A large part of the IT community does indeed very little work.

As for having to work over 40 hours and being stressed, I guess there's a price to having to work in US under such lax worker's rights and benefits, in Europe you just say no thanks boss see you on Monday.

And I reiterate, a large parte of our sector does very little practical work.

1) People who can leave will leave if the work load is too high. Those who can leave are usually the best team members.

2) It does not work. Research has shown most people are incapable of producing more than 40 hours of work a week over the long term. They can do it for a week, maybe a month but after that their productivity is either the same as a 40 hour/week work or maybe even less. People are not machines and just because they are asked to do something (or ordered to) does not mean they will or even can.

One last thing, what keeps employers inline in the US is people can leave. If you are in a bad job, you can switch to a good one.

nobody is going to admit to other people they know that this (slacking off) is what they do. You only get this on an anonymous forum like HN or reddit. Of course, some of them might be lying, but where there's smoke, there's fire imho.