This “you gotta program all day every day or else you are unfit for it”-attitude is incredibly toxic and harmful. No other profession has this. No dentist gets told he gotta setup a practice in his garden shed to practice pulling teeth, or else hell be a horrible dentist. No, doing job for 40 hours a week is enough to be one.
I agree on this, but I believe the comment was aimed more at the "Tinker-Attitude" that many STEM-People have.
And I believe many other professions have this to an extend: I'd imagine that many journalists and authors enjoy reading in their spare time. Every mechanic I know has a cellar full of half-finished machines he fiddles with in the evening.
I don't have the energy to code on private projects for eight hours after eight hours of coding at work (besides occasionally enjoying not sitting in front of a monitor...).
But every once in a while it bites me to blow 10 hours of tinkering on some strange useless problem, like simulating Logic-Gates with basic arithmetic.
That was not prescriptive but descriptive. I don't program every day after work either, but I do sometimes get terribly addicted to a problem and work on it a great deal. I haven't met a good programmer that didn't have it, much like you don't mean someone who's properly good at anything they don't practice a great deal.
> No dentist gets told he gotta setup a practice in his garden shed to practice pulling teeth
This is a weird argument to me, the medical field has an even more unhealthy work/life balance than our field. They absolutely "practice at home" (obviously not through home surgery, but reading and so). Dentists have an easier time than most other medical professions, but every dentist I've met regardless had extremely good work ethic and frequently obsessed over his work.
You can absolutely work 40hrs a week and be a good engineer business-wise. However, most people who are remembered for their contributions to a field (and weren't just in the right place at the right time) dedicated a large part of their life to it. That includes writers, poets, musicians, doctors, anything.. to quote old Onion videos: are tests biased against students who just don't give a shit?
It is very common for professional athletes and for anyone who wants to live off their art (painters, musicians, writers, etc). Most academic types I know are like that too.
There are plenty of programming jobs where 40hs a week is enough and you get paid a good salary.
Now, if you want to join a FAANG, that's a different story. But no one wins a Grammy by playing exclusively in weddings either.
