> Carmack is also in a favorable position where he's basically always been able to choose only projects he's passionate about for work, so he can't really see the perspective of somebody being forced to work on something pointless by their boss

BUT HE SHOULD!

One of his first jobs was a soul crushing dev work when they had to write X random PC utilities every Y week for some monthly subscription thingy. You know what he did? He started slacking like crazy at work so he could work on game development with his bodies at home. Using company equipment he more or less stole from work.

(I think he was sued for this, and then repeated it many years later and was sued by Facebook)

So technically, he worked shorter hours. He just didn't tell his boss.

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...