[hga]

I don't see anything that you've said that's unique to Silicon Valley, except perhaps for the extreme hours which I never experienced. Especially the "QA gets no respect" bit; I jointed Lucent for a QA including programming QA stuff job and it was a miserable, never again, I advise all my friends to avoid it like the plague.

[Cuyacap]

I come from banking in the Midwest. While I worked some long hours occasionally, it was never as bad as what I have experienced here in Silicon Valley. I'm specifically talking about the geographical Silicon Valley, not just the tech scene in the area. On top of that, I'm going to claim unrealistic work / life balance is something common to this part of the country. I've returned to banking out here, and I still find there is an unrealistic expectation of how many hours an employee should work a week.

With that said, I don't really mind the long hours if I am properly compensated. It's not the long hours that bother me. It's the thought that I have nothing better to do than to serve the company at any time of the day. Employment is a mutually beneficial economic relationship. Out here, it seems that a lot of employers think the employees should be thankful they are allowed to work there.

[hga]

I'm from the Midwest myself (sort of, Joplin, MO is at the edge of the West and is culturally Southern). Never worked here, though, but I don't get the impression insane hours are acceptable here. Have worked in the Boston area, roughly in the '80s, and D.C. area, roughly in the '90s. No insane hours either place, aside from some occasional, short term, customer driven projects, which are a very different thing.

As for your latter point ... don