[eranki]

The problem is corporate culture and chasing secondary indicators of productivity (hours spent in the office, lines of code written, emails sent). The actual output of knowledge workers is hard to determine and bursty (you can spin your wheels on a problem for days but have a break-through in minutes) so people come to rely on these proxies.

I don't even think the problem is employers [in Silicon Valley]. Employees themselves, unaware of how best to show their worth, choose to optimize for these proxies because it's perceived as a safer bet.

That said, I think when I've worked 80 hour weeks before I've gotten twice as much done as 40 hour weeks, but only because I felt driven to produce a certain output, not because I cared about the hours.