Top developers can have a life outside coding

I know that when I've worked at jobs which weren't all about focusing on abstract problems (such as an analyst or a consultant or a project manager), I could definitely put in more hours.

EDIT: Also, air traffic controllers (a job that I feel is more similar to programming than being a doctor) are restricted by law to work no more than 6 hours. From what they say, after their shift is done, their brain is often completely fried.

Additionally have you spent some time without coding? Because I was upgraded to project manager I haven't actively coded in 4 months. I feel I'm significantly slower now. You forget the small details. Like yesterday I had to think about how to call "git mergetool". That meant my brain didn't think about why I would need to solve a merge conflict instead of doing something else (like ignoring one branch, or writing feedback on the pull request) but instead I've spent the time thinking about how to type the command. That doesn't directly slow you down, but that decreases your output significantly.

We are talking "top developers", not average developers right? Yes most people think of themselves they are "top developers" but in truth most are "average" which is (arguably) less than "mediocre". If you are fine being "average" the whole discussion thread doesn't apply to you and I agree with you that slacking off for a few years doesn't change that status a lot.

Sorry to disagree but I have spent my whole 15 year career as a developer at banks and many fortune 50/100 companies and I can tell you for certain that most developers in these extremely high paying corporate jobs, including the developers do rarely do any software development or practice outside of the office.

Keep in mind that most of these jobs require a decade or more of experience so most of these folks have wives, children, 4k sq. ft. homes with swimming pools and all of the collective responsibilities that go along with those things. Consequently, their managers are in the same position so it almost never expected that anyone regularly sacrifices their family life for work related activities outside of times when it's absolutely necessary.

Successful, established and non-software companies rarely ever implement bleeding edge technology. In fact most of these companies have EA departments that forbid the use of anything outside of the approved, vetted technology stack without a specific approved exception.

What I've seen in these teams is that there is little emphasis on learning new technology like what I see as the standard requirements in HN lately. Developers instead set themselves apart by (and are interviewed/hired for) consistently demonstrating exceptional/outstanding: -problem solving -critical thinking -customer focused behavior -core enginerring skills -business domain/political accumen -leadership and mentorship

Only a couple times have I reviewed an employee performance appraisal that contained management directives related to lack of software skills and I have reviewed thousands of them to date.

I have personally interviewed and hired hundreds of elite software engineers for salaries of well over six figures and I can guaranty you that the question of emerging technologies is only discussed if the candidate brings it up or specifically has it on their resume.

The recent stories about complex technical algorithmic interviews that I hear about on HN are nothing like most big corporations interviews. The good corporations hire good people knowing that skills change and can be trained.

As a mater of fact, I know several elite level software engineers at top US companies that if presented with the startup style interview process would either fail miserably or would be so completely insulted by the process and hubris that they would decline to proceed with the interview(then go across the street to a fortune 50 and easily collect 225k with benefits).

TL;DR: The majority of elite U.S. software development jobs are nothing like the working conditions often described on HN.