[throwaw12]

I am an engineer as well, in western Europe with kids. But I regularly see people committing code at 9pm or commenting on docs at 11pm or see their testing traces (logs) at 1am and on weekends.

I can't compete with them in any way. "Don't work hard, work smarter" doesn't apply here, because I am surrounded by smart people, who also do smart work, when baseline is same, you just need to work more.

Guess who will be liked/praised more and have less chances to be laid off when conditions get worse?

I am lucky though, its not easy to fire people here, can't imagine what's happening in US

[balfirevic]

> But I regularly see people committing code at 9pm or commenting on docs at 11pm or see their testing traces (logs) at 1am and on weekends

That might not mean much - you'd see the same from me, but I don't work more than 8 hours/day (on average), I just work very irregular hours.

[throwaw12]

> I just work very irregular hours.

Do you also come to office and spend 8 hours, even if you do nothing? I see those people in the office almost regularly

[balfirevic]

Yeah, makes sense if you see them in the office all the time.

I often come to the office for just a couple of hours and then do more work afterwards from home, and other days work entirely from home.