# Being ambitious and being a dad > **TL;DR (article)**: A startup founder rejects PG's line that "having kids may make one less ambitious," refuses the career-vs-fatherhood dichotomy, and commits to maximizing *quantity* of time with his kids while still building. > **HN reception**: Overwhelmingly parents, overwhelmingly sympathetic, but the thread's real work is an audit: it keeps pulling back the curtain on "he has it all" founders and finding an uncredited spouse, a nanny, or a kid who barely saw their dad. [Read on HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49321298) -- [Original article](https://nicholascharriere.com/blog/being-ambitious-and-being-a-dad/) ## Cluster 1 -- The false-prophet audit (dominant) The largest and sharpest current in the thread. Commenters report that when they investigate anyone who appears to be both wildly successful and a great parent, they find a hidden subsidy: a spouse who absorbed everything, hired help, or kids who quietly got much less than the public story implies. The recurring diagnostic is asking whether the admired person's partner also had a demanding career. - [`ip26`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354836): "of your professional idols who are good parents and seem to have it all, how many have a spouse working a demanding full time job as well? I realized for me it was zero." - [`handedness`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49353498): "The number of wives who have complained to me privately about the lack of family commitment of rock star husbands whom everyone admires [...] was a real eye-opener." - [`dalyons`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49356632): "Zero for me too, but boy are people quiet about it. Almost taboo to let on that that is the arrangement." - [`mandevil`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354222) relaying two lines women have been saying for decades: "To really achieve, you need a wife" and "husband, career, kids, pick two." **Internal disagreement**: [`tuomas7`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49360910) claims every unicorn founder he knows has 2-5 kids and seems fine, and is immediately answered by [`fg137`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361004): "They are not driving their kids to daycare/schools/doctor's office themselves." ## Cluster 2 -- Ambition doesn't die, it retargets (substantial) The most common direct rebuttal to PG's premise. These commenters report roughly constant or higher output post-kids, attributing it to forced elimination of slack rather than to extra hours. Several say the *object* of ambition changed, not its intensity. - [`digitallogic`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49353053): "Can't say this resonates with me. Though being a dad has wildly changed what I'm ambitious about." - [`firefoxd`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49353230): "Maybe ambitious is not the right word. It's more like, at some point you have to go home." - [`blobbers`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49353569): "I'm shocked by the amount of time people who don't have kids waste." - [`megalomanu`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49359716) took the most literal version: nights and weekends vanished, so he moved his side project into the center and founded a company around it. **Internal disagreement**: [`funnygiraffe`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49355655) pushes back that kids consume willpower and sleep, so focus at work can genuinely get *worse*, not better. [`tayo42`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49355061): "2 hours of free time isn't enough focus time to do anything significant." ## Cluster 3 -- The quantity-of-time premise, and its reductio (substantial) The article's claim that there are "no diminishing returns" on time with kids gets tested by taking it seriously. If true, the logically consistent move is to work as little as possible, which collapses the article's whole balancing act. - [`dalyons`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49353397): "then it leads to the conclusion that you should work as little as possible [...] The ambition to be kidmaxxing, if you will. This is incompatible with career ambition obviously." - [`bwest87`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354409) rejects the premise outright: "Kids having time alone and with their own friends outside of the eye or ear of their parents is a really important part of growing up." - [`Yapping7880`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49362828) defends it from the other side: relationships get built in "the down moments, the 'bored' time, the drives to school," not in scheduled exclusive time. - [`Calazon`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49353548): "Ultimately any two ambitions will compete with each other for finite time and energy." ## Cluster 4 -- Sequence, don't balance (substantial) A large practical camp argues the real variable is *when*, not *how much*. Two versions circulate: have kids young and poor, or run career hard in the windows before kids and after they're grown. Notably, the exemplars in the article (PG, Gates, Zuckerberg, Carmack) all had their first kid well after their defining work. - [`leonidasrup`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361663) states the hole in the article directly: "Who succeeded after having kids and was at the same time great father?" - [`sacul`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49355463) (father of nine): "the best time to have children is when you're young. The next best time is now." - [`pizzathyme`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361501) cites Strauss Zelnick's two-window model: go hard before kids, then again once they have their own lives. - [`a_hoglund`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49359569): "if you abandon the retirement mindset, you can have a fruitful and abundantly productive career later on after having prioritized your family." **Internal disagreement**: [`kakacik`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49359200) and [`wat10000`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361940) both argue late is better: more money, more patience, more self-knowledge. [`somenameforme`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49371563) counters that late kids statistically delete grandparents from the picture. ## Cluster 5 -- "You'll understand when you have them" vs "that's just hormones" (substantial) Sparked by [`alphabeta3r56`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358217) sincerely