I've had some bad patches but I don't think they were unique to my profession. Sometimes it was my boss. The tech landscape in the late '90s at Internet hyper-growth companies, when I started, is way different than it is now--I, like you, would be pretty surprised by any company taking an explicit stance against "mental health". But I'm also different now--I've had enough experience to be both in a different place in my career and to know what is or isn't a good fit for me in terms of work style.
My experience, your experience, Vadim's experience--interesting as anecdotes but none of it tells us anything about the "profession" without numbers.
So my intuition is that Vadim overstates the case as a whole, but it's still interesting as an anecdote because what I think he's feeling is pretty common and it's interesting enough to read what worked for him and what advice he has for someone who feels like that.
I do think that in reality it's rare for an engineering leader to take "mental health" days off but all of my engineering leaders have taken plenty of time off and encouraged others to do the same. I haven't worked at a death march cadence in probably almost a decade (and I quit that job pretty quickly when it started). I don't think your experience is homogeneously true, I think people are pretty reticent to take time off (it's why "unlimited PTO" even works in practice) and it's probably worth it to continue asking why.
My experience, your experience, Vadim's experience--interesting as anecdotes but none of it tells us anything about the "profession" without numbers.
So my intuition is that Vadim overstates the case as a whole, but it's still interesting as an anecdote because what I think he's feeling is pretty common and it's interesting enough to read what worked for him and what advice he has for someone who feels like that.
I do think that in reality it's rare for an engineering leader to take "mental health" days off but all of my engineering leaders have taken plenty of time off and encouraged others to do the same. I haven't worked at a death march cadence in probably almost a decade (and I quit that job pretty quickly when it started). I don't think your experience is homogeneously true, I think people are pretty reticent to take time off (it's why "unlimited PTO" even works in practice) and it's probably worth it to continue asking why.