David Heinemeier Hansson

Acting your wage will atrophy your abilities, so putting in anything less than your best means giving up on what you're capable of. You can't save talent or energy for better days, only watch it go to waste. This is a hard truth to accept if you don’t think your company has earned your best.

Acting your wage will atrophy your abilities

There is more to life than work. I will repeat this again: there is more to life than work. People do work, to earn money for their family and themselves. So they can live in comfort and do the things they really love. You might like your job, and want to give your best, but: (repeat after me) there is more to life than work. If you give 100% to your job, then what’s left for your family and friends (and for yourself)?
I understand that there are people to whom their job is their entire identity, everything they live for. But they are the minority and I do not envy them, even if by some arbitrary metric they are deemed ‘more successful in life’ than the rest of us.
And what does it say about a company if they expects you to give all to your job. That they only see you as an automaton that produces work and once you’re not producing enough anymore, they can dispose of you and replace you with the next automaton? With no regards for personal life or circumstance? That’s a sh*tty place to work at.

What a great path to burnout and working in a toxic company 👎

The comments already cover some of my thoughts, so I have nothing to add in that arena, but I did want to add that DHH is a business owner (he co-owns 37signals with Jason Fried). That is to say that he has a direct interest in his employees giving him more work for the same wage. These things must always be kept in mind when reading stuff like this.
It’s like CEOs bitching about remote work. Of course they don’t want their workers to have work-life balance

There is a balance to life and it’s up to each individual to identify and seek out the balance they require.
That being said, if you think that this guy’s take is unrealistic then you have chosen the incorrect career path. IT is an ever-evolving field and there really is no place for stagnancy in any of the paths available to IT professionals.
This is great advice and it’s sad that people would focus more on how this makes them feel like a victim as opposed to how this mindset will empower your career, and subsequently, your life outside of it.
Just because you work hard and prioritize progress in a career does not mean you are a slave to work. I wish people would knock it off with the polarizing, opinionated, semantic rhetoric when it comes to personal accountability in IT or even work in general. Plus if you work hard when you’re younger then you can relax more when you’re older. It really isn’t offensive or complicated advice.
Like, seriously, go get paid less to answer phones if you are offended by someone successful saying not to be stagnant in IT.

While this is true, there’s absolutely no reason to do more than what you’re paid for, and helping you company earn money by doing that.
If you want to train, either do it on your free time (however if IT is not your passion, I would not recommend it, it’s the best way to get yourself a burnout), either do it on working time, but don’t do it for them (as in, don’t accept missions that are above your paygrade), do it for you