This is true not just for engineers, but teachers, manufacturing workers, and number of people where the workforce size is suppressed and individuals are stretched to the limit for the benefit of the C suite and the shareholders.
One not actually unfortunate aspect of the preferability of sane to insane work hours is that a lot of aspects of corporate culture that are much esteemed in startup-land are really basically designed to get you to work insane hours, from undergrad-dorm-esque offices (hey, remember when we pulled all-nighters all the time and it was totally cool?), to employer provision of services since you wouldn't otherwise have time to run errands, to, most mind-bogglingly to me, employer provision of dinner. It really shocks me when I see a company drawing attention to how it provides free evening meals to its employees (or just to its engineering staff or whatever), because why the fuck would I be there at dinner time? And why are you all stretched so thin in the first place? (I mean, at my actual job, I am there at dinner time, on occasion. Which is less than ideal. But at least no one acts as if that's a great state of affairs.) And that doesn't get into the corrosive mindset according to which your job is supposed to be your primary leisure pursuit as well, because you love it so damn much.
It's absolutely a corrosive mindset. It's also one not conducive to learning new tricks or to meaningful thinking– just shallow processing, to paraphrase Nassim Taleb.
Don't get me wrong, I'll be up late tonight. I've got some big things tomorrow that I need to prep for. It happens once in a while.
Sleep's important, but the kind of masochistic bullshit you correctly ID isn't. Or shouldn't be.
I mean workwise, I feel better sprinting short burst than to walk for long periods, but trying to take on a 4 year death marathon, starting at 6 in the morning and ending 2 in the evening, wasn't much of a bright idea. I ended up crashing every second term, to get sick weekly during that time and to pull down my hard earned grades into the D range.
I believe that the mind is a lot like muscle in that respect. Don't excercise it, and it will atrophy. Strain it constantly, and it will break down, along with your bodily health. The point to building mental muscle seems to be alternating between periods of excertion and recuperation. Anyone telling you that carrying weights constantly is the path to strenght is proably trying to get you to build their pyramids, pulling stone slabs up an incline day and night.
You can imagine what the culture was like (loved my team though)
This is how margins are increased (runway gain) by the people who are going to be selling the company: cheap offices and more hours under the same salary. You want respect for your time from a startup? Work hourly.
We should be working less hours; as the mental capacity and focus required to do our jobs well is strictly necessary to do a good job.
Just because someone, somewhere, got rich working stupid hours doesn't mean you will-- if anything you probably won't and why would you want to? Your life just vanished; because you spent it working like a dog for nothing.
While I think DHH (of Rails fame) is often kind of a douche (I am too, so don't take too much offense)-- his, public, views on how to run an office and actually work a start up are vastly better and more realistic for the masses.