Yeah, I really disagree with ncmncm's world view. My experience on 25 years of Dev is quite different.

Really? Who have you found that pays overtime?

I don't know who pays overtime, I don't get paid overtime, but I also don't do overtime (at a FAANG). Why do overtime if they don't pay for it?

Overall it's pretty good, and I'd be fine even if I was paid half of what I'm paid, after a 2001-style crash. I can think of very few other jobs that have such nice prospects.

What country if you don't mind sharing?

What country? In my experience overtime is never mandatory. I think if you work for a startup with young (unattached) engineering staff there may be social pressure to spend inordinate amount time at the office - is that what you mean?

In the US, on call/overtime without pay can be mandatory for salaried employees. IT as i recall is called out specifically if you help maintain critical systems. Normally the company just has to be clear on expectations before hand. Fortunately I have had reasonable employers that don't abuse it but i do have to do on call and don't believe i have any option to avoid.

I had a salary in my last company and did on call which came with a paid component if we were called to do work off hours. We were working on that in my current company, but they just basically let me set my own hours to deal with that. Work a lot for a few days, go home early on other days. Have some downtime? Expect you might need to work extra some other time. My company doesn't abuse this, although there have been a few really critical months of crunch time in the past few years. It's basically all evened out for me.

I worked in Israel in various big companies and I could see situations for myself or others where overtime was never explicitly specified, but a monthly salaried software engineer had been given an amount of work that cannot be completed without "voluntary" overtime. I'm asking for country because I can see it being a cultural difference between different countries.

My current gig actually. As a contractor/consultant, I charge for hours worked. You want more than the contracted 40 hrs per week not only do you pay but you pay at a higher rate.

Really? Time-and-a-half over 40 hours?

Thought not.

I've worked in startups for fifteen years and not once have I been in a situation with compulsory overtime. Maybe I'm just lucky? Maybe Boston area startups respect work/life balance more than most?

Anyone developing for a web service or data warehouse is likely to be oncall; if the employer has an SEE organization maybe someone else does it for you ....

I'm nearing the end of my second year of CS. I was up programming until midnight last night (Saturday night). I woke at 6am this morning excited that I get to keep working on this task. I don't know of a single peer excited to work on assignments but I guess this bodes well for me.

Yes and no. Cs is huge. People have preferences for what they’d rather be working on. But it seems it’s a lower div class, whose projects tend to be more general. There’s a possible cases: your peers find the project boring because it is trivially easy but just busy work to them; they find it hard; they are interested in something else in cs.

This assignment, in particular, has a reputation for being difficult, even nightmare inducing. I think it's a combination of I like challenges and I like development, while my peers might not like challenges as much or they might find it stressful.