Carmack since the 2000s mostly always worked multiple jobs at less than 40hr. Working 30 hours on software at Id and 30 hours at his rocket thing is about like

Carmack since the 2000s mostly always worked multiple jobs at less than 40hr. Working 30 hours on software at Id and 30 hours at his rocket thing is about like a half-time employee who does a hobby wood working job on the side. At Meta he eventually became part time CTO less than 40 hours and worked on his AI stuff on the side until fully moving to it. There is some difference in that he was probably doing lots of programming at all the different jobs, rather than an unrelated hobby (maybe not that different than the woodworking analogy though, he began talking about lathing rocket parts a lot), but 40 hours at one place tended to be too boring to him through large parts of his career more than he lets on in that comment, though the AI stuff came later. There's also a big difference in working on assigned tasks you maybe disagree with vs deciding which tasks are needed, having power of delegation, etc.