> To be clear this is in a startup context, an organization which is highly informal and tries to be extremely productive in a short amount of time to create some viable product.
I understand, though I don't believe that working long hours is a productive use of anyone's time over time periods longer than a few weeks. From my personal experience working longer than ~8h impacts both concentration and quality, which decimate efficiency of any subsequent hours worked (more bugs then mean more time needed to fix these bugs, which just adds to the crunch).
After a while these side-effects begin to bleed into the next workday which ultimately nullifies the benefits of longer hours.
I don't know why you are talking as if I didn't completely agree, and already said so, that demand 8+ hours of high quality mental work is counterproductive over long periods of time.
My point remains that German labor laws make startups very hard to do. Not that I believe that you should work 10 hours a day over months, but in a startup there might very well be a situation where you can spend 12 hours effectively, which would be a violation of labor laws.
Hypothetically there could be a very important deadline to meet. I absolutely do not believe that you can consistently do high quality mental work for 8+ hours a day, but certainly I have worked productively for 10+ hours in a single day on occasion, that was during University though.
To be clear this is in a startup context, an organization which is highly informal and tries to be extremely productive in a short amount of time to create some viable product.