[petercooper]

My recommendation would be the opposite. Carefully manage expectations and pace yourself if you want (a) to ensure your longevity as a tech worker, (b) to avoid serious health problems and (c) to avoid later regretting missing out on the valuable social and emotional opportunities of your youth.

Sure, I can see how that would work for perhaps even most people but it's different strokes for different folks. Ultimately, people need to make their own minds up because it doesn't always work one way or the other.

I regret not working a lot harder in my early 20s and haven't ultimately derived much value from the "valuable social and emotional opportunities of [my] youth." Indeed, working harder and more deliberately has led to better social and "emotional" opportunities. It's hard to "regret" the past significantly considering I'm happy now but if I could go back and wipe most of my memory, I'd work my ass off 100x as hard at that stage of life.

[gruseom]

Strongly agree. One of these days I want to write a manifesto against "work-life balance". Yeah, you heard me: against. "Balance" implies a tradeoff. Work, when you have the right work, is life.

That's not to say there's no such thing as overwork, spending too little time with your family or what have you. But it's time someone stood up to the prophets of complacency.

[mortenjorck]

As you allude to, work-life balance is something we tend to need if we aren't able to make our work something we believe in wholly. I spent the past year hoping to trade my day job for my dream job, but I think I've come to the conclusion that at least for me, the only way I'll ever find it is to make that job myself. It's liberating and daunting.