Nobody has children to become better at their job. I certainly didn't. You have them for all the usual reasons, or for no clear reason at all, and then you spend the next couple of decades mostly trying to keep everyone fed, rested, reasonably happy, and the house somewhere short of a madhouse. Some days you choose two of four. Visiting Amber at work, June 2026 So it caught me off guard, somewhere along the way, to realise that raising my kids had been quietly teaching me things I now use every day at work. There was no plan, no book, no moment where I decided parenthood would sharpen some professional skill. It just happened, the way most real learning does, while I was paying attention to something else. For most of my career this would not have come up. I spent over two decades at HP, working mainly alongside older, more established colleagues. It was a mature, structured, somewhat bureaucratic place, and it did not tend to draw many young people in. Whatever I was learning at ...