[photochemsyn]

Solution: run open source LLMs on local hardware where inference takes a while but you're not leaking your sacred proprietary code to some backdoored cloud cluster. Then downtime arises naturally, see the relevant xkcd on compiling:

https://3d.xkcd.com/303/

Note also, compilers automated the process of machine instruction generation - quite a bit more reproducibly than 'prompt engineers' are able to control the output of their LLMs. If you really want the LLMs to generate high-quality programming code to feed to the compiler, the overnight build might have to come back.

Also, in many fields the processes can't be shut down just because the human needs to sleep, so you become a process caretaker, living your life around the process - generally this involves coordinating with other human beings, but nobody likes the night shift, and automating that makes a lot of sense. Eg, a rare earth refinery needs to run 24/7, etc.

Finally, I've known many grad students who excelled at gaming the 996 schedule - hour long breaks for lunch, extended afternoon discussions, tracking the boss's schedule so when they show up, everyone looks busy. It's a learned skill, even if overall this is kind of a ridiculous thing to do.