the US sounds like a dystopia more and more everyday. sure, one could make the case that these work habits are a reason for your success, but who is really benefiting that success?
Talking about India not US!
I have also had a CTO who worked in the UK and The Valley and he said he got as much work out of the UK team as the one with only two weeks al in the states.
It's partly engrained into the culture and partly to do with the prohibitively expensive means of travel.
For example, you could probably find a flight from London to Paris (return trip) for under 50 quid (for one). In the states, there's no way you're traveling that same distance and paying less than 300 quid, I'd say.
So, it's a combination of both but I think the expense contributes, or lends itself directly, to the social stigmatisation.
But that just takes me to St.Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit. I've been to all of them before, and there's some nice parts about them, but they're not a completely different culture like Paris is to London. Hell, St. Louis is just barely in a different state.
Pretty much all the chain stores are the same in every city you go to in the US, so it really enforces the sameness of the country. There's unique landmarks and museums and parks and local restaurants, but half the city is going to look the same as every other city.
Detroit is actually the closest comparison to London/Paris, because you can go through a tunnel at the edge of Detroit to Windsor Canada, and then you do get a bit of a culture shift.
But with Paris, further travel to other very different cultures are just some quick and cheap train rides away, whereas I just have more Canada.
Bad One: Gets pissed off easily when something doesn't work, focuses on himself, doesn't like when people go on leaves while he himself enjoys vacation twice a year, discriminates, uses trickery to get things done, uses his ego in product decision making in case of a technical debate, not at all honest
Good one: Rarely looses his cool, may not write code but brilliant with products and product architecture overall, defeats you in technical debates using intelligence rather than his command and ego, is honest & loyal with you and so are you, is a boss but works with you like a team
When I started out I remember once I was staying late to the office coz I had some pending work, my manager stayed with me because he had good understanding of the problem and he dropped me off(I used to travel using companies transport) even though he had to take detour. Best product manager ever!