[epolanski]

Which one?

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.

[StressedDev]

I hate to break it to you but in the US, employees at many companies do not work more than 40 hours a week. There are two reasons for this:

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.

[wyclif]

Another thing about Europe v. USA conditions: it is considerably harder to fire a bad hire or team member in Europe.

[metiscus]

It is a testament to the great work they do that many people believe that IT does not do much. The work required to keep things working without noticible downtime is hardly trivial.

[epolanski]

Thanks I work in IT, I'm a dev, and based my comment on both my own and experience and the dozens of peers I know very well in many companies of the world.

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