That’s what you said originally, which reads as mostly normal work hours, plus maybe some overtime.
If it was 16 hours a day, then please say so.
> I wouldn't be allowed to take my laptop home, so if I had a hard problem to solve, I'd have to stay in the office the whole time. So basically they expected us to never see our family nor collaborate with anyone.
The part you highlighted says you cannot work from home. That’s unrelated to the number of hours they expected you to work.
OP could have spelled it out, but in any communication there is a level of shared knowledge.
When you read a comment that you understand to be complaining about making nearly a million dollars whilst working 9/5 in the office, a more charitable path would be to examine your own context and shared knowledge, rather than exclaim loudly that OP is a bad person.
Not that you did that, but others have.
A blind spot, I suppose; I have spent my whole working life in the West Coast tech industry - though discussions on this site generally share that cultural context.
Not the person you're replying to, but I was not aware. I guess we have a different cultural backgrounds and some things that are obvious for most of this website are not for me.
Also this makes me even more confused. So OP actually expects being pressured into working overtime (irrelevant where - at home or in the office)? And that's not even their main issue?
What's the point of getting a double salary if you have to work twice as much? Can't they (as a great software developer with a strong work ethics and a good work-life balance they clearly have) just... refuse the overtime?
Re-read your original description again. Nowhere did you say you had to work 16h a day.
And those people that work months away from their families -- they're being abused too. You'll notice that the owners of oil rigs aren't out there with them, for example.