I won't answer every post as you guys posted a lot, but just to address a few moments:
I don't post much here nowadays, but I feel obligated to say I'm with Zantera on this, despite you guys giving him shit.
You guys want to work 80 hours across 7 days with consecutive weeks, you do you. My boss is like this too, clocking 12 hour days and doing weekends. If you don't have any other option, it's also fine, but it's not a reason to brag or to belittle anyone who says this lifestyle is not for them. Apparently you're not allowed to complain about overtime if you work 40 hours a week? Is it like this thing that if you don't have children, you're not allowed to be tired? Or if you sleep more than 5 hours a week, you're not allowed to be tired either?
For some people 8/5 is enough, especially if you add commute to it. I sure would like to do some hobbies instead of crunching on some project with deadlines that were set so they can only be met if you're working on it day and night.
Of course my workplace screwed me twice with overtime payments so I might be biased I used to work overtime a lot ~3-5 years ago but I don't do it at all anymore and I'm alright with that.
Firstly, my job entails running 3 public venues 7 days a week and 15 hours a day, so it's a necessity of my job. Agree with Tim, probably a ME problem but yeah his comments got my back up too. I just felt the comments were kind of taking the piss to people like myself that sometimes have to do long days and work every day to keep their business turning over.
I didn't feel that way at all (I'm also not taking the piss to people like you and Tim). I rather felt your and Tim's comments were a little bit passive-aggressive which is why I posted. There are people who work OT, 80 hours a week, or 7 days a week; I've got no problem with them. There are also people who work 40 hours a week and don't want OT, and it's alright in my book. Obviously people need to be flexible, but it's also a two-way street; there's got to be some compromise between the worker and the company. Which takes me to the next point:
Well, it's like anything else, isn't it? You CAN do you, but accept/acknowledge the consequences. Not so much now, but I worked for a company that rewarded people for working globally. The entire world doesn't work on "8-5 eastern time, four days a week", so I would get calls almost all hours of the day. The concept of "40 hours" was a pipe dream. By all means set your limits, but accept them. If you don't get that promotion, or don't get that raise, it's not because your boss blows, or the company sucks or you're being discriminated against. It's because you made a choice to limit your contributions to that company. Other companies may be fine with that, but that particular one might not be for you.
I agree with all that and never said anything against it. Personal example, I was promoted to a lead engineer two years ago (ironically, it happened because I got fed up with my company and gave two weeks notice) and honestly right now I think I'm at the optimal point where my salary is pretty good, yet I can manage all my projects in 40-45 hours a week. When my boss is on vacation I fill in for him and the workload there is overwhelming. I can totally see why he works OT. I do not want it (it's more of management stuff and going to meetings, and I'm inclined towards engineering work anyway) and in case he eventually goes higher up and they offer the position to me, I'm pretty sure I'm going to decline it. So yeah, not disputing your point at all.
If the company, for example, does projects for it's customers, and has deadlines, they have to be met. My job is, in part, to handle disputes, so when we miss a deadline, it comes to me. I'd love to be able to tell the customer or the courts that "well, sure, we missed that deadline, but you know, the weekends are the weekends and there was a NASCAR race to go to, and our lead engineer plays guitar in a band and had a gig all Saturday afternoon".
See, from my point of view this really depends on what kind of deadline it is. If the deadline is ridiculous in the beginning and basically can't be met with the amount of people allocated on the proejct (even with OT, or requires a stupidly high amount of OT in a span of few months), and I've pointed it out multiple times before we began the project and was met with "well, you've just got to do it, no way around it", then yeah, I'll leave on Friday at 3 PM sharp and go play guitar or whatever. If the deadline is a few days away and some other department institutes a written standard which requires me and the team to re-do half of the 3D models which are already good to do (this happened before), I'll also leave as soon as my working day is over. If the deadline is reasonable but we have to crunch the last two weeks? Sure, let's do this.
Look, I'm not saying OT is anathema. I just wish people who do OT stopped giving shit to people who don't, when they do good work in those 40 hours and want to spend the rest of their time doing something they prefer.
Also yeah we should move to another thread for sure.