[TuringNYC]

>> [1] Most salaried employees don't do unpaid overtime, period.

At least half of tech workers I know do unpaid overtime. Almost all are on at-will contracts where they can be laid off anytime and I know almost none who have lifetime-final-year salary pension plans.

[vkou]

1. That overtime is usually rare. Half of all tech workers don't have to be at work for every night shift, through holidays, and weekends. The buses, on the other hand, have to keep running, even after 5 PM on a Friday rolls around.

1.1. Even if you're an auxiliary on-call, you only need to work if something comes up. You don't need to be physically working, all through the night.

1.2. If you're constantly crunching, every week, you need to find another job, or demand non-meaningless equity, or higher wages, then your tech-worker peers, who do their 9-5. Most mature tech companies are full of people who do their 9-5. They employ hundreds of thousands of tech workers.

2. Tech workers are a tiny subset of the working population.

2.1. They also have much higher on-paper compensation then their similarly-trained peers in other fields (Bachelor's degree, and 0-5 years work experience), and even despite the occasional overtime, much higher hourly rates.

[throwaway2048]

Thats hardly a gold standard anyone should be aiming for.