I've personally spent too many long hours up through the night in flow state without realizing how much time had passed until I could finally recognize the fatigue. The difference between pervasive engagement in an enjoyable hobby and a "death march" isn't as cut and dry as I used to believe.

It has served as a warning to me to never take the advice of "so long as you're happy you'll be fine" literally. Now I can't stay up past midnight without waking up fatigued for hours in the morning.

I was having so much fun and feeling a sense of personal fulfillment that I don't think anything short of a physical intervention would have stopped me. Words like those in the OP's post simply glanced off my consciousness for years, as I had believed I had found a decent activity to be interested in. Some consequences can only be appreciated by experiencing them in reality, and no amount of words can effect change on some personality types.

Another problem is contempt for "walking deads". I used to work 70 hours on average per week. Did so for 3 years. I received contempt for that "lack of productivity" I was showing by working all those long hours, because my colleagues had no way of evaluating my productivity if not by some kind of self-reassuring comparison to themselves. The same thing happened with respect to code Simplicity, another fetish to put on the list. In the end, although I decided nothing, I was in charge of all the shit they had not to deal with, so of course what needs to be done and how it should be done can be easily shrinked down. Because that's what matters to the workers. The wage being fixed with respect to how much is produced the only way they can optimize is by working less and this is what's hidden behind the logos of productivity coming out of the worker's mouth. Productivity means "productivity of the wage". Ditto for simplicity. Simplicity means "ease".

In fact my colleagues were pissed by the amount of code I was outputting and by its "sophistication". One weekend I decided to do a marathon and reimplement what I was on working on. I did in that weekend what we did in 3 months for 30 times less locs. I was also made aware of secrets negotiation of some of my colleagues to raise their wage, rendered jealous by the new, super-lazy, super-paid new hire. So I left. 3 months later, I received a call from my pair-buddy, the other backend pillar in the company. He decided to left. They found replacements, but I learnt what was planned to be done in 2 weeks by the two of us took 6 months. So what did managment do ? They distributed overtime work to everybody, including the 2 frontend lead devs that did not work on Friday. They left after 6 months too. That's when I received a call from HR, offering to come back at the condition that I behave (not kidding you). Well that guy got fired eventually and replaced by a pawn from the holding company. His CFO loyal friend followed him.

The comment frames itself as data.