I've always viewed adult life as maximizing the time/money problem. Or rather, solving the problem where it's relatively easy to get either free time or money at any point, but relatively hard to get both at the same time.
As developers, we have the advantage of being able to attack it from the Money side. You can spend your early career ramping up your bill rate so that you don't have to work 52 week years just to pay the bills. And you can also build product stuff that keeps paying dividends long after the heavy work of building it is done.
Combine those two things during the "burnout" phase you mention, and it shouldn't take too long to get out in front of the problem if you work it right.
Took me until about age 30 before I could start taking entire years off, but I bet a kid fresh out of school could do it a lot faster these days. There's really never been a better time to be in Tech.
As developers, we have the advantage of being able to attack it from the Money side. You can spend your early career ramping up your bill rate so that you don't have to work 52 week years just to pay the bills. And you can also build product stuff that keeps paying dividends long after the heavy work of building it is done.
Combine those two things during the "burnout" phase you mention, and it shouldn't take too long to get out in front of the problem if you work it right.
Took me until about age 30 before I could start taking entire years off, but I bet a kid fresh out of school could do it a lot faster these days. There's really never been a better time to be in Tech.