I think the drugs thing is more common than anyone wants to admit.

Of course caffeine is huge, but we had a 10x type programmer who suddenly went full 180 degrees.

Turns out he stopped taking his Adderall.

My company tried to hide it by saying "mental illness". That's still the official message, despite everyone next to him knowing full well what happened.

>Until that guy burns out and crashes

I see this most with new grads. The company knows their enthusiasm and ignorance to red tape and how disposable they are. They use these new grads on the worst jobs, long hours, terrible work experience, or thankless. The new grads do a decent job, but become disenchanted because their hard work wasn't rewarded either professionally with a promotion, or never made an impact on the company.

---

I genuinely don't know what to do with over productive people. They are going to be disappointed. Although I'll take one at my current company, we have a backlog!