I worked Bay Area tech as a dev for several years; the thing they are really really good at is manipulating young people (mostly men, really) into thinking that if they aren’t living work then they are bad people. All of your free time should be spend thinking about work, building things for work, “leveling up” your skills to be better at work. Family and friends are not important, only work. The gaslighting and emotional manipulation is cult-like.

I once had the founder of the startup I was working for tell me that he had no idea I cared about the company after I gave a presentation on how we could pivot our product to be more effective. He then asked how he could get more of my time for the company. I was working 60-80 hour weeks already.

I’m an EM now and those experiences shaped how I run my team: work is work, not your life. You do your work so that you can afford to do the things you actually care about, and that is how it should be.