I argue engineers and managers to actively seek to shorten work days and work hours. 9-5 / 5 days is such an arbitrarily concept and it doesn’t translate at all to productivity, in fact counter to that it is the most unproductive thing we might ever have.
Apart from the common wisdom to avoid burnouts, breaks are really super important. I argue against us having 5-days work scheme. It is way too much, it is quite useless too, and we lose lots of productvity and peak-performance and creative thinking, just to ensure that employees stay longer in the offices. Now that i have several years of experience ranging between academic (2017-2018), big corp (2018-2019), and startups (2019-now), i can see i have experienced both: i perform well for even the strictiest 9-5 jobs. But it is just a above-the-bar kinda of performane. I performed magnificentely great during my own startup years where i was able to take days and almost weeks off as i please. I understand that taking hiatus is not very welcomed since we run through different tight deadlines as our business requires, but the strict 9-5 Sunday-Thursday is not better either.
A break every couple of weeks, a break during day hours, are very much needed. I can only confidently speak about software jobs and tasks that actually requires a certain level of brain activities. A task can cost an engineer 3 days, and in their peak Zone mode, they can fairly achieve that in their typing-speed. Where possible, i highly recommend technical leads to look after their colleagues and esp. subordinates and ask them to take sometime off. It would be even much better if said managers and senior engineers led by example and make it an office-cultural theme to take your vacations and take sometimes off. It is not just to avoid burnouts, but also to increase developers productivity and their deliverables.
The best advice i heard from a promient engineer was whenever you stumbled upon a computer bug, just walk away, take a nap, or chat it out with your colleague.
It is almost always better to walk away from your problems, when you are trying to fix a computer programming bug. Please actively ensure you take good sleep, rest well, be hydrated and exercise your right to ask for vacations. It is not a super-hero or definitely not 10x developer to be working 24/7. We are not hiring for writers, but rather looking for intellectuals and creative tinkerers.