Well, don't paint with a broad brush. I love solving problems too, and I love learning new things. I too played with computers as a kid and my middle school friends and I built websites for fun. I wasn't exposed to real programming (beyond neat Javascript tricks) until CS class in high school.
However, science has always been my #1 thing, and programming is my probably my #3. Interesting, but not the only thing I want to do. Working 40 hours a week at it is enough for me. I still love learning new things and getting better at the craft, but when I go home, I have other hobbies.
I'm hacking my treadmill with Arduino for fun. I'm brazing metal. I'm riding my bike more. I'm reading a fiction book that just came out. I just read a book about world development. All of that is a lot more interesting to me than going home and sitting at a different desk doing more programming, you know?
And while I'm not offended by your comments and this is entirely non-personal -- really, I'm just curious as well and enjoy talking to people with different perspectives -- the attitude that if I'm not always programming, I'm "less than" than other programmers seems oppressive to me. I'm still smart, I'm still curious, I'm still good at my job. But there's still the perception that if I am not programming more, I am falling behind.
So the solution for people like me is to pretend to be someone like you, who loves programming above all other things, and it's mildly exhausting. It's great that you love programming so much and I kind of envy you. But not everyone needs to be exactly like you to be a worthwhile contributor. (Again, not personal, I just enjoy putting these thoughts into words.)
>the attitude that if I'm not always programming, I'm "less than" than other programmers seems oppressive to me.
Who says that? It's so backwards from everything I'm accustomed to in the bay area. (In the bay area I've done 10 years of data science and 5 years as a software engineer before that.) Maybe it's because I didn't go to universities out here and it's university culture? People at MIT can get very passionate about their projects.
I've had companies (many of them) advertise to me saying I should join them because they have a healthy 9 to 5 work culture. But what company doesn't? Maybe a young startup, but you sign up for that at that point.
Everyone I know who regularly works more than 40 hours a week (who isn't a CEO) is almost always because their boss asks for X quantity load of work done, which might be 50 hours of work, so they do the 50 hours instead of communicating they can't do that much within 40 hours. Sometimes it's because they're a junior and are afraid of not fitting in and are afraid of getting fired, but sometimes it's a senior who has their tech down, but not their communication skills down. It happens, and it's sad to see, because it almost always leads to burn out on their end. It's not a good thing.
I love what I do, but I do 40 hours a week. Want more? It better be a rare event (crunch times are a real thing in some industries) or you need to be paying me more, and I'm not cheap.
>So the solution for people like me is to pretend to be someone like you, who loves programming above all other things, and it's mildly exhausting.
I love programming, but it's just a tool. It's like saying you love hammering. It doesn't make a lot of sense when you take a step back. What I love is the projects I do. You mentioned hacking your tread mill, so it sounds like you do more tech hobby stuff after hours than most software engineers.
Frankly, I rarely do projects outside of work, despite loving what I do. Why? Because companies give me inspiration to do specific tasks that I love. Without working I have a hard time finding things to do. If I could find infinite things to do, I'd be a CEO, providing things for everyone else to do. The only people who truly don't turn off, end up being CEOs, not software engineers. (Unless they don't know how to capitalize, or some other edge case, of course.) So it's unrealistic to believe you have to be doing non-work tech to work in tech. That's just absurd.
Also, I can't say from country to country, but within the US software engineer culture, while it varies from company to company and team to team, is generally somewhat similar across the country. On the NYC side, working more than 40 hours a week is common (eg, quant work), where on the bay area side only working 40 hours a week and turning off (unless you're at a startup) is common.
Is it possible this has to do with too small of a sample size? It's easy to stereotype. We naturally do it unless we learn otherwise, sometimes through learning statistics, sometimes through other routes.
However, science has always been my #1 thing, and programming is my probably my #3. Interesting, but not the only thing I want to do. Working 40 hours a week at it is enough for me. I still love learning new things and getting better at the craft, but when I go home, I have other hobbies.
I'm hacking my treadmill with Arduino for fun. I'm brazing metal. I'm riding my bike more. I'm reading a fiction book that just came out. I just read a book about world development. All of that is a lot more interesting to me than going home and sitting at a different desk doing more programming, you know?
And while I'm not offended by your comments and this is entirely non-personal -- really, I'm just curious as well and enjoy talking to people with different perspectives -- the attitude that if I'm not always programming, I'm "less than" than other programmers seems oppressive to me. I'm still smart, I'm still curious, I'm still good at my job. But there's still the perception that if I am not programming more, I am falling behind.
So the solution for people like me is to pretend to be someone like you, who loves programming above all other things, and it's mildly exhausting. It's great that you love programming so much and I kind of envy you. But not everyone needs to be exactly like you to be a worthwhile contributor. (Again, not personal, I just enjoy putting these thoughts into words.)