Yeah, I'm curious why this essay was written. A week after having finished spending (evidently) quite a while writing two essays about economic inequality and your personal role in increasing society-wide inequality, why the sudden change to caring about spending time with your kids? And why the need to say this out loud?
This essay strongly feels like rationalizing to oneself an unwillingness to engage with reasoned criticism (of which there was quite a bit). If pg wants to spend time with his kids, good for him, that's certainly going to be more fulfilling than arguing online. But throwing arguments over the fence and then proclaiming the desire to spend time with your kids genuinely does not seem fulfilling.
No, there's no connection with this essay and the last one. He's been thinking about writing about this topic for a long time. In fact, one of the things Paul and I talk most about is that life is short and we need to savor time with our kids and do things that are meaningful to us. So trust me when I say that, as PG's wife, I believe you are mistaken.
Dutch is a language of proverbs. One of them is 'High trees catch a lot of wind'. The further you stick your head out the bigger the chance that someone will try to score points of you, either by picking apart every word you wrote or by mis-interpreting if possible every little turn of phrase. This goes with the territory of being very visible, and Paul is now a fairly high tree in the tech landscape his essays offer easy hand-holds to those that wish to practice their written wrestling skills. This will likely get worse as YC goes on to more and more successes (pretty much un-avoidable with the speed the snowball has been going down-hill).
Since plenty of people reading Paul's essays are more than capable of figuring out the intent rather than taking pot-shots at the form in which that intent was cast I don't think given the choice between playing 'someone's wrong on the internet' and spending time with your kids there should even be a contest. On the other hand, action begets reaction and there isn't an essay that Paul wrote that did not have its share of discussion and picking apart so maybe simply accept that and totally ignore the responses?
Enjoy the time you have while you can, indeed, life is too short and I wished I could spend and had spent much more time with my kids. Before you know it they'll be borrowing your car keys and all those years that feel like they will last forever will have vanished.
Well don't lose your faith on HN's sense of humor, there are some of us who do get the joke :) maybe next time add a /sarcasm tag or such? I admit that it will water-down the effect, but it is better than nothing!
While it's possible that that caused pg to write this essay when he did, the position articulated in it is completely consistent with what he's been saying for a long time. And a glance at his Twitter feed makes it clear that he finds joy in being a dad and makes it a real priority.
This essay strongly feels like rationalizing to oneself an unwillingness to engage with reasoned criticism (of which there was quite a bit). If pg wants to spend time with his kids, good for him, that's certainly going to be more fulfilling than arguing online. But throwing arguments over the fence and then proclaiming the desire to spend time with your kids genuinely does not seem fulfilling.