Glad to hear you are ok. I am also an advocate of shorter work schedules - it was not my recent incident, but rather having a child that prompted this. Having a child reduced my available hours and made me optimize the time I did have to work - and I found out I was more productive when I used my time carefully, rather than allowing procrastination and working longer hours. To be clear, even with a child my hours were much longer than they should have been (12 hours a day, 7 days a week, vs 15 hour days)
I think that is important to get out there: those long work hours and, while coding is a brain activity and logically can take place mostly in your brain much faster than you can ever type, advocating long hours behind a computer is not more productive. It really does not have to be. And that is important!
Amen! I once worked for a company with a lot of agents on customer computers (think anti-virus, though that wasn't it). We were forced to work late one night to get an auto update out. We were tired and screwed up, and lost connectivity to about 300,000 machines. We were not forced to work late like that again.
I actually liked that pressure; besides a short period of extreme stress (1-2 months maybe) I enjoyed all of it but I did not notice my body didn't like it. Only after I learnt it was all stupid of me and that pressure did not actually make the work better / more effective.
