[t0mislav]

>12 hours/day

I can't even imagine working a minute longer than 8 hours per day, and 12+ hours is woow. Is this common in US?

I work 8 hours my whole career (IT). My wife works 6 hours per day. (central Europe)

[throwaw12]

I am an engineer as well, in western Europe with kids. But I regularly see people committing code at 9pm or commenting on docs at 11pm or see their testing traces (logs) at 1am and on weekends.

I can't compete with them in any way. "Don't work hard, work smarter" doesn't apply here, because I am surrounded by smart people, who also do smart work, when baseline is same, you just need to work more.

Guess who will be liked/praised more and have less chances to be laid off when conditions get worse?

I am lucky though, its not easy to fire people here, can't imagine what's happening in US

[balfirevic]

> But I regularly see people committing code at 9pm or commenting on docs at 11pm or see their testing traces (logs) at 1am and on weekends

That might not mean much - you'd see the same from me, but I don't work more than 8 hours/day (on average), I just work very irregular hours.

[Aeolos]

I have worked 10-12 hours a day throughout all of my working career (from 19yo onwards). This is in central Europe, and I'm not even the hardest worker around.

[balfirevic]

Do you just sleep, work, commute and do chores? That sounds dreadful to me.