How having kid #2 motivated my career-change out of development (kinda)

It is August. I’m a nearly 2 decade developer who knows a dozen programming languages and 2 human ones. I’ve been out of work (mostly) since May. And the kind of career I had— a solid day job in software development, combined with inspiring evening activities like playing in bands, meetups and personal projects—won’t be the one I’ll be returning to. I’ve had time to think these days, and while I don’t regret our fortune to have a second child, the sad truth is that the best job I’d ever had started to go south during the preparations for, and consequences of the birth of our 2nd child. Now, in picking up the pieces, like the Banach-Tarski Paradox, I am finding that what the pieces reassemble into is distinctly different from what they were before. Here’s how it happened.
Before #2, we navigated through the huge transition of having a #1, getting through their sleepness nights, getting her into daycare, learning to work and live again. In short, we adapted. I let go of organizing the meetup that I did, but found time to attend others, and felt like I was growing as I prepared for 30–50 minute talks for these meetups. I was learning React, Redux, mastering ES 2015, functional programming. I submitted talks to and attended conferences, and believed I was finally about to have contributions matching my seniority in the industry.
Then, I finally posted to friends and family that I got a dream job- I became Software Architect at a large EdTech company, partly due to my demonstrated expertise in Meteor, which I showed by making videos at meetups and at home, and various community work. The highly available Node services I’d built during my day jobs hadn’t hurt either, but the fact that my passion overflowed 9–5 was a distinguishing factor. I got to work with a very talented and prolific polyglot team with UX experts, a savvy PM, motivated QA team, an already established and large user base, and a realtime development stack I knew inside and out. I was doing the best work of my career.
I worked 40–45 hours a week happily, and dabbled after hours. I gave brownbag lunches discussing architectural directions, and based on team feedback, elaborated these ideas into working code, documentation, and sample applications. I couldn’t wait for September 2017 when our product would launch based on my tech! In December 2016 our family moved from our 2 bedroom condo into a house, and #2 was born in February 2017. In March he got sick and spent some days in the hospital.

In April I was informed my last day would be June 1 2017 — my year long contract would be completed, but not be renewed, even though other members of the team would have theirs renewed. The reason cited was that I was under-performing for my level. For my seniority, it’s easy to expect a lot of me, and I welcome it. But for a person going through the life changes that I was, I didn’t feel like I was wasting a moment that I could, in trying to help.
What I didn’t notice was that, like a lobster in a pot of slowly heating water, I didn’t notice that my focus had changed—to accommodate #2, of course. And since I didn’t get proportionally more effective, what happened was that I gave somewhat less to the company — found comfortable niches to work in instead of being in the thick of the gnarliest parts. And for a project with less than 3 months to go, a senior team member being slightly less present is a rough thing for a team to negotiate. Once they made the necessary adjustments to keep up velocity, they decided not to continue with me. Now, I feel they missed an opportunity in not negotiating a change in the situation rather than discontinuing it. But things were missed on both sides, and I take full responsibility for mine, and I move on for greater purposes.

Now I’ve had a few months to completely structure my time as needed, and what I find is that my priorities have changed. I spend the days with a mix of work-prospecting, Open Source contributing/research, and extra family time. It’s great to get to know my little man, #2, my mini-me. It’s great to have time to settle into a house, and set it up for my work and family needs. Seeing our first-born through her first summer day camp experience has been great. When my wife, a school teacher, returns to work, and I do too in September, I’ll have a day job again. Before, moonlight work was like a Nitro Boost for my career, but there’s no time for it now. And neither short-changing my family nor being a ticket-punching uninspired developer makes me feel good about myself. The younger, freer, motivated ones — let them show us what it’s like to rally and bring a steady stream of new ideas from all kinds of sources. I got a job to do — a couple, in fact, and once I’m done for the day, I gotta be done. I just can’t keep punching the developer clock, fearing that I can’t keep up with the treadmill of new tech and matching it to the needs of companies.
My next career as a teacher/instructor— based solely on growth-hacking the student instead of the company—begins in a couple of weeks. It’s a lifestyle change from development and architecture but it’s more in-line with my new life, where people matter first, over products. If I moonlight, it’ll more than likely be for volunteering: sing songs with kids at church, or in the larger community to teach coding to kids. I love striving to be the best, and I can’t dial that down. But I can choose an area where ‘the best’ I can be is a better expression of who I’m called to be. So I’m not mad at #2 for how my dream job became a memory. Because it was time to forge some new dreams to make me into the kind of person my family, and my inner person needs me to be. Slinging code just won’t cut it anymore; I need to be able to sleep when the work is done. Because my success is found in their eyes now.

