Respecting the 9 to 5
Someone on X shared their "hot take" regarding growth in your career. I assume good intent since I'm afraid the message was just poorly phrased. It sounded like they were advocating for professionals to work beyond their 9 to 5 to achieve rapid growth (there's so much nuance to this, there was no way it would have landed the message the way it was intended). I can't find the exact quote since it was deleted, but that's not important. The whole conversation and its replies raised good points and all sorts of misinterpretations. I'll give you what I think about it, regardless of what the "hot take" was about.
I strongly believe that if your work requires you to extend your hours beyond 9 to 5 then something is very wrong. I consider this a leadership failure, estimates and projects should be planned accounting for regular working days. Anything beyond that should be an exception. I won't hunt you down if you stay working longer hours, but you'll hear from me during our 1:1 that you have to take care of yourself.
The one thing I can often relate to is the need to "scratch an itch". I've been there, I've stayed up until 2 AM to get to the bottom of a blocker, I just couldn't let go. That's always your prerogative but I never expect you to do it. Some of the best engineers I've met, care a lot about the puzzle in front of them. When they face one, they also can't let go and spend extra time to get it solved. This is admirable but not sustainable. Proceed with care.
There are a few other situations where I can understand the extra hours. The first one is emergencies. I work hard to create a supportive team. This means that if anyone is bogged down dealing with a production issue, others are there to support and help out in any way they can. If this is not how your team would react, you need to work on strengthening relationships within it. If anyone on my team is in this situation, I'm the first one to show up. You lead by example, always.
The other scenario is something I recommend to anyone, especially early in their careers. The extra hours don't necessarily need to be actual work. You should continue spending time expanding your knowledge, filling any gaps, and being deliberate on what you want to study. This helped me tremendously in my first job. I was out of college, worked on research for the most part, and had a limited understanding of how production-grade software is developed. Every single evening I studied, took extra classes, and filled the gaps. After 1 year on the job, I was considered a technical leader.
No matter which path you take, none of it is sustainable without a work-life balance. What worked for me was focusing on what I found interesting and also fun at times. This was healthy because it didn't feel like work at all, when you create that type of balance you nurture a sustainable habit.
Thoughts
Any extra effort you put into growing and expanding your knowledge beyond your day-to-day work pays off. Don't just work extra or study extra for the sake of it. Have a Target and focus on what you need to get there. If that aligns with additional growth and visibility within your company, then maybe extra hours of work are exactly what you need. I generally recommend focusing on anything independent of where you work. Be deliberate about any skill that can be transferred, learning git well will benefit you no matter where you end up (I can make many more examples but I'll cut it short, hopefully, you get the idea). If your manager expects you to work extra hours, you're in the wrong place. I expect my team to respect the 9 to 5 and make sure they are set up for success. If the expectations for their role cannot be exceeded within their regular working day, something is wrong with how we evaluate performance.