I did not elect to have a child before considering the impact it would have on my livelihood. I have absolutely considered the impact that having a child will have on my livelihood, as well as on my life in general! I'm merely asking for practical advice from other parents. Are you suggesting that if I've considered the impact that having a child would have on my livelihood, I should not ask anyone for advice? That's quite an odd position to take.
Lets say in 10 years he flips a company. The kid has college money, parents who are financially secure - and if the OP wanted, he could forget the office and spend what would be work-hours with his kid.
I think you may have missed the point of my question. The OP is wondering how he can maintain his productivity with a little sprog monopolizing his time/attention( he was more diplomatic than that, but that's the crux of the issue ).
I then asked why he didn't consider this possible impact on his livelihood( the productivity aspect )before deciding to have a kid.
So, to use your response as a template, I would rewrite with the following:
Let's say in 10 years he fails to get his company off the ground because 4+ hours per day that would have been previously available to him to work on his project were not, due to the presence of a child. The kid has to take out student loans, parents who have nothing to show for 10 years of stress - and if the OP had to, he could take a second job and spend what would be kid-hours with his work.
I am primarily self taught( with some minor help from my father, when I was a child ). I don't work for any of the "cool" places you mentioned, but I do have a reasonably successful ecommerce business.
I did go to school, but I began programming tiny asm programs at ~8 years old out of my dad's 8086 book and my obsession with software expanded from there.
If your SO went into a relationship with someone who he/she knew was extremely passionate about building things, and they somehow expected this to "change", they are delusional, dishonest, or both.
Did you really want to spend the rest of your life with a delusional, dishonest, controlling individual anyway?
Yeah, didn't think so. In this event, you move on and find someone who doesn't try to hamstring your dreams and crush your soul. They do exist, and your life will be richer for it.
I think your conclusion of a dishonest, delusional and controlling person may be a little off, but I see what you're saying. When we first started dating, I wasn't like this. Sure, I still hacked, worked hard and built things. But I admit that I did change and started working more and being serious about the startup lifestyle. I should also mention that we started dating when we were still in college.
Now you have to have at least 10k twitter followers, at least 5k HN karma, posess at least one Arrington-stained blue dress, and win any number of other Silicon Valley popularity contests. It's all about "networking" nowadays.
You're not the target audience of the article. It's referring more to the people who spend all day hanging out at the trendy SF cafes and going to all the "networking events", waiting around to catch the eye of anyone who works near Sand Hill Road, instead of actually getting shit done.
I used to be one of those people, so it really stings. I remember even back then reading stuff like this and thinking it wasn't talking about me. Self-delusion can be a strange thing.
But then I buckled down, read informative technical books (i.e. NOT Godin, the OP, etc) and started producing instead of consuming. Evidenced by the fact that I read this article and am writing a reply, some days are better than others. :)
I don't think I'm self-deluding myself any longer, but who knows.
Actually, I had -3 downvotes before complaining. As for complaining, I think it's valid in this case. I hate meta discussion as much as anyone else, but in this case, downvoters are imposing their views on others, and impacting those people from finding jobs.
Basically, I don't care about the karma, but I honestly do feel that the downvotes were against the idea of HN.
I think it was the assumption that it was a joke (as another commenter pointed out) based on what was written. Nothing about the post was NSFW, including the link. In fact, if anything in the post was NSFW, then the problem lies with the place of work, not me.
Facebook doesn't seem to have too much trouble attracting talent. (Personally I have little interest in working there, but PHP is only a small part of why.)
First of all, stop tailoring all your efforts to a single funding source. If you're going to invest the effort of putting together a pitch, make sure it is generic enough to be used on N other funding sources.
You have limited time to bring a product to market. I suggest spending this time developing the product and pursuing funding sources that have far less bubblicious attention than YC.
If you already have an engineering degree and you are numerate, then pick up Knuth and start reading. After that, Abelson/Sussman.
It is advisable that you do this before picking up "Learn Ruby/Erlang/Clojure/node.js In 13 Seconds" or whatever the latest shiny toy is that the startup groupie kids are fapping to this month.
Between Knuth and Abelson you will have a solid foundation that 90% of web app hackers lack, and will likely be capable of becoming good with whatever tool you choose to use.
The comment added to the discussion, and the "protip" in question was a good point.
Last I checked, karma is to be given/taken due to quality of content, not whether or not it hurts your precious feelings.