In my experience, if you’re a reasonably intelligent and experienced software engineer, and make some smart choices about where to focus your effort, you don’t need to put in much of that effort to live what most people would consider an enviable life. So you do that, become envied, get the validation, and feel generally pretty good about yourself.
But there is this nagging sensation that you could do more.
And it’s true, and that’s what this article talks about.
And underlying that, I think it’s important to look at the tradeoffs, and make a conscious decision about your life goals. As awesome as Carmack is, I’ll bet not many have sat down and thought about what it would be like to be Carmack and not themselves.
Of course, the magic is figuring out how to get as many of the benefits with as few of the drawbacks.