First time I was a engineering lead, things were going great, to the point we simply weren't busy... Long lunches, chill days, making good friendships. The younger staff became worried that they weren't busy and didn't have anything to do, because they were so used to always having backlogs of bugs and other random assignments to do. I simply said, this is what life is like when you're good at what you do - you reward good work with pleasantness instead of more work!
Then I have time to check with the kids, have dinner and watch a movie or go biking (well, the latter got complicated with our covid measures).
And the next day I am happy to be back at work.
The big, big difference is that I am in France and cannot be forced to many things, this could just have an inpact on my career (which it does not and I could not care less anyway)
> But we consistently did a solid day's worth of work everyday and there wasn't much juice left to continue after.
I find that a bit much, one is to expect some downtime so employees switch modes a bit, maybe do research on their own on the company time, say, maybe 4-5 hours a week. Squeezing up to the last drop, even if it’s paid and within the normal 40 hours a week, is not the best way to let your employees grow.
If you need to do overwork to reach the good levels of productivity something is seriously wrong in your company. Sure, moments of overwork happen, but in my experience it is usually seen as a failure in management if this happens regularly.