asking why raising a kid is meaningful. The answers split into an experiential camp (it cannot be conveyed, only lived) and a skeptical camp that treats the reported feeling as an evolved delusion and demands a non-feelings argument. This became the longest sub-thread in the whole discussion. - [`enjrolas`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358321): "As a parent, I get to give you The Most Infuriating Answer: once you have kids, you'll understand." - [`siren2026`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49365583): "There is inherently nothing very special, unique or difficult about it. [...] please use rationale and not feelings." - [`the_af`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49374683) defending the frame: the thread *is* about feelings, so demanding they be excluded changes the subject. - [`mikemarsh`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49365418) lands the cleanest counter: "Any kind of accomplishment outside of having kids could also be boiled down to an 'evolutionary' drive for status, power, belonging [...] Why is this nihilist lens applied selectively to one pursuit and not others?" ## Cluster 6 -- "Ambitious at what, exactly?" (several) A persistent minority refuses the word itself, arguing it silently means money and status, and that the author's own product (an AI no-code app builder) undercuts the framing of ambition as noble building. - [`jsrozner`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49353917): first dictionary definition is "an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power. Ambition is basically definitionally antisocial." - [`bradleyjg`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49357489): "One thing I hate about SV culture is the bullshit. Are we talking about making lots and lots of money? If so, please for the love of god just say so." - [`spicyusername`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49360220): "Making decisions based on what will make you more 'successful' will make you a slave to others approval." - [`b1gTekken`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49368431) audits the article's own exemplars: aside from Einstein, they were "engaged in meager iterative improvement and social moat building." **Internal disagreement**: [`amouat`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49360555) and [`Aurornis`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361220) argue this reads "ambitious" too narrowly, that it can mean writing a book or reaching financial security for the family, neither of which is about approval. ## Cluster 7 -- Structural, not personal (several) A group that treats the whole essay as a category error: this is not a discipline problem to be solved by removing time-wasting activities, it's the predictable output of a society that dismantled the support network and then handed the bill to individual households. Several note this is the same conversation women have been having since the 1980s, arriving late and rebranded. - [`slavoingilizov`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49362104): "we threw out the whole idea that you need a village to support you as a parent and replaced it with career maxxing as the only prominent virtue." - [`throwaway2037`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354488): "This essay feels like the 2010s when feminists were debating if it were possible as a woman to 'have it all'." - [`tropdrop`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49364837), a new mother: "As the author of the linked article searches for good father figures in vain, so do I. The search feels even more difficult." - [`xp84`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354740) supplies the historical delta: 1960s fathers "didn't even lose any sleep over it," and in two generations we invented an expectation that dads be provider, friend and daily presence at once. ## Notable Tensions - **Cluster 2 vs Cluster 1**: "Constraints made me more productive" and "there is always an uncredited subsidy" cannot both be fully true. The thread's own stress test is [`katzgrau`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354226), who posts an admirably disciplined 5:30am-to-10pm schedule with no hobbies, no friends, no downtime, and gets asked three separate times where his spouse is in it. - **Cluster 3 vs Cluster 3**: the article's strongest claim (maximize quantity, no diminishing returns) is attacked from both sides at once, as impossible to hold alongside career ambition *and* as bad for the kids, who need unsupervised time and non-parent caregivers. - **Cluster 5 vs the regret voices**: the "you can only understand it by living it" defense makes disconfirming evidence unsayable. [`thunspa`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49362607) claims you'd be "hard pressed to find a parent who will regret having children"; [`Jtarii`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49364793) answers that it's such a taboo you'd never hear it even if it were common; and then two people in the thread say it plainly anyway. ## Noteworthy Comments > [!quote] `[ip26]` ([link](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354836)) -- the single most-repeated diagnostic in the thread, stated first and best > I've started peering behind the curtains when I get the chance, and I've not yet found someone wildly successful who is also a model parent. Time after time, their spouse is quietly shouldering an enormous load, or their children spin their wheels and wind up rudderless, etc. > You can certainly be successful and be a good parent, but one of the first steps is recognizing and picking out the false prophets. You can't hold yourself to a superhuman standard, which is what a parent maximizing career while letting family malinger will present. They will say, Look at me, a captain of industry with vaults of gold, who has the physique of a twenty-five year old and is also an all-star parent. And you have to figure out that it's a lie. > One little clue -- start to notice: of your professional idols who are good parents and seem to have it all, how many have a spouse working a demanding full time job as well? I realized for me it was zero. > [!quote] `[Yapping7880]` ([link](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49362828)) -- the emotional center of the thread; a father whose wife was diagnosed with ALS > Because I think that among highly motivated workers there's a falsely held belief that you can make up for missed time with your children by planning "exclusive time" with them [...] But I think that strong relationships might be made best in the down moments, the "bored" time, the random stuff, the drives to school, picking up the house, mealtimes [...] After our second, my wife got sick, she was diagnosed with ALS when he was just over a year old [...] Kids truly changed everything with me. Every single way that I define myself. [...] > Odenkirk: "Anybody who has little kids at home, growing up. [...] I didn't have to ask myself, 'What am I doing here? How can I be a part of this world? How can I be meaningful today?' I didn't have to ask that question, because the fucking answer is 'Pick up everything between here and the door, and make sure they get to school, and have a laugh with them.' I understood my purpose." > I am a bad software engineer. I'm a mediocre project lead. I think I'm a good colleague. But I know that I'm a great dad. > [!quote] `[bcantrill]` ([link](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49371044)) -- named upthread as a counterexample, Bryan Cantrill shows up to supply the actual receipts > When we started Oxide in 2019, my kids were 15, 12, and 7, so out of those time-consuming younger years. But when we started Fishworks inside of Sun in 2006, that 15-year-old (now nearly 22) was not yet 3 -- and his brother and sister were still in the future. Point being: I worked plenty hard with young kids. > More generally, I have always believed that the choice between work and parenting is broadly a false dichotomy (especially in our domain and age, which affords quite a bit of flexibility). In my role as a parent, I served on the board of the kids preschool; I was the president of the elementary school PTA; I led the kids' Cub Scout Den (hardest parenting job no question); I coached baseball several times over; and I have been (and still am!) the scoutmaster of the kids' Scout troop. > These experiences were all time consuming [...] but they also made my life richer, and that very much includes my professional life. [...] anyone who is familiar with scouting will see an echo in Oxide's values. > [!quote] `[jonners00]` ([link](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49357787)) -- the concrete scene that makes the abstract tradeoff visible > I once bumped into a couple of very high profile VCs sitting outside a coffee shop. Somehow the conversation got round to the fact that we were potty training our 12-month-old. One of the VCs told me their two kids, 2 and 3 years old, weren't yet out of nappies, just used pull-ups, because there hadn't been time to potty train them. [...] it was delivered as a kind of admonishment that I was involved in potty-training at all. > It really depressed me at the time, realising there was a class of entrepreneurs and backers who were genuinely stop-at-nothing, even if it meant their three-year-old at day care was wondering why he was the only nappy-wearer. > Also, I never saw consistency from the people who put venture before family. They'd be buying shots for young staff at 11.00 at night on a week night, checking their crypto-balance continuously, micro-managing, taking unnecessary business trips, etc. > [!quote] `[Daneel_]` ([link](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361656)) -- the thing the thread's dominant framing makes almost unsayable, said anyway > Also as a parent, I still don't understand. I have two kids and regret it. They suck all the time and energy from my life. I give my all to be a great parent to them, and I would never let them know that I regret having kids, but if I could wind the clock back I almost certainly would. I feel like I'm throwing the most valuable years of my life in a wood chipper. > [!quote] `[sneak]` ([link](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361035)) -- the thread's hardest dissent, aggressive and heavily argued-against, included because it's the only sustained anti-natalist case here > It should be a lot more shameful to pretend that having kids is a normal or healthy activity. It's selfish, unnecessary, consumes immense amounts of resources [...] and almost universally induces a delusion in the parents that they have done something meaningful, helpful, world-changing, or profound, without affecting their ability to notice the plainly obvious fact that humans have evolved this delusion to keep them bonded to the incredible amount of time and inconvenience caused by children so that the species will continue. > Children are a luxury option, like buying a Porsche or taking regular vacations to the Greek isles. [...] Do not in any way confuse the good that human beings have accomplished with the need to produce more of them. > [!quote] `[miyoji]` ([link](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363298)) -- quoting Vonnegut as a direct refutation of "completely removing time-wasting activities" > Then I go down the steps and my wife calls, "Where are you going?" "Well," I say, "I'm going to buy an envelope." And she says, "You're not a poor man. Why don't you buy a thousand envelopes? They'll deliver them, and you can put them in the closet." And I say, "Hush." [...] > I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block [...] Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. > And I've had a hell of a good time. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different. ## Worth a Look - [`modriano`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49356930): a careful audit of each builder the article name-drops (Zuckerberg, Gates, Graham, Carmack), showing all had their first kid *after* the defining work, and all had "right place, right time, great execution, and much luck." - [`_carbyau_`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354774): a structural observation nobody else made -- we claim to want kids but build a world at adult scale. Plates at their shoulder height, sinks they can't reach, hand dryers next to their ears. - [`marttt`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49357212): argues family size in terms of communication-pattern combinatorics, enumerating the play configurations for 2 vs 3 children. Immediately met with a counterexample about the birth-order trauma pattern in 3-kid households. - [`spidercat`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49365437): the thread's only extended account from a female-bodied commenter, on why pregnancy itself is the scary part and why social-media discourse offers only "wonderful" or "horrible" with no middle. - [`psim1`](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361138): "As a dad, I feel like a total loser." A rare description of failing at *both* sides rather than trading one for the other.