Work-Life Balance is Critical; Don't let Alex St. John represent "experienced" developers!

Indie developer Rami Ismail responds to critic of work-life balance in game industry

I read this article today. I wrote an inline response. The bold parts are the article's original text. My responses are the rest of it. Yes, this layout is copied from the amazing nodontdie.com because I couldn't come up with another one this fast.

venturebeat.com

TL;DR - I was so stirred up from the original article by Alex St. John that I wrote another chapter in the book I've been writing for the past year about becoming a young video game developer. A good way to summarize what I wrote in that chaotic chapter (that will probably make my editor cringe, sorry dude ;)) is as follow:

I will never take for granted the incredible opportunities that came my way after finally earning my first job in the game industry, but I should note that those opportunities meant a few big sacrifices in my life at the time. I had to move across the country (since then I've worked in Japan, the US and Canada) only get to see my family once a year; some of my closest friends even less. It was tough but I was working my dream job and told myself I would make more time to see them "later."

I put in tons of extra hours early on to try to get promoted onto a development team and make what I saw at the time as a real impact, but I also recklessly burned myself out in the process of working 10, 20, even 30 extra hours a week, and suffered from anxiety and depression for nearly a year after shipping my first huge feature as a producer in charge of a team. This anxiety and depression eventually ended up costing me an unmentionable opportunity that I will never be able to forget. As a younger developer, you would hear me make all sorts of excuses about why I had to work the extra hours, but I was just being a young, passionate, idiot!

Only in the past two years did I finally put work life-balance at the top of my priorities list, and have I come to realize that I could have been balancing it all along. I wasn't managing my time effectively, I was young, naive, and anxious, but mostly dangerously, I was giving my entire life to my work. Eventually, I would attach so strongly to my work that my own self-worth was completely tied to the success of my team and the work they did. It was a disaster waiting to happen. By far this was the toughest lesson I have ever learned in my 30 years of life, and there is no way in hell will I stand idly by watching young developers go through the same thing. It's our job to share our learnings and to be responsible leaders in our industry. Take a stand and do something about young developers and companies that don't understand work-life balance and the long term damage it can cause!