And you know what? Mostly it wasn't worth the time I could have spent elsewhere.
If all-nighters will make you rich, by all means, pull em. And then once you're rich, STOP.
But if all you're doing is spending your time and youth and energy to make somebody else rich and don't get rich yourself, you're a sucker. And if that person expects you to do 30 hours at a time at your workstation so they can get rich, and you do it, they're a scumbag and you're their bitch.
Don't be anybody's bitch. Don't chase after that carrot dangling from a stick in front of you forever. I wasted so many hours, days, years of my life putting my heart and soul and guts into startups that nobody remembers, that mostly never made any mark or ripple anywhere, and I never got rich doing it.
Now I get up at 8am, I start working at 9am, I peace the fuck out at 5pm and I don't think about work code until 9am the next morning. On weekends and evenings I write my own code, and I hang out with my wife and my cat and I watch old movies.
That sounds like old people shit when you're 22 and all this stuff is new and you think that if you just put in enough crunches, that sempai or the Money Gods will notice you and throw some your way. And yet there are millions of us in this industry, and a lot of us are well paid, but most of us don't ever get rich and we damn sure don't change the world. We just make useless crap that makes rich dudes richer that will be utterly forgotten by history, and that's not worth giving up your youth and energy and life to.
I know most of y'all won't believe me. That's how this whole youth/middle age thing works, right? Stupid old man who never got successful grousing at the kids.
But man, I'd give anything to have not done most of the work I've ever done for other people, and spent that time wandering penniless around the world instead. Or had better luck early enough to make enough money to stop working a long time ago. But the key word there is "luck". That's almost always all it is.
Go home at 5, man. Trust me. The code and the capitalism will still be there in the morning, but that great meal, that night of partying, that mysterious stranger across the bar? They may not be.