People have drastically different rates of output. Longer hours is one factor, since we can assume people aren’t working late just to slack off, but there are people who need to work long hours just to keep up with some more productive co-workers who still head out the door at 5.
Perhaps in a vacuum… It is far, far more important to be well liked than to do a good job these days. Hopefully a person can be both well liked and do good work, but the social aspect of any "work" environment is more important.
This is the difference between junior investment bankers and engineers. Both have to work hard at the beginning of their careers to justify being paid for their work for all future years. Investment bankers are paid to be available to make decks, crunch numbers, etc at all hours of the day. I’m curious how many of those hours are spent doing something of value vs just being available to the partner. In comparison, a software engineers time is not valued for simply being available, but rather in creating something useful. Both are motivated to work many hours, but one is intrinsic and the other is extrinsic.