I appreciate the point of this article, but I think it oversimplifies both the thing it's criticizing and the solution. Maybe others have heard "you must be wi

I appreciate the point of this article, but I think it oversimplifies both the thing it's criticizing and the solution. Maybe others have heard "you must be willing to put your work family first" or "you can use your vacation time, but do you really need to?" I have not heard either of these in my career. No where (large company, small company, private company, publicly trade company, company founded the previous year or a company founded 125 years previously) had anyone said or implied expectations other than my actual family should come first. Every where I worked, ensuring that we took sufficient vacation time was encouraged (although I have worked with people that misunderstand that vacation time means that you don't work, and that checking email is working). More subtly, However, is how companies handle "crunch time," (again, this has been a thing in pretty much every company I've worked at regardless of size, age, or industry). No one is saying "this is more important than your family," but they will say "we need to get this done by X date." The managers I have respected understand that there are sacrifices to do this and do something to make it up (e.g., give bonus vacation days). But on our end, we have a paycheck because our company takes in revenue - our job is to do the things that ensure we continue to ensure revenue, we can't just say "I wrote the program, I'm out." However, there is something to keeping your management accountable that this is a career for us, not a charity. If you want us to stick around, you have to pay us. If you want to build a team that people want to work on, we need passionate people but we also need people representing a diversity of skills, interests, race, gender, ways of thinking, etc. Many of the people I've enjoyed working with are certainly passionate about programming, but they had passions outside of work and coding. They have hobbies that include reading fiction, running, building stuff with Arduinos, or doing community service. They spend time with their families and friends. I also agree with the article as it rejects the "this is how to be a real programmer" mentality. It's easy for that to introduce bias about who a group hires, promotes and works to retain (or the people we as a software engineering community tend to attract). There are lots of ways to be a "real" programmer (whatever that's supposed to mean).