I think you do have to acknowledge the point that engineers are sometimes thought of as commodities and the business often don't realize the effects of their requests on the engineering team. Management is always very quantitatively focused and its hard to justify a lot of the yak shaving that needs to be done . This leads to poorer quality code or engineers working extra hours so they don't end up swimming in shit every day.
Of course if you are in those situations, just leave, we're in high enough demand right now. Only in a recession should you worry about those qualms.
36 accounts for time spent eating lunch and taking breaks. It's a good target. It also handles common schedules some folks have of 4x9 and 3x12.
But you need to be okay living in a city nobody's ever heard of, working for a company nobody's ever heard of, and not changing the world. But honestly 99.9% of the people working 80 hour weeks in VC funded start-ups writing the next big CRUD app aren't going to change the world either, and they're paying $3500/mo to rent a 1-bedroom while people in these small cities are paying $1k/mo for a 2-bedroom mortgage a 10 minute commute from their office.
There are plenty of very well compensated 40-hour-a-week software development jobs available.