Comment by Retric
9 months ago
Part of this bias is the kind of people dying on a deathbed tend to make less risky choices. You’re underrepresenting motorcycle riders let alone BASE jumpers etc. Long hours seem like the safe option, you’ll rarely get fired for working late. However, it’s easy to be pissed how much extra time you put in when you get laid off etc.
Thus, people looking back have more information to work with and where risk adverse so they likely worked more than they should.
Working outside of normal hours is now a cause for suspicion. Especially in today's WFH environment. It's a prime time to convene with the handler who does the actual work. Or to exfiltrate proprietary information to your superiors in North Korea. Etc.
Whatever it is you need to do, get it done during normal business hours. If you can't manage that, find another job.
It's so bizarre for me to see this perspective in a tech space when my tech-adjacent academic R&D career exposed me to so many people who naturally wanted to pull periodic all-nighter efforts or just live in strange shift patterns that ranged anywhere from night owl to vampire...
I've been asked unpleasant questions about working into the night, and I've seen working outside regular hours listed as a red flag on "how to detect employee fraud" guides. So however bizarre you may think it is, it's real, and companies are well within their rights to behave this way. Remember, in the USA your employer has the right to fire you for any reason except the ones specifically enumerated in the Civil Rights Act, or if it violates your employment contract.
Most people working in "tech" are implementing business functions and processes, and are answerable to people on the business side of things. Academic R&D is a whole different animal.