Alright. Two guys working in a great company. One had the attitude of "no uncomped OT" and leaves at 5. The other guy works till 7.
At the end of the year guy 2 gets an extra 40k comp raise vs guy 1. In 5 years that's a 200k difference.
So by avoiding "uncomped OT" guy 1 fucked himself out of a ton of comp.
OBVIOUSLY this depends on the company and there's no guarantees. I've been lucky enough to work on companies that were like this and this every man for himself short term thinking was poison.
it certainly does. i have worked for several investment banks as a contractor, and i can assure you they do not much care how many hours you put in. if you wanted a big bonus (as a contractor, i obviously didn't get one) you had to produce value to the bank. and sitting at your desk until 7pm simply does not do that - actually it costs them money; you probably have no idea what the costs of air conditioning are in the city of london.
also, how much does that 2 hours per day, per year, over 5 years add up to?
The fact that it even occured to you to think that I am talking about sitting pointlessly for 2 hours vs creating value means we are coming at this from different directions.
I guess another way to say it - find a place that rewards you for value, and produce exceptional value.
We get the math, what is less plausible is 40k raise every year for five years while remaining on the same team doing the same job. Few jobs pay $200,000 at all, very very few pay so well that two people with the same role could be $200k apart. It's not impossible, of course, but that would be an extremely rare situation.
Guy 2 sold more of his time and compromised his health and personal life by working 50+ hour weeks. He probably also made more mistakes than guy 1 because he wasn't well rested. Nobody got screwed out of comp but their manager who values bums on seats.