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I’ve had the full range of experiences (full time work or 20-30 hours of freelance work) and they are just different, not necessarily better
Sure. The diminishing labor returns (from fewer rest days) are less expensive than onboarding sufficient personnel.
But the most sensical understanding of worker productivity is that it slopes downward as the number of consecutive workdays stretches onward. Productivity trends higher at 30 hours than it does is at 40 hours.
Why do you think that just the amount of hours worked per week dictate how successful a whole company is? You are focusing on one very basic metric to derive a very complex conclusion...
Finance is a completely different beast, and even there many of the big ones don't overwork their employees with 60+ hours/week.
All these tech companies are RTO, on-call schedules, and "high seasons" (Prime Day, product release days, etc.).
I don't think it's axiomatic.
If your job aligns perfectly with what you'd do in your spare time, you might not see the appeal of a shorter workweek. But that doesn't mean others don't enjoy their work — they might just be overworked and need more balance in their lives.
It’s nutty to me that if I like my job I must want to spend more than half the week doing it. There’s nothing—nothing—I like well enough that I want to devote more than 50% of my best hours a week to it… every single week indefinitely.
I can love my job and still not want to do more than 20 hours a week of it. Those aren’t contradictory feelings.