The deathbed perspective is highly effective at sorting out what really matters. I've struggled with health issues for a few years now, and I ask myself regularly, "If I were to die in 6 months, would I be satisfied with having spent the last 6 months of my life doing this work?"

Often the answer is yes. A job is a good thing. Currently, I work for a company doing meaningful work, with a decent team, and a product that is heading the right direction. I get a decent paycheck to support my family and let us have some fun, and go home and see my family earlier than most.

On the flip side, if the organization changes, the answer can flip to no and it becomes time to leave. Sticking with a place that used to be a "Yes" after it turns to "No" is a painful experience, and people frequently stick around too long because of how things used to be. This is where the emotional detachment matters -- It is critical to your well-being to recognize when that answer flips.

IME another benefit of this is you can attract a more reasonable class of people at work.

When you can be manipulated by guilt and "the VP wants this tomorrow, it's high visibility", the most manipulative people in your org are going to latch onto you and praise you. If you are emotionally detached from this type of behavior, other people who are emotionally detached will be more willing to associate with you because they do not fear getting sucked into projects created by those manipulative people.

Note that emotionally detached does not equal lazy or bad worker. Some of the best people I know are emotionally invested in their work (e.g. being an awesome developer), but they are not emotionally attached to the manipulative drama you see in every office and being the knight in shining armor who comes running in to put out fires that somebody else created.

I also adopted a similar work approach earlier this year. Worked crazy hard 16-33 y/o with extra non-paid hours. I now manage all work shoved on my plate as a priorized backlog and no longer allow people to drive the priorities given to me. I am somehow in a high level position with many teams to manage and avoid at all costs offloading tasks to others without these items being filtered through my lisl first. I always make sure that I won't interrupt someone else's current tasks. I also have discovered the power of requesting to people that they send me an email with all the detailed informations for a particular task. With IM such as slack these days, people tend to throw away their responsabilites on others cause it's just so easy to do. Overall, I think that being more calm and facing the truth than I no longer want to accomplish more than 40h a week as resulted in me working better without any comprises.

It seems intuitive to me that the thing you pour your intellect, attention, and care into for 7-9 hours a day 5 days a week should be meaningful and fulfilling.

On the other hand, hanging meaning and mission over one's head seems like a great way to manipulate and underpay them, and being susceptible to this seems like a great way to become a useful idiot.

Squaring these two views is something I struggle with.

As a related note - why do employers prefer younger devs? Because they haven't learnt this lesson yet.

> I frequently espouse the virtues of a "Fuck you, pay me" work attitude...

One can enjoy the company they work for, but at the end of the day, they're not family and the loyalty only goes one way. Employment is a business contract and business is about making money. A company is going to try and wring everything they can out of you, so you should absolutely do the same.

There was a deathbed survey where they asked everybody what they would do different and virtualy all of the correspondents answered that they would have spent more time with family and worked less

The crazy part about overworking in the software development industry is that, at least from where I am (TN, US), job opportunities are abundant. I could maybe slightly understand working the crazy hours if ours was an industry where jobs were scarce or competition was cutthroat, but I've never had issues getting work. Yeah, maybe I won't be working on the sexiest thing, or making as much as I'd like, but I'm going to land on my feet pretty well.

My little bit of advice: save enough money for your emergency fund. I recommend at least six months worth of expenses. Not just for your primary bills, either, add up how much you actually spend in a month on everything and save 6 times that. That way, if you end up in a shitty situation, you can walk away and not have to worry about money, and you don't have to start eating ramen noodles everyday. I feel like money (or the lack thereof) is usually the reason why people put with so much crap. You don't need FU money, just enough to give you a comfortable runway to getting a new job. If you're even a halfway decent developer and you're in a decent market, six months should be plenty of time to get a new job.

Totally agree. Also, in corporate environments a lot of times “work” is something done to make higher ups look good. Most “urgent” work also falls into this category. It’s usually optional nonsense that could wait.

This was a hard lesson to learn for me as well. It is something I strive for now though even running my own business. I maintain boundaries like strict work hours and try to keep my work away from my life outside of work.

This resonates with me so much. I am currently trying to do the same.

I've taken the attitude that I should be as dispassionate as possible to the work I do. Which doesn't mean don't care about the work I do, but there's a point where I become a perfectionist over the projects I truly care about.

It was actually one of my managers who told me to get some perspective about it, it was very hard for me to realize that my work ultimately doesn't define me.

I only realized and adopted this after 2 burnouts.

It kind of blows my mind that people actually get attached to their work like that. I have friends to are like this but I just don't get it. Personally I just have never cared nor even been able to care about company problems beyond what I am asked to do to get paid in a narrow sense.

The people I know who have the approach you have now seem to have a harder time finding a job, because every employer expects their engineers to be passionate about whatever it is they're disrupting which signals that they'll work without counting their hours. What is your secret?

Yup. Hard lesson.

The contract between employer and employee is a simple one. You trade skill and time for money [Period].

This is something I struggle with every single day for the last year. I value how much I get out of work in terms of learning and improvement and have had a pretty ok last couple of stints with a lot of things happening outside of my control.

I wish this could be easier.

I would not use the same language you use, but certainly one should see a job for what it really is: an agreement to do work for money that will be kept up as long as it is in both parties best interest, aka a business arangement.

I am trying to learn how to do this! Teach me!

The deathbed scenario is something I use regularly when faced with a difficult decision. Cuts a lot of BS out of decisions

I was going to write exactly what you just published. You can’t imagine how I identify with you.

Made this mistake too. When I started back in paid employment I set myself ground rules of working when I am work, no email/messaging outside of work, arrive on time, leave on time, no overtime paid or unpaid, not thinking about work when I am not there, no socialising with colleagues and keep personal chit-chat to a minimum.

I found that this made me a better employee - focused on completing work quickly during the working day.

Easier to set these ground rules when you start with a company, also easier to set when you are 40 than 20.