[EliRivers]

You may last a couple years being the odd one out doing strictly 40h a week, but performance review is going to catch up with you at some point.

That doesn't sound like a performance review. It sounds like a "are you staying late in the office" review. If the way to get ahead isn't to be good, but to just stay late, is it really worth it? All those extra hours of your life, sitting at a desk, wishing you could go home, but instead flicking through another batch of click-bait articles and padding out your timesheet.

Although I suppose if that's how it is, one could game it. Turn up a little early even, make a big noise so everyone sees you're there (oh, that guy, he's ALWAYS here early - that's what they'll remember, even if you're actually in early less than everyone else), and then just leave for an hour to have a leisurely breakfast. Pretend you have a meeting before lunch and one after, and just go to the gym and take a long lunch; you could even find a "meeting buddy" - someone with whom you have meetings, on the understanding that neither of you will be there. Faking decisions and the like from meetings is easy; generally, you can make the actual decisions in sixty seconds on your own. Identify days that the boss will be in late or leave early and treat those as short days. Get into the habit of podcasts or self-education during those long evenings at the desk. I suppose if one embraces it and games it for what's being measured - time on the clock - it wouldn't be so bad.

[somethingsimple]

It’s not about perception. I have to stay late because the work itself is insane. Crazy deadlines, dependency on other people/teams, that sort of thing.

[EliRivers]

I understand the evidence indicates that with long-term excessive long hours, performance is worse. You could be the outlier, able to work efficiently after ten to twelve hours, but I understand the probabilities are against this and that actually it is about perception; that the person in charge of saying how good you are at your job is effectively incompetent and can only measure time in office.

[somethingsimple]

I don’t disagree. But when your deadline is often tomorrow, what can you do?

[firestri]

You can push back or negotiate the deadline. In my short career, I found that most deadlines are BS. They're just there because someone somewhere made the arbitrary decision that it needs to be delivered by then. There is no reason behind it.