" Then again other things in the past were a no-brainer future (e.g. less working hours - see experiments in Kellogs) but the world spinned to a different direc

" Then again other things in the past were a no-brainer future (e.g. less working hours - see experiments in Kellogs) but the world spinned to a different direction." You are more efficient when you work less (obviously, because you have an internal deadline that says you want to finish before your time is up), it is just that the culture surrounding software engineering is biaised towards long hours, half in which you are not really working or working with a terrible productivity, or worse, be in endless meetings. It also pleases management to work more hours, because you "work harder" :-).