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Ask HN: How to Deal with a Conservative Family?

by mion on 12/10/13, 11:37 AM with 41 comments

• by ScottWhigham on 12/10/13, 12:19 PM

  You seem like you have it all figured out - that you know "things" that your family doesn't, or that you think that your family's life experiences are old and stale and not relevant in today's modern world. It's funny to see this for me, as a 42yo man. I was that way too when I was 14-24. I'm not being critical of you - it's more a 42yo man bemusing how funny life is.

  I read something yesterday that resonates here - it was a something like "Remember all those kids in school who always asked the teacher, 'Will this be on the test?' They were on to something. It's your job to know what the important metrics that you will be judged by, and it's your job to make sure those metrics are where they should be." Well, you know the metric - GPA - and you are letting it slide because you are doing side projects. Let's swap this out with music and see it from a different perspective: "Any attempt at explaining why my GPA is getting lower and lower as I focus on my music outside of class is futile."

  The key point I'm trying to make is that you are distracted. You can say, "Yes, but I'm doing side projects that help me become a better programmer." Fine - that does make it better. But when your future prospective employer looks at your resume and compares it to 3-5 other candidates, will they cut you the same slack you are giving yourself?

• by GBKS on 12/10/13, 11:53 AM

  Why do you grades necessarily get lower due to your side projects? Is it not possible to keep both up?

  This is a good exercise in learning to communicate and to manage your image. Present things in way they can relate. For example, you can present open-source like getting involved in your local community or a local business organization. You do things for free (in real world organizations you have member events, volunteering, etc) and you gain valuable business connections and expertise.

  The 'construction worker' analogy can be put aside if you can present them a career plan. Research the jobs you want to get, get information on salary and benefits, and explain to your family that this holds a good future for you.

• by brnstz on 12/10/13, 12:11 PM

  Your problem is not that your family is conservative. I don't know how "bad" your GPA is, but if it's trending downward, the problem is not your aunt/grandfather's views on the world, however outdated they may be. You don't necessarily need to change their view on programming / open source, but you should appreciate they are concerned for you, possibly for good reason.

  pg has a PhD in computer science from Harvard. Do you think his undergrad GPA was low?

  You have four years to get a decent GPA, you have your entire life to contribute to open source. You can possibly do both while in college, but the former might be more important.

• by shane_burkhart on 12/10/13, 12:46 PM

  My family isn't quite to that level but no one really understands what I do or where I want to go. I feel like this goes for a lot of startup people. Most people don't see what we see or understand the opportunity.

  One thing that I've decided is to stop worrying about what they think. Ya they are your family but don't let them dictate your life or dissuade from what you want to do. I live in Missouri, and plan on moving to SF when I graduate. No one in my family is happy about that, but it isn't going to change anything. You still love them, they still love you. They obviously are concerned about your future. That's excellent because the startup path is not an easy one and encouragement is welcome.

  As far as grades go, they aren't the most important thing, but don't let them tank. Keep them manageable. They have taken a lower priority for me but I am still able to keep them to about half A's, half B's. That's fairly sufficient for anyone as long as you have a lot of side work so show for the rest of your knowledge. I can tell you I've learned more on my own than I have in any of my classes.

  Overall, don't worry about your family's perception of you because it will improve and they will eventually see where this path leads. People see startups as a big failure, but simply put you fail to succeed. Just keep pursuing your passion.

• by rfergie on 12/10/13, 11:50 AM

  My family are not particularly conservative, but they would still be concerned about a falling GPA.

  Perhaps you are misdiagnosing the problem?

• by wobbleblob on 12/10/13, 12:18 PM

  Your family is right: 'programmer' is the software equivalent of a construction worker, and you almost certainly do not get paid for writing open source software.

  Whether these truths are bad things is another matter though. Where would the world be without construction workers? Can you imagine what a building would cost if the architects also had to do the actual construction? And would it be a better building for it? And who would have heard of Linus Torvalds if he hadn't written some open source software? Your name on a popular project is a great advertisement for yourself. It gives you a broader choice of employers and it helps your salary negotiation.

• by olalonde on 12/10/13, 12:07 PM

  > My grandfather tells me not to write open source software because I don't get paid for it and so on.

  Many employers give more weight on open source work than on GPA. I guess you could try to explain him that (you could use architects as an analogy: would he hire an architect with a great GPA but no portfolio or an architect with a great portfolio but a bad GPA?).

• by mcv on 12/10/13, 11:58 AM

  Show them they're wrong by being successful at what you do.

  Of course that's going to take a while, and it could get really annoying if they keep nagging all that time. It would help a lot if you could get the idea across that real skill trumps GPA. Find some examples of highly successful programmers that didn't graduate.

• by intellectronica on 12/10/13, 12:14 PM

  Presumably if you're an undergrad you're an adult? Part of growing up is learning to make your own way. You family were the people giving you direction as you were growing up and now you're on your own - you decide what's good for you and take the responsibility to explain your decisions. It's great if you can still get advice from your family, but if you don't think it's good advice that's fine. Everyone goes through this phase. It's particularly hard in the beginning, when you're just starting to make your way in the world, but it gets better with time. Listen to your family, make an effort to explain yourself and also be very clear with yourself and with them about where the line between their giving advice and your deciding for yourself passes.

• by jacknews on 12/10/13, 1:59 PM

  I think your relatives may be right, assuming you are only "contributing" to open source, rather than leading a substantial project, or wrapped up in potentially important research/innovation.

  It's just a hobby, especially if you are neglecting your "day job", that is, your grades.

  Painful though this may sound to the HN community, it has always been the case that people who command or deal with "things" are considered lower class than people who command or deal with other people, and I believe this is still the case, even in tech circles. For example, I don't believe any of the current wave of "tech stars" have achieved what they have through technical skill alone. It's mostly been about business acumen, marketing, timing, assembling a good team, and so on.

  The "redeeming feature" with software is that programming is actually quite a complex skill, still open to innovation, and the demand for it is apparently currently higher than the supply. However I believe Obama, and other figures in powerful positions, are attempting to rectify that situation with their "everyone must learn to code" initiatives, and combined with potential innovation in automation and so on, the ground could quite easily shift.

  So while your open-source contributions may also be contributing to your resume, you have to consider the bigger picture of economics, and human nature, and decide if your current hobby is really viable as a lifetime career, and whether it can trump the "official" route to success or not.

  What to do? Charge for your time. If you're any good, someone will pay. You will learn what programming, in the real world, is all about, and your relatives will see someone practicing "grown up" skills rather than merely indulging a hobby.

  And finally ... "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." Mark Twain. perhaps shift the quote by a few years.

• by DanielBMarkham on 12/10/13, 12:23 PM

  I'm not sure why you feel your family is conservative. Remember: these political terms have very fluid definitions. If you stuck a gun to my head, I might define "conservative" as "folks who don't want to change anything because it works good enough already" while liberal would be "folks who want to change things that aren't broken" That's just a SWAG, though. I'm sure all my conservative and liberal friends would disagree!

  So I know a lot of conservatives who do open source, who do all sorts of new things -- after they've been around for a few years. I guess die-hard conservatives might wait 50 years or so before trying new stuff? Usually these guys aren't in IT, though. You have to remember that in IT something like 80% of what we use refreshes every couple of years.

  I had a very similar problem with my parents who were very liberal! To them there were established ways of trying new things. It wasn't an issue of trying new stuff. It was that they had a different mental model of reality than what I was experiencing. It took a long time before they finally figured out what I was telling them.

  There are a lot of conservative people who teach interpretive dance, improvisational acting, or creative writing. Likewise, there are a lot of liberal people who are lifers at various BigCorps, are lawyers for the man, and so on. Don't confuse the comic book definition of things with how things actually work.

  So the problem here is, at least from your brief description, is not that your family doesn't want you doing new-fangled stuff. It might be that they don't understand how the technology field works. It also might be that somebody is paying for college and you're spending your time chasing stuff that doesn't look like college to them. Could be a lot of things, actually. I think more information is needed.

  It's one thing to want to freeform chase your dreams. It's another thing to commit to a structured regimen of training. Sounds like your family is expecting one thing from you and you want to do another. As long as they aren't writing the checks and you're not making a mistake by going in debt for something you're not using, sounds to me like you get to decide. Time for an honest talk.

  Also, and this is tricky for tech folks, you just may never be able to convey what the tech world looks like to them. IBM lifers have a much different view of tech than SV types. (Each tends to disdain the other, but that's a story for another day)

  Buck up, kid! If you want to spend your evenings building free software to change the world, go for it. But that means you have a communication job ahead with the family -- one that might take many years to accomplish.

• by munimkazia on 12/11/13, 8:23 AM

  This is just a hunch, but I don't think your family would be too worried about these things if you kept your GPA up. They are trying to find the reason for the falling GPA, and blaming what they can find.

• by kbeller on 12/10/13, 6:08 PM

  What does "conservative" have to do with your question?

• by timbro on 12/10/13, 12:17 PM

  > My grandfather tells me not to write open source software because I don't get paid for it

  Yeah, these are the values of the rat race culture we've been nurturing so far. And look where that has taken us. Sanity?

• by davidsmith8900 on 12/10/13, 8:10 PM

  - Just keep your head up and continue to follow your heart.

• by wellboy on 12/10/13, 11:56 AM

  It's always like that and it would be weird if it weren't. You're 100% going in the right direction. If you want to be an entrepreneur and change the world, you will receive a lot of adversity, also for no apparent reason.

  But if you do, you know you're on the right path, so go out there and kick ass! :)