Not so long ago I wrote a post about depression. And actually the problem here is that a lot of people wrote comments that they have exactly the same symptoms and exactly the same problem. This is why here is a follow up about work life balance.

The problem that I see is how people imagine success in a lot of countries.

And as you can see here typically it's your salary amount and your job title. And the higher your job title is and the bigger your salary is then you are cooler you are more successful than other people and it is really awesome.

And actually 10 years ago I thought exactly the same because I lived in Ukraine and this mentality is really popular there. And I even didn't think about another approach to the life, because all people were thinking just about salary, better position and better company.

Then after sometime I moved to Germany, where I see exactly the opposite. People are not that focused on the work, they have the balance between work, private life, their mental health and of course their physical health. And actually I can say that for me it was really difficult to change the mentality from money focus to life focus.

But after sometime I really think that it is more correct way to live life. For example previously it was completely normal to get a call when I was on vacation and answer some questions regarding code or try to fix something was not working on phone. In the last 6 years while living in Germany, I never got a call from the company, when I was on vacation. Because actually this life work balance really works here.

And obviously I am not saying that you must change your country and go to the country, where you have this work life balance. You can do exactly the same in your own country. You just need to understand, that you will hit the glass ceiling of salaries inside your country in any case. So at some point you can't really get more money as a normal developer. You must get some high position like for example teamlead, architect or manager. And you will for sure work more, have more stress and more overtimes. And yes typically you will get more money with these positions, but it will be like 10 or 20% more.

This is why you must ask yourself does it really make sense to work more? Do you really want to have stress or overtime at work for these 10 or 20% higher salary?

I think that it is much better to find job, where you don't need to be under pressure, where you don't have overtimes and you know that every single day you just work there 8 hours and not more. So you have a really nice life work balance and you can do whatever you want in your free time.

And the best example of the country which is fully focused just on salary and positions is of course US. There everybody are obsessed with the amount of money, that you earn, they are focused only at work and they really don't have vacation days at all by default.

But if you will google what are the happiest countries in the world, you will see that in the top list you have the countries where they don’t have the highest salary, but they really have their life work balance, they have social security and medical security. They know that if they are loosing their job they have a long notice period and also when they are fired they are getting money from the government, which actually means social and medical security and life work balance is much better in a long run for your life, than just money and higher salary.

Additionally to that not all people want to become a teamlead, architect or manager. Some people are really good in focusing on writing code, they can implement everything better and they don't want to be in the management position at all.

I hope that this post helped you to be focused on your life outside of your office even more. And if you want to avoid stress and depression as a developer make sure to check this post also.