I worked crazy hours in my early 20s because I liked it. I liked computers, I liked my team, and to be frank, I had not much else to do. If I went home early, I would be spending time on the internet anyway.
But the thing is, unless you're building your own business, it just doesn't matter. No one will remember this in five years. In a corporate environment, every doc, every line of code you wrote will be replaced or forgotten far sooner than you suspect. Two or three reorgs later, your team might not even exist as a distinct entity. There will be no statue of you in the hallway after you're gone.
It's also not your family. If you become any sort of a liability, if you make an off-color joke, if the revenue metrics are off by 5% - thanks kid, here's the door. The first layoffs you go through will be devastating precisely because they crush that illusion. Yeah, your manager might be a genuinely nice and caring person, but by the end of the day, if they're asked to sort a spreadsheet with your name in it and then draw a line somewhere, they will, and there will be "nothing they could do".
The only lasting thing you're getting out of the heroics is the money you save, the skills you learn on the job, and for a short while, the reference you get from your old boss when you apply for the next job. If you optimize for that, you'll probably have a satisfying career. If you don't, you wake up one day realizing that you've given up a good chunk of your life to make Sam Altman 0.01% richer, and that's that.
If a company is demanding that you sacrifice social life and well-being, ask yourself what's it worth to you. Are they paying more than anyone else? Or do they just want to get more kLOC out of you for free?
The reality is, unless youre working on something that is actually revolutionary and positively going to impact humanity (which is rare I know) - who cares? Many people get wrapped up in their identity for work and its pretty sad. Little do they realise, they play straight into the hands of those who want them to be a productive asset and nothing more.
> ” I worked crazy hours in my early 20s because I liked it. I liked computers, I liked my team, and to be frank, I had not much else to do. If I went home early, I would be spending time on the internet anyway.”
This describes me almost exactly when I was in my 20s. However, I have far fewer regrets than you might. My career progressed a lot faster than it otherwise would have, and thanks to salary compounding my family enjoys much greater financial security than we otherwise might have. The institutional and product knowledge I gained in those days enables me to now have a much more relaxed work schedule and spend time with my family while still delivering value. And finally, it’s fun to walk through a lab and see the software I wrote unprompted over a few weekends still humming along two decades later on hundreds of stations.
I am under no illusion that my company is my family, but I didn’t do it for them. I did it for myself, and the company happened to benefit. There have never been any loyalty expectations on either side, and I would probably do it all over again.
I have no regrets. My point is that it's easy to have regrets if you build your self-worth around the company and your impact there. That's the part that's almost always too ephemeral to matter.
The secret is that the "crazy hours" tricks works best in a normal company, because your contributions stand out. If you're in a place where everyone is expected to work 9-9-6, you're not getting ahead, you're just keeping up until you burn out.
But the thing is, unless you're building your own business, it just doesn't matter. No one will remember this in five years. In a corporate environment, every doc, every line of code you wrote will be replaced or forgotten far sooner than you suspect. Two or three reorgs later, your team might not even exist as a distinct entity. There will be no statue of you in the hallway after you're gone.
It's also not your family. If you become any sort of a liability, if you make an off-color joke, if the revenue metrics are off by 5% - thanks kid, here's the door. The first layoffs you go through will be devastating precisely because they crush that illusion. Yeah, your manager might be a genuinely nice and caring person, but by the end of the day, if they're asked to sort a spreadsheet with your name in it and then draw a line somewhere, they will, and there will be "nothing they could do".
The only lasting thing you're getting out of the heroics is the money you save, the skills you learn on the job, and for a short while, the reference you get from your old boss when you apply for the next job. If you optimize for that, you'll probably have a satisfying career. If you don't, you wake up one day realizing that you've given up a good chunk of your life to make Sam Altman 0.01% richer, and that's that.
If a company is demanding that you sacrifice social life and well-being, ask yourself what's it worth to you. Are they paying more than anyone else? Or do they just want to get more kLOC out of you for free?