I’ve been fully remote for 12+ years now, and I’ve had a very successful career in engineering and engineering leadership. I also have eight kids that I get to spend a ton of time with. There’s a remote tax on career growth, but my RE side hustles have more than compensated for it.

Every now and then I wonder what might have been if I had stayed at Apple. No way to know for sure, but I probably couldn’t have afforded the family and lifestyle that I enjoy now.

That is a weird statement. Most people eventually have kids, so obviously the average ambitious person has kids.

My experience is actually that there is a bias towards more ambition among the childless. Not because of laziness of parents, mind you. But in the decision whether to have kids or not, ambition may play the decisive role, everything else being equal. It goes so far that I have heard otherwise reasonable people resent childless colleagues because of course those workaholics can afford to push overtime while those with kids are pushed into carreer disadvantages, so they say.

Parenting gives to access to a part of the world you never knew existed. The school events, sports, Cub Scouts, neighbors down the street. You meet people who are trying to create a great world for their children. Your interests align, so you end of working together on it. You actually become part of the community.

I used to be Mr. Career, and maybe someday I'll get back to it. But right now my job plays such a small role in my life compared to my family.

His main job was to fly around the world and train salespeople on how better attract and retain clients.

One year, he was traveling for 180 days aka half of the entire year.

For many years I was somewhat conflicted about this b/c on the one hand he wasn't around much but on the other hand my mom didn't have to work, we had a great life and got to take international vacations every year.

As a father now, I appreciate the sacrifice my dad made to not see us as much but to provide a great life for his wife and kids.

Before my kids, I started at sunrise, and coming home was optional. Then I got married and divided my attention. Then I got twins, so I divided it even more. But it doesn't make me any less ambitious, in fact, I have more fire behind me to ensure I give them a bright future. It's just that, I come home on time now.

Edit: and thank you for writing this post. It's rarely something we mention in our personal blogs, but it's always nice to know how diverse this culture is.

A desire to accumulate power is tantamount to a desire to accumulate wealth. Most ways to wealth these days involve finding ways to consume more of the world's resources or siphon resources to yourself.

Consider refining word choice. (Though if your notion of ambition corresponds to building a sillycon valley startup, then 'ambition' is probably the right word.) I don't mean that nothing good ever comes of technology; I mean that VC-funded startup tech is mostly done in the pursuit of money, damn any social consequences.