Work/Life Balance Will Make You a Better Software Engineer
Yeah, I'd like to see some actual data.  Some kind of scientific study, anything.I don't say this because I'm a proponent of work-at-any-cost culture -- I'm not.  I work about 45 hours a week, no weekends or nights outside of rare emergencies.  That's certainly good for my mood and my relationship with my family and so forth.But I see all these articles in which they suggest that after 40 hours a week, your productivity crashes or goes negative or whatever, and it strikes me as wishful thinking.  The universe does not often line up to give us win-wins like this.  My belief is that, probably, for at least a lot of people, if you spend a few years working super hard, you'll probably gain a lot of skill and be highly productive.  Maybe if you keep that up for decades, accumulated stress will make it a net negative.  Maybe some people have really low tolerance for stress and will much more rapidly turn to net negative.But the idea that it is universally or near-universally true that everyone is more productive on a 40 hour week is at best under-argued, and, I'd guess, probably mostly untrue.