I get a bit annoyed hearing about the 2 hour a day folks. They are probably forcing their peers or managers to take on more work than is their fair share.
I'm in management now .. as an engineer, I most certainly used to work over 8 hours a day (probably 12 hours, counting all the time I spent studying to keep up). Now, in management, the hours have actually gone up .. I now have to worry about things my team is doing 24/7, have to deal with a ton of human, infra and organizational issues, being open to meetings at any hour of the day, in addition to staying technical (my direct code contributions have gone down but my engagement with codebase and overall non-code issues has skyrocketed). I am in a large company and do AI research (so work and what I enjoy are the same, and doing cutting edge research is pretty much as hard as it gets).
Point is .. when people boast how little work they do, it makes me wonder who is the poor slob who gets to do extra. We are software professionals, and professionals need to act by a certain creed and abide by an unspoken ethic. Maybe this is my immigrant roots showing .. as I grew up, my folks always taught me to make sure I'm worth the salt I'm paid. I certainly have had periods where I was in a funk (especially early on in my career) but when a job just didn't gel, I left and tried to find something more engaging.
I certainly don't feel I can coast for a few months. Who the heck are these companies that are so relaxed. Pls don't say FANG (or MANG or whatever). People I know at the senior level work really hard too (from my peers). It could be certain areas of a large company, and it could be for some short period where people can get away with coasting. I don't think this is really sustainable with how competitive today's software landscape is.