>Sounds like someone needs some more tasks for their to do list.

Sure, if there is a corresponding pay increase for those tasks.

60 hours? What the fuck?

5x12 is 60. Many people in tech regularly do 12-hour days.

Some people in certain parts of tech. In the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, the average number of hours worked per week in the US was 42 [0]. 2020 may have been a weird year, but not weird enough to make 60 normal.

I would consider whether your employer is trying to normalize 60 hours to exploit you, rather than it actually reflecting reality.

[0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#work-hours-wo...

I have never worked with anyone doing 12 hours a day 5 days a week as usual. Then again I’m in Europe .

you will be downvoted for state the obvious..

60 being more common than 40 is not obvious (it's not even true), and if it were it should not be treated as okay. The downvotes are because OP is trying to normalize workaholism.

He might have had a different experience than you. I too served in uniform, often working (and earning) for more than 40 hours a week. Later, when I managed a team in a different country, the cultural norm there was to work longer hours as well. It's worth noting that while a 40-hour workweek might be standard in some places, others might see norms of 44, 50 hours, or even more. Even in Europe, roles like production management or working in a SOC often entail more than 40 hours a week.

It's not a question of experience, it's a question of data. 42 is the average hours worked in the US in software, and the US works more than any other country:

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#work-hours-wo...

For your sake, I hope you're being paid with an assumption of a 60-hour week.

I wonder if this has to do with your

> Old Life: Attorney

All the lawyers I know are basically married to their jobs. I think workaholism is just part of law culture

Lawyers have some pretty decent progression and it's very common to open your own firm later in life. It makes sense for those with aspirations to work that hard for that payoff.

Tech, not as much. There are certainly unicorns that probably became billionaires after burning years of midnight oil, but many tech ventures fail, regardless of the experience involved. There is always a need for a lawyer, meanwhile.

I wouldn't do all that overtime on a gamble, and I argue you don't even need to do overtime to win such a gamble in tech.

My productivity actually tends to scale negatively with the number of tasks on my to-do list :P. The more there is on it, the fewer items I'm likely to complete!

Anyone in European Union most likely only works 40, because we have actual employee protection laws here.

>Who here actually works a 40-hour week?

Uhh, I did? First job I had a total of 5 weeks of OT. 2nd job never had to work above 8 hours a day, de facto nor de jure. I even had a 4 day experiment for 4 months there and it was lovely. Third job, no overtime.

Did I do some extra hours here and there off the clock? Sure. Especially with wfh I can get fixated and want to spend a bit of time getting something compileable. But outside of that one OT period listed above, I never worked above 50 hours.