This is a crucial point. A pendulum swing was inevitable.

I am vehemently anti-corporate culture that expects out of hours unpaid work as routine. I am generation X, and therefore supposedly part of the generation that casually accepted this, but I never did. I didn't consider the company's ineptitude and bad planning my fault. Instead, I put in red lines from the word go, and even though it led to some unpleasant confrontations, because I was good at my job, my employers accepted and came to respect this. Others who worked in similar (management) positions didn't do what I did, and consequently the bosses took whatever they could.

As a result of my refusal to work outside of certain hours (after all, I wasn't a doctor on call or part of the emergency services), I never cancelled a family holiday, never missed a child's birthday, or school play, or sports day, or other important occasion. I was present to read to my children at bedtime, and I have no regrets whatsoever.

My children are now 19 and 15, and although I have a lovely relationship with both of them, I occasionally feel the melancholy and bittersweetness at the inevitable passing of time, and how much fun it was when they were little. Imagine how worse I'd feel if I'd not been there; if I'd kowtowed to the truly idiotic, not-a-team-player bullshit of competitive, pseudo-macho, I'm-working-later-than-you, I-answer-emails-at-stupid-o'clock corporate insanity that so many around me bought into. Many of them are crippled with regrets as a result. As is often said, no one lay on their death beds wishing they'd spent more time at work.

Good for Millennials and Generation Z.