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shako's avatar

I never felt ready to have my baby, neither did my wife. I've spoken to a lot of other parents (and our parents) and none of them did either. I enjoyed working really, really hard in my 20s. And I do still work hard, and so does my wife. But after a decade of it, you start to get the idea of what work is all about. And it can be great. But the life fulfillment from also building a family is wonderful as well. I think it would be difficult if a parent felt they had to give up their entire career to stay at home, but for the most part that's just not necessary if you have the resources.

I also feel like you'd see a lot more single people without families in more successful levels of the corporate hierarchy if it were that advantageous. But I think maybe not having a family might boost your productivity by 10-50% at max? And maybe that sounds like a lot, but the difference between someone who is going to be an executive, or a senior leader, and anyone else, is usually an order of magnitude. The really good people aren't just getting there because they're 30% better than average. The far right tail of human talent goes deep.

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Paul Millerd's avatar

good reflections - I enjoyed reading this!

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