Considering that I had the same thought, no.

However, most people cannot regularly work 48 hour shifts except under duress. (IE, their life, job, or crisis depends on it.) Many can do it once, but need a significant break afterwards.

If someone is regularly cycling like that, it very well could be a coping mechanism for bipolar.

Spoiler alert: the guy was taking amphetamines.

Seems like the only way to regularly work 48hr shifts.

I don't know if that was the case with this guy, just that the schedule OP described is the kind of schedule that a bipolar person might end up with. But the main point is that building a work culture that can handle this kind of schedule from people who really need it (for whatever reason) is a good thing, and there are good reasons beyond mere convenience that a person would work a schedule like this.

Oddly enough he did confide in me that he was bipolar.

Long hours is like 10, maybe 16 for a serious emergency (like building-catches-fire level stuff, not like "oh the API is down" stuff - it should happen less than once a year).

48 hours, even once, is a serious problem.

I often work from 9 am to 3am. The problem is when I start something interesting at 5pm. Between 5 and 3am, a box of cookies (Prince, they’re quite addictive). Total 16-17hrs, plus a good lunch break. I think being sugar-high has an amphetamines-like effect.

I know it’s not healthy, but I have unresolved issues that remain unresolved after 10 years trying to get help. At least it’s not alcohol. But that’s also perhaps why people don’t see the distress.

I work to forget.

I assumed it was an exaggeration, like 48 hours with a break to sleep, because how could OP even know for sure that it was truly 48 hours without break if the guy was at home?

I'm still suspicious whether it was actually 48 hours straight with no rest because -- no matter how brilliant someone is -- I would be extremely leery of the code written toward the end of that session.

I suspect people who were around for the dotcom bubble, or who have worked on consumer software back when it had gold master dates, don't read it as an exaggeration. I did not, and know several people who worked non-stop 30-60 hour shifts for various reasons.

In my case one had genuine clinical manic episodes and was open about his mental illness; another seriously burnt out; older friends in the games industry spoke of multi-month post-launch vacations (back in the late 90s) to cool off.

I'm confused, what is a SWE going to do during a 16 hour shift about their building being on fire?

"Back in the day" we used to have physical machines places. A DC catching fire (or flooding, getting hit by lightning, or etc. etc.) meant "manual failover" and a day of restoring backups.

(And that was best case, if your infrastructure and deployment scripts were up-to-date. Most people's weren't; probably the ratio is only slightly better today.)

Unless you are using drugs it's very unnatural for your body to allow you to stay awake for 48hrs. It is however common in people with bipolar.