In Silicon valley everybody works all of the time and nobody works any of the time.
I think the work culture of a handful of companies -- Google, Amazon, Apple -- is made to seem like this monolithic ethos in tech, and then other tech companies seem to model themselves after those companies, or pretend like they do.
But this wasn't even tech that introduced this. The "Work till you die" culture had been on Wall Street for decades before big tech, in Insurance and business and sales and finance. CPAs and young attorneys are still expected to put in 60 and 70 hour weeks to "do their time" until they're partners. Tech, by contrast especially in Silicon Valley was more like a college campus, Stanford, Cal Poly, MIT, because early tech ... largely
was driven by research divisions of universities.
It doesn't have to be that way, and it doesn't have to be that way in technology. Good companies respect your life, give you balance. I work in technology and virtually never take work home, I don't check my phone when I leave, I don't check my email on weekends, I'm almost never asked to do anything outside of work hours, and hell I don't even work that hard when I'm at work with a balance between meetings, development, planning, and then some amount of time to myself... I try to go for a walk every day, when the weather's nice I try to bike.
It really depends what stage you're at in life. I've been in tech since my first co-op internship while still a student. My first job out of school was your typical tech office: free breakfast, lunch, snacks, drinks (including alcohol), a game room (mainly used for Smash) and a bunch of communal areas with sofas, etc. I was in my early 20s,working with a bunch of peeps in their early 20s, and we hung out a ton at the office, even on the weekends sometimes. It's not like we were working crazy hours: for the most part I'd get in at around 10h30, some people showed up for lunch. Beers and Smash would start at 6. After that some would go home, some would go eat together (or order in) and the night owls who sleep all morning would work another hour or two (so in the end everyone was working their fair share). It was basically a couple of extra years of university, but with a ton of free stuff and infinity times more money.
Years later, as a married father of two, I sure don't want that life anymore. That's why like you I work remotely. But it made perfect sense for those first couple of years.
Yeah, this is my experience with that too. I used to have a social life that was strongly ingrained with my work life when I was young, and so those perks were nice office benefits. Now though, I've got a social life almost completely separate from work and the last thing I want to do, ever, is hang out at work after work with my coworkers. I'm old, have a family, I want to be home. Occassionally I'll get together with a coworker on the weekend, but we're more friends at this point than coworkers. When I was young, though, it was different... Regularly used to go out for drinks, go out on the weekends, etc., with my coworkers.
