| I think John Carmack is amazing but also an outlier. The intersection of the sets of developers who: A) make it to their 40s and are still IC's B) still work > 40hrs/wk on a startup for little-to-no-pay C) are still happy and enjoying themselves Is small. It's not empty though! But I do think there are many people who think this is the ideal way to live or something they ought to strive for. And the set of people who try and realize later in life that was not what they should have been working towards do tend to burnout and have regrets. It happens a lot to people who want to be famous. They don't think about what they would have to give up to get it: some measure of your health in later life (hello carpal tunnel, frequent recurring hemorrhoids, type-2 diabetes, heart disease, poor vision, etc), friends and relationships (read enough biographies and loneliness is a recurring theme) -- things they might take for granted. There are stories from people who did make it and became famous and wish they hadn't. There are more of those than the, "I wouldn't have given this up for the world," types I think. Grass is always greener on the other side, as they say. Update: also, Carmack hasn't been working at a startup since he took the golden parachute out of Id and could afford to build rockets as a hobby. |
https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/IC