As a warning: every time I’ve pushed hard, then had to rein it in and do less, I’ve gotten fired.
There’s nothing you can do that makes you irreplaceable, even if you’re the only one in the world that can do it.
It’s fine if you want to stay in your happy place as the only one that can do X and then keep selling them on the value you provide and how you’re doing big things. But, nothing lasts.
Don’t burn out, but sitting on your ass is a bad strategy.
Don’t do that then. Work on 90% with bursts of 130%. Don’t work on 120% all the time because it’ll be assumed you’ve gotten lazy when you just need to slow down.
In U.S. even though a full-time job is “40 hours”, many in non-government jobs put in more. The “120%” spoken of would be 48, so let’s say roughly 2 extra hours a day, so 7:30-18:30 with an hour lunch. Tech startups in my experience are usually 44-46 hours for low-mid IC dev or more if higher or any lead/manager responsibilities. Some dev/IT managers may be on-call most of the week. But some people literally are working 40 hours/week.
Other countries “100%” hours/week are roughly:
Europe 35-40,
Eastern Europe ~40,
India 45-55,
China 45-50,
Africa 40-50.
And similar applies for dev/IT startups and management.
Some work > 100 hours week on average, but I think that’s difficult to do in dev/IT for more than a month at a time without burnout, even if you just keep hitting a button over and over.
If a country expects 40+ hours on average then they should also expect an inverted demographic pyramid within a generation or two. Many such cases. It's a great way to commit national seppuku.
There’s nothing you can do that makes you irreplaceable, even if you’re the only one in the world that can do it.
It’s fine if you want to stay in your happy place as the only one that can do X and then keep selling them on the value you provide and how you’re doing big things. But, nothing lasts.
Don’t burn out, but sitting on your ass is a bad strategy.