I don't remember exactly what settings I set at work, but I set various security settings to paranoid levels. There are three or four things that forget their cached authentication when the system goes to sleep, and so upon wake I get dialogs from those things the next time they need to do something that requires authentication.

I've found that it is actually much less annoying in the morning to start from scratch than to wake from sleep, because when I start from scratch I only have to enter my password once and it covers all of those aforementioned things.

This wasn't the case before I replaced the original hard disk with an SSD. It was then slow enough to boot that I'd find myself waiting with nothing to do.

The SSD is fast enough that it gets through the boot and to the password prompt while I'm still busy unpacking the breakfast I bring in to the office with me, and after I enter the password gets all my startup items launched and ready while I'm still finishing up unpacking breakfast.

with the 2016+ MBP, you'd reboot several times a week, due to crashes

It's all anecdotes and YMMV and all of that, but my work machine is a 15" 2017 MBP and I use it day in and day out running Xcode, Sketch, Paw, and a few other things and it doesn't crash any more often than my personal 15" 2015 MBP (which is rarely). Current uptime is 17 days, with the last reboot being tied to an update.

I suspect that either the 2017 spec bump fixed the issues present in the 2016 version or the crashes you mention are tied to specific software.

Do you use external monitors daily? Or dual external monitors? I suspect it has to do with the USB C driver or hardware that's buggy.

Crash almost always occurs on wake from sleep (when plugging in monitors and other USB C peripherals)

Yes, I have it plugged into a USB-C 2560x1440 27” Dell monitor all day, plugging it in at the beginning of the day and unplugging it at the end. At home I’ve also had it hooked up to HDMI and DisplayPort monitors via USB-C→ HDMI/DisplayPort cables (no docks/dongles). Neither have had a negative impact on stability.

Late 2016 13” non-Touch Bar anecdata: have restarted maybe ten times total between purchase last winter and today.

That's a lot of reboots: almost once a month.

I wish Apple would bite the bullet and release actual "pro" laptops with Xeons, ECC, and high end GPUs - similar to what it's doing with the iMac Pro. ECC would largely eliminate the need to reboot, as well as providing much better data integrity.

Dell, HP and Lenovo all have such machines.

Late 2013 MBP here, since I upgraded to macOS Sierra, I've had crashes once or twice a week. It's gotten better in the last 2 months, so I think apple might have fixed some of the bugs.

I bought a MBP in July and rebooted it maybe ?twice?. It's never had a problem with crashing. Great machine, but the touchbar sometimes annoys me.