There are very few technical teams inside that seem to come even close to that, so I'm extremely doubtful that managers are going to be sufficiently disciplined to keep their staff down to 30 hours, nor employees sufficiently empowered either. It's so hard to see this as anything other than a way to pay people less for comparable work.

I've found that this is a much less stressful and more productive way to approach most things in life.

> Some of the 60 hr/week employees are gunning for promotions and probably don't care about work life balance. Why should everyone have to compete with that?

That seems totally reasonable. It's similar to the way tech companies have a concept of a "terminal level" where it's considered fine to spend your whole career with no pressure or expectations to earn further promotions.

And who else besides Jeff Dean, enjoys such a distinguished role?

Amazon states that SDE-II is fine actually. I think that's just their way of keeping the bar for senior higher.

Why would you go against a theory that all evidence pointed toward? I think what you meant is that despite what it looks like at first glance, there could be reasons why this is a good idea. You should present evidence for those arguments, maybe based on personal experience