward others. If I literally can't take a day away from my phone or without telling people where I am, I've found myself in a risky space emotionally. So I'll occasionally leave the phone at home, or go hiking from sun up to after nightfall alone with the phone off, only maybe telling someone (including my spouse). People need their own space.

In addition to my previous comment, burnout seems to happen when you're working a lot on something you don't really control the outcome or reward of, along with the presence of some force that gradually erodes your sense of autonomy. If you feel like someone else is the arbiter of not just most of your energy, but all of it, over a long enough period of time, you'll grow to resent yourself, those people, and the work.

[Bayko]

Unfortunately when it comes to preparing for interview leetcode is pretty much required at all stages. For that the way that works for me is to never let go of it. I will solve 2 3 problems over a week even when I have a job. That downtime at work when you are at home or waiting for the next meeting...just leetcode. I absolutely hate LC and hate the fact that it is omnipresent but now no longer fear it. Except Dynamic programming. That thing can go f*ck itself. But ya now when it comes to LC I am "always" or rather one week away from interview ready.

[AnimalMuppet]

> Unfortunately when it comes to preparing for interview leetcode is pretty much required at all stages.

I have never had a leetcode-style interview in 40 years. (I may have had one such question, maybe - hard to remember for sure.) So, no, it is not required at all stages.

Disclaimer: I'm in embedded systems, which is very different from FAANG.

[dheera]

The weird thing is I've gotten everything from no code to entry level to ultra-hard coding questions in FAANG-level interviews.

I also have a hunch I've gotten easier coding questions when an existing team member referred me to hiring for their own team.

[giantg2]

Funny enough, I just had my first LeetCode question ever... for an internal job posting. Wtf

[toomuchtodo]

That is dystopian level hilarious.

[giantg2]

We normally do minor fizz buzz code screens internally. But that's just a small test to see how much of the tech you know, like if you were switching from say Python Lambdas to Angular front-end. And it's mostly to see about how you approach the problem.

But some of the internal postions do it differently. My favorite was a mock code review on a PR that had intentional flaws. Then you'd call put what was wrong and how to fix it - not just pure code but also requirements, tests, commit messages, etc.

LeetCode is different though. The rating and stuff. Even the interface... I still don't know what it's doing behind the scenes to run the code and feed inputs and what those inputs are. Believe it or not, this LeetCode interview wasn't my worst internal code screen. I once had one that HR said to bring my laptop and use any language I wanted. When I got there, the manager handed me a Mac (which I've never used), told me to use Angular to create a page with a table (hadn't used Angular at that point), and told me to do it in Webstorm (most teams were still using Eclipse at that time, so no experience here either). I managed to Google my way to a working table, but cut the interview short when he wanted me to style it. It's and internal posting. I clearly know the basics and got something working, even in the worst possible interview scenario where I didn't know the tools at all. Surely I can learn the rest (this was a midlevel posting, not even senior).

[BehindBlueEyes]

I'd interpret that as they wanted actual usable work from the interview, I've had a few of those "technical tests" that boiled down to "if we get enough applicants to add to this code we won't need to hire any of them"

[taurath]

You can be assured that the person who actually got the job worked on a Mac in Angular using Webstorm and that nobody wants to entertain ideas that their methods of interviewing are in any way tipping the scales.

[charles_f]

Interesting, I had the same thing a few years ago while interviewing internally for a manager position, and from a VP

[dheera]

Can't they just look at your code commit history ...

[giantg2]

They absolutely could.

On the opposite side, I usually skip teams for their repo so I can review them. Are there test cases built out? Do they have east to follow code design, or descriptive comments? Do they have a normal level of abstraction, or are there multiple layers of interfaces for not real reason? I recently declined a position because the team was building a UI, didn't have a CMS, didn't have any real rests, and the code looked like a bit of a mess. It didn't help that the languages (Go, React) were completely new to me, so I wouldn't be able to make an impact on improving these issues.

[hirvi74]

But then where is the opportunity for ego stroking?

[parpfish]

I’ve run into a leetcode once over the course of five job hunts. There’s always some sort of screener that may use a leetcode style interface, but the problem is something like fizzbuzz/write a function to say if a number is prime/etc.

The interview is about finding the obvious resume frauds and seeing if they can communicate their problem solving process, not finding a genius that’ll invent new algorithms

[SoftTalker]

Also never interviewed at FAANG and never been asked to write code in an interview

[swatcoder]

I'm with you and the GP, but I suspect all three of us have pursued a balanced and satisfying career instead of the one with top of market compensation.

Some of the folks here don't see alternative options when FAANG compensation is some integer multiple of what the rest of the industry has been supporting for the last 40+ years, and I don't entirely blame them for that. I'm not surprised when some later find themselves miserable and feel like they're trapped by golden handcuffs and insufferable bureaucracy, but I understand how they got there.

[SoftTalker]

Yes, I’ve been in tech for 30+ years and just recently broke 6 figures in salary. But I live where a nice house is under $300K and I take satisfaction in living frugally.

[copperx]

That's interesting. What's your line of work?

[batshit_beaver]

As someone currently in the process of trying to move from a cushy, interesting startup job to a soulless FAANG for that compensation multiple, the ONLY reason I'm doing it is because I have a young kid now. I wish there was another way, but it is genuinely impossible to provide a comfortable level of family life on a startup salary, unless your partner is also in tech and is ok with not being a stay at home parent.

[sadcherry]

> I wish there was another way, but it is genuinely impossible to provide a comfortable level of family life

It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it? It's basically the top 1% speaking. And you can't tell me that the other 99% have miserable lives.

> unless your partner is also in tech and is ok with not being a stay at home parent.

Stay at home parent is a choice, and a pretty expensive one. One does not have to choose that and can still live a comfortable life. Many women (and let's face it, we're unlikely discussing the man staying at home for the next 7-15 years, eh?) even prefer not to interrupt and/or basically end their careers because of parenthood.

Americans often look to Europe, claiming that these things are so much easier there, which might be true, but at least as much is it a matter of personal choice as well.

[quern]

I did the same for the same reason , but I moved from a soulless FAANG to a high frequency trading company. This is another integer multiple.

To my pleasant surprise, the HFT is more rewarding (not just in comp) than the FAANG was. At least for now, or that's what I keep telling myself.

[eropple]

There are other companies, too. I work at, statistically speaking, Your Phone Company, and they don't pay FAANG money but they certainly pay a lot better than I was doing at startups.

Caveat: I don't live in the Bay Area, though the Boston area isn't exactly cheap.

[kody]

Funny enough I had an interview today with a dynamic programming whiteboard problem. I feel like if I hadn't been putting in my leetcode hours I would have totally bombed

[TheKarateKid]

Apparently Google and finance firms are the ones that still ask dynamic programming. If any non-FAANG company is asking that, especially startups, I'd tell them to get off their high horse.

[rramadass]

Advice from another thread : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41462980