> You are not describing interest, you are describing obsession.

I'm describing passion.

> love being a software engineer, still, my family is orders or magnitude more important

It's not mutually exclusive...

I wake up at 6am, usually because that's the time my son wakes up. I spend around 30m with him until my wife takes over.

Then I work on some stuff from 6:30 to 8:30 before the rush of the day starts.

My wife does her morning yoga starting at 8:30 so I take care of my son from 8:30 until the nany arrives at 9am.

I do my work day WFH (with some pauses to play with my son or chat with my wife) until 6pm, then stop to spend time with my son before he goes to bed around 7pm.

I cook, eat and discuss with my wife between 7pm and 9pm.

We usually then head to the sofa where she watches a movie and I sit next to her reading/coding.

She will go to bed around 10pm, I usually continue to work/code/read until 11pm/midnight.

3 times a week I swap the cooking part to go running for an hour. Or I do it at lunch time.

Overall I spend quite some time with my wife and child, while still working between 2 and 6 hours more per day.

I really don't think I have a crazy schedule, nor that I don't spend enough time with my wife or child, or doing sport.

I think the interesting parties to answer that are your wife and kid (in the future). There is subjectivity in what constitutes “enough”.

And there is also quality vs quantity. Each family is obviously different.

As friendly advice, have an open conversation with your wife about that. Speaking from personal experience, I definitely had months where I thought I was balancing my time well enough and my wife disagreed.

Every conversation in this thread where someone implies what is "enough" "passion" or "accomplishment" makes me agree more with unionizing the industry.

It's as though the absence of religion in modern life has left a vacuum of comradery and dogmatism, so they let work fill it.

To counter your final sentence. Europe has an absence of religion and has no such work-life balance issues as America. (Speaking from experience on both sides of the big pond)

I don’t see much wrong with your schedule if it suits you.

Keep in mind that many people are passionate about multiple things and it is ok that they are not coding related. Please, just don’t assume I am not passionate about my job if I spent “only” 8 hours a day on it on average. There are just more things I am passionate about and I have only one life to live.