[corresation]

That's a bit of a straw man there.

It isn't a strawman, though you may be interpreting the comment in a different manner: Proudly boasting about excessive work if you haven't optimized your efforts is not something to consider an accomplishment. Yet it is absolutely common throughout the Western world.

I've always been a "slacker" in the sense that I like to live a varied life. That means when I work I accomplish the most with the least. Many, many people make no such attempt: Thinking back to coworkers back when I was an employee sort, the sorts that did the heroic hours and had the endless late nights by and large accomplished very little, because the metric that they were rewarded on -- at least in their own self-evaluation -- was effort.

So the guy cutting the grass might boast about clipping his yard with nail clippers, just as the developer talking about their 90 hour work weeks spends 88 of them surfing Reddit. This is endemic, and the result is very low productivity because the results aren't measured, the perceived effort is.