I don't want to mold my children into anything. They can find their own way to be successful, and I'll be there to support them into whatever they choose to do.

Or make the other parent not neglect them

If you teach your kid the lesson that life sucks and trying is for suckers, don't be surprised when they believe it and don't get anywhere in life because they never try.

> This is the best way to form children who are good workers with interesting careers.

No way. Its OK to just be alive and be a human hurtling through space on this rock.

Its OK to do something just to do it and childhood / adolescent behaviors are for experimenting not training.

Sorry you feel you were led astray.

On another hand your kids are more spoiled with the wealth they were born into and potentially may have lower drive than you have.

Hard to tell how they would turn out.

I suspect that the scope of possibilities they're aware of, things that they can be if they work hard, is simply different.

You could, for example, also consider being a good parent a productive thing, and a personal advancement opportunity :-)

The whole me vs. the kids thing is a false dichotomy. If it's something you want in your life, it is you.

That's begging the question. Your original ambition doesn't benefit. What if it was something really good and worthwhile?

> for most people their kids will have more overall influence then their work ever will.

This can't be the case, unless you think the amount of 'influence' always increases as generation pass (why?)

My kids are humans, just like me. If we're both selected at random, we should expect equal 'influence' for both. If I have some reason to think I'm above average in influence, then I should expect regression to the mean for my kids.

Related to this: if you have kids yourself, or you're in a position of providing guidance for kids, keep providing a safe and consistent environment for them yourself, but teach them that the world is not fair, that adults are not always right and not always consistent, that they themselves are not always the smartest person in the room (nor should they always want to be), and that other people care about themselves much more than them.

Or, in short, don't just teach them that the world is awesome (though it can be); teach them how to get what they want out of a world that's not out to hand it to them.

Absolutely, it is very important to me that we do things they enjoy. Otherwise I might end up doing the exact opposite of what I intended — and end up with them having an impression that working with technology is plain boring and a chore. Now of course in any creative endeavors there are times of pain and struggle, but I want my kids to experience the joy and satisfaction that can come from it too.

As I grow older, I see a huge divide between those who have/had parental support vs those who don't/didn't. It doesn't even take financially or professionally successful parents. Many of my peers had middle-class parents working normal jobs who just loved unconditionally + put effort forward... the difference between them and those who had less than ideal upbringings is typically vast.

Having loving parents who teach, model, and promote healthy discipline habits is paramount for a kid's success. Unfortunately many children don't win that lottery.

Ok, putting aside it's important to be emotionally warm towards your children and ensure they understand you love them "unconditionally"[1], I do think it's also important to help them to learn retrospect and to work smarter.

"What a great mark you've earned! What do you think was working about your approach?" (then praise and encourage them for whatever they say so long as it's remotely reasonable). I just say this because I feel like the "work hard" mentality actually hasnt served me in life. Once you work for a business no one cares how "hard" you work, if it's not smart first. Smart is the more powerful variable, you can work Smart and not hard and be quite successful. But work hard on stupid things? No one cares and you'll be overlooked and even hated on at times.

[1] - I'm not a parent, but honestly everyone has a limit, and frankly love should not be truly impossible to lose. My love will stop if they butcher my wife, burn down my house, and call me fat.

Well, don’t make them feel stupid, either - what I tell my son is that he’s smart, but I remind him that even if he’s smarter than 99% of all the people in the world, there are still 70 million people that are smarter than he is.

Hol up. A little off topic, but a better goal is to be a supportive and loving parent. Don't have kids with a goal to have them do X by Y. Children are there own person. Guide them, direct them, support them, teach them, but their goals should be their own.

They don't 'just' have money. Its not like some fairy shows up on one particular night drops a suitcase full of money outside their doorstep.

Life is full of choices and actions we take.

If a parent slogs all their life to ensure their kids have a good future and another parent doesn't. Then I'm very sorry that's exactly the future these people chose for themselves.

Ironically these are the same people who keep talking of work life balance, quitting jobs and taking care of kids and all that. While somebody else builds a financial empire. In the real life a parent who is always busy but can provide financially is vastly more preferable to kids than some who isn't but stays at home just to take care of them.

Learn to live with your choices and decisions.

There is also something to said for developing a kid’s sensitivity to and ownership of their individual intrinsic motivation. If using extrinsic motivation works for your kids, that’s great for you. Deciding on an approach for the child one rears out of concern for a lack of lawyers and doctors doesn’t sound like a sound decision process.

I would rather have my children dream of becoming astronauts than becoming the next Steve Jobs.

This I think precisely embodies what works and what doesn't. If this is your goal, you'll figure out something that works.

I think this is a really great point by itself, that I don't often see articulated so clearly.