[happytoexplain]

Yes, but this form of gambling is a terrible thing to encourage implicitly. It's awful for society to ask people who have worked to attain a "normal" education, trying to apply to "normal" companies, to choose between life-harm and potential future compensation. For specialized cases like a silicon valley moonshot startup or whatever, fine. But this scenario, allowed to progress naturally, will work itself into more and more "normal" cases.

This is especially compounded by the two facts that it's not a zero-sum game, and software developers have a higher tendency to fall outside some of the social norms that normally serve as natural controls on this kind of scenario. I.e. if you can do your job for unusually long (because it's not physical labor, and/or you enjoy doing it both as a job and a hobby), and you don't have many other obligations (you don't have kids, or you can afford childcare; or you don't have a wife, or you have a wife who doesn't mind you spending little time together; or you can afford to order prepared food often or don't have a cultural/personal bias against it), what happens is the people with these properties work more hours, causing the market to adapt and pressure the other people in the same field. In other fields, this doesn't happen in enough numbers to cause this problem.

[Nevermark]

In my experience, I agree: not everyone can put in the same kind of extra effort. And in areas where people are replaceable cogs, this can really hurt some people.

But in knowledge work, if things are hitting the wall and there is pressure to extra-contribute but you are not in a position to put in extra time, you can still respond in a way that visibly shows your commitment.

Express to your management & team your concern about the need for extra commitments and ask-for/suggest ways you can realign your work to prioritize what is most important to the situation.

Nothing makes up for limited additional capacity more than demonstrating that despite your constraints, you are all in to help everyone around you succeed.

Again, this may not work as a low level cog where management isn’t invested in the individuals that work for them. But in other cases, people do appreciate demonstrations of commitment even if you cannot contribute more on some dimensions.

It’s just important to explicitly and visibly show your flexibility and willingness to incorporate others suggestions, on all the dimensions you can adapt.