[lmm]

> As I said, I do have a healthy work life balance.

If you're working overtime and on-call outside of work hours then no, you don't. That's not healthy and there's no way to make it healthy. You talk about "owning" responsibility for fixing this thing if it breaks, but real ownership is two-sided - do you have a meaningful equity stake (token stock options don't count) in whatever that system does so that you're getting the upside as well as the downside?

If you're choosing to spend your life and health on something you actually own, fair enough, it's your funeral. But if you're a worker then it's not your job to deal with that. I can understand that as a parent you're vulnerable, you don't want to lose your job, and when the bosses say the business wouldn't be viable if they had to pay for a proper night shift (or whatever rate it would take for them to get enough coverage from you and your colleagues voluntarily taking those shifts - funny how the biggest fans of "free markets" don't seem to like being on the receiving end) then it's hard to stand up to that. But doing free favours for the bosses is like paying Danegeld - once you start it will only get worse.

You keep talking about responsibility to your colleagues, but what you're doing hurts them a lot. That's where my anger comes from.

[Cd00d]

I'm not actually working meaningful overtime.

I am working a more flexible schedule where I handle some details from my phone AFK and work dedicated hours at times that fit better with family obligations.

I actually believe setting that expectation helps my colleagues.

And again, I work at small companies by choice. If we fail a product, the company may fail, then we are all out of a job.

[lmm]

> If we fail a product, the company may fail, then we are all out of a job.

My view remains that if you're going above and beyond then that shouldn't be just to avoid the downside - you should also be getting a proportionate piece of the upside. For a small software company skilled workers are often bringing most of the value to the table, so you should have a corresponding ownership stake (I don't mean that purely rhetorically - from a friend who works at a consultancy that's structured as a cooperative it sounds like it's very much a "normal job" in practice).

Of course in a more capital-intensive business, or if you're blitzscaling, then maybe the owners are bringing something else to the table that you couldn't replicate with just a gang of programmers. But in that case capital is almost always a part of what they're bringing, and that means the company should be in a position to be paying what things cost.