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Comment by kchoudhu | Hacker News Reader

Be ready to have serious discussions about the two body problem when you're in a relationship with an ambitious woman. When opportunities come, someone's going to have to take the hit and swallow the disruption. Men are accustomed to having their way in these matters -- this is not necessarily the case anymore.

In my case, it forced me to rejig my career plans and strike out on my own. I'm far, far, far better off for having done so (and so, more importantly, is my family), but at the time, it did seem like the end of the world.

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Yep, this is the rarely-discussed side of finding an "independent"/"ambitious" partner. It seems great on paper to be "equal" but it's not so simple. I've broken off relationships over partners refusing to even humor a discussion.

Thankfully the person I married is far more willing to face my ambitions and discuss compromises and other options. We've run the gamut from me pursuing med school to SAHM-hood (and SAHD for him, too) - which, despite society generally looking down on childrearing, I think it's possible and great for someone to be ambitious about it.

Alimony is a bit amusing to consider from my perspective, then. It's being seen here and elsewhere as a bit of a "woman takes my hard-earned money" thing. I could easily think the opposite! I'm not sure all these people would necessarily appreciate being on the end of that kind of criticism if they made any sacrifices for my ambition that created an imbalance :) And with my relationship and aiming to work with my partner as much as possible for the benefit of our family, I wouldn't begrudge spousal support so easily, even if we split acrimoniously.

> of that kind of criticism if they made any sacrifices for my ambition that created an imbalance :)

The reason alimony is unfair is marriage is a two way street and alimony is not.

I work 60+ hours a week in a high stress role. I come home at 6pm and spend a couple of hours playing with my kids.

Then my wife gets them ready for bed while I do another hour or so of work.

Finally around 9 or 930pm I sit down with my wife and we relax together for another hour or so.

What would happen if we divorced?

I'd get to see my kids every second weekend and I'd lose all my emotional support.

Without my partners support I couldn't handle my 60+ hours of high stress work each week. And I'd like to see my kids more often.

I could easily take a 60% pay cut and drop my hours to a sustainable 25-30/week but I'll end up in prison due to my states alimony laws.

If you are actually married, I encourage you to reconsider very carefully what you bring to your marriage, what your wife brings to the marriage, and whether you have truly built a two-way marriage. The day I did this was surprising.

Personally, I went from "she's slacking while I'm busting my ass" to "we are both very, very tired at the end of the day for very good reasons". The mutual increase in respect and empathy afterwards was noticeable.

I'm not sure the comment you're replying to has that issue. They said:

> Without my partners support I couldn't handle my 60+ hours of high stress work each week.

So within the marriage, they're perfectly happy with the split (or at least that's a reasonable read of their comment).

They're saying that if a divorce happened, alimony laws would require them to continue working long hours to keep up their income, even though they lost the partnership benefits of the marriage that make such a workweek possible.

Exactly :)

My wife supports and enables me to be ambitious and handle high stress work.

Without my wife I couldn't handle it and would burn out in months. But the legal system doesn't care.

Our marriage is just fine thanks :)

My point is if we did divorce I would be screwed by the legal system whereas my wife would be supported by the legal system.

How is that fair?

I have a feeling that a lot of the people ripping on alimony in this thread and elsewhere on the 'net were/are not ready for the deprioritization of self and concomitant promotion of "us"[1] inherent in marriage.

[1] Note use of "us" and not "other". You aren't putting the other person on a pedestal here!

So you're not a location independent entrepreneur/freelancer?

I was talking about this with my girlfriend recently. She's leaving the city in a year to do graduate studies. I'm a mostly location independent entrepreneur. But, leaving Canadian tax residency is complicated, and there are some big advantages to the fixed office setup I have here, because I do some video production.

I was thinking of keeping my residence here, but frequently traveling to visit her. There's some types of work I can do quite easily on the go. I'll only find out how well that works once we actually do it.

How did you arrange things?

I spent eight years or so working at an investment bank in NYC on the technology side of things while my wife finished up grad school. The pay was good, but the hours and schedule rigidity were not.

My wife eventually got a really good professorship halfway around the world. We had a couple of titanic fights about what taking this job would entail -- and we eventually came to the conclusion that we would come out ahead if I quit and started my own company. I'm concentrating on building a portfolio of services now that will provide cashflow for a bigger project later on -- and it's going well. I get to play with the kids all day, write code when I feel like it (mostly late at night) and focus on getting healthier (I've lost about 20 pounds in the last year...no more stress eating on the job). Location doesn't matter because Internet: last year we spent 8 months in Doha, 2 months bumming around Europe and 1 each with family in Los Angeles and Bangladesh.

Honestly, I'm surprised more techies don't go down this road.

Very curious about the tax implications of this approach.

We moved to a jurisdiction without income tax, so we were only taxed on our earned income above a certain threshold. As US citizens, it was a reasonably lucrative move.

Ah, yes, if only being in Princeton and then working for Wall street for 8 years was available to everyone.

Wonder why doesn't everyone just do it? It's so easy, right?

No argument that this isn't an option available to everyone, but a large number of technologists have the financial klout to make this work.

It's risky.

If you do contract development, it's really not that risky. If anything, I'd argue it's riskier not having that option available. Even though I've taken full-time jobs on occasion, always having the option to fall back on contracting is an amazing safety net.

It worked out for us, but I would be peddling bad advice if I didn't add that I don't recommend doing it without a substantial financial backstop already in place.

Question: Don't you have to pay tax stateside on income earned outside the USA?

After a certain income threshold, yes. The income threshold is actually quite high: 103K of income earned abroad per person in a family is exempt from US taxation, which is a substantial savings.

I'm not comfortable disclosing my personal situation in any greater detail in public -- but I'm happy to chat about it over email if you are interested!

Thanks! (and apologies)

too late to edit, but I meant "so you are" instead of "so you are not"

Figured :)

As a developer who took 7 months off of pat leave, I'd recommend devs seriously thinking about it.

A remote working dev has the flexibility to earn a good keep while also letting their partner have the more rigid location and schedule.

The year I took off for paternity leave was simultaneously the greatest ("wow, it's fun spending time with my kid!") and worst ("holy crap, we've been leaving women to deal with this?") thing I've ever done.

I seriously suspect a lot of jabs directed at feminism would die away if more men took paternity leave and used it as directed (and not, say, as a way to goof off for an extended period of time).

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