I fully agree. But I also think it's a sign of something broken. It's deeply sad that a generation of talented people have to go home and face a choice: crank out even more hours of work to have an outlet for your creative/professional ideas... or don't, enjoy life, but fall behind and feel appropriately guilty for abandoning your creative impulses.

> crank out even more hours of work to have an outlet for your creative/professional ideas... or don't, enjoy life, but fall behind and feel appropriately guilty for abandoning your creative impulses.

Hopefully following your creative impulses is enjoyable...? And doesn't feel like work...?

That's wishful thinking if your job requires you to do the same physical activity as your hobby (typing, reading a backlit monitor). There are real physical limitations to our human bodies. Plus we require a range of experiences - more "creativity time" may conflict with family or rest or fitness - there are always opportunity costs.

Maybe this is the story of an embarrassment of material wealth. The idea that we should find our job as our main source of identity and fulfillment might be culturally whats wrong, rather than the system of work.

In the past, most people weren’t dilettantes chasing creative pursuits that also paid the bills, yet I’m assuming they managed to have fulfilling, meaningful lives.

How is this different from any other profession? I am sure garbage collectors go home and indulge in other fun things. Yes corporations are loosing out as they are unable to utilize your creativity but let us face it, corporations (and wall st) cares more about mitigating risk no?

I go home and write code for fun (and intense challenges), play sport, play music etc. If I had to pick work that gave me these id have to take a massive pay cut. Yep it is "sad" but I think the bigger loss is for the CO than it is for you. Id even say (if I was being selfish) that work is so damn boring and unchallenging that it actually fills me with energy that I get to take home :). Being broke may not do that for me !

I assume you're not being facetious. This is obviously different from e.g. garbage collection because garbage collectors are not actively involved in designing and optimizing their own schedule.

No I was not. I would have thought it would have been worse for GCs as they had tighter and fixed schedules? At least with software engineer we (ignoring all this rto nonsense) have flexibility. My point was that work pays you mostly because you are working on someone else's dreams (unless you get very lucky) so there is less chance of disappointment if you prepare and plan around this?

Here's your computer, your accounts, aaaaaaaand your shackles.

Yeah I found that priority mismatch out the hard way. My issue is I haven’t really been able to get a feel for whether that’s going to happen going into a job - I don’t see the writing on the wall until a month or two.

I do a few things:

Before joining any job I get some background on the executive team. That will tell you a lot about the culture, and let you know if the current team still has the founder or not (which can make a big impact on company culture).

That will tell you a fair bit, if you brush up on their background you can get some approximate sense of how it may influence company culture. I also look at where they are in life, as this can often indicate where they may lean into their philosophies in decision making. You can find patterns here sometimes.

Then, I do similar for the immediate time I'm working for when I'm hired. That will give you a sense of their personalities, at least.

Next, I really dig into how the company presents itself outwardly, and the general tone they carry. This one is harder for me to describe, but I have noticed that more "stuffy" companies tend to have a certain vibe to their presentation, for instance.

Finally, try to estimate where in the company lifecycle the company is. Is it new and unproven? Is it new yet has product market fit? Is it an older company climbing its peak or has it hit peak and is now largely to the point of being as big as its going to get or may even be plateauing?

these questions usually get me a good enough sense of company culture I haven't felt I've ever been surprised by company culture once I arrive at a given job.

Extra credit you can simply have an off the record conversation with your potential co-workers on LinkedIn or something, but not everyone answers cold questions about what its like working at X

Its sad that we have been conditioned to see creativity as an 'urge' and a 'luxury' rather than some integral part of life.