During my tenure at both companies, my higher-ups liked my performance so much that when it was time to select people for raises/promotions/rate increases etc, I was among the few selected. I took this as a sign that my half-performance was valued enough to earn me more money so I wanted to stay like this forever.
I interviewed at a company that hid the fact that they wanted 996 until my first day there. It was 6pm my time, I was done for the day, eating dinner, and I got a call from the east coast team to review a PR. PR got merged and he asked, "what are you working on for the rest of the night?" and I was blunt. "I'm done for the night. Bye." sent my resignation in that same night.
I'm convinced that no one can ever be productive for 8 hours a day, let alone 12 hours a day. And indeed, I certainly wasn't productive for 8 hours a day when working two jobs. But I got stuff done.
At what point do we as a society agree that putting more hours doesn't necessarily create more results? We are in an era of increased economic output, but it's not trickling down. People aren't being paid more, they're being asked to work more. It just seems like the bar just keeps arbitrarily getting higher and higher, for the same financial benefit.
In my idealized society, we'd have universal basic income. That way no one would HAVE to work. When people work because they WANT to, they get to be more creative. I believe work output would increase. To say nothing of the non-economic outputs that would result (arts, music, etc).
Yes, I know the system wouldn't be perfect, and blah blah blah socialism, but a flawed great system would be better than our current flawed shitty system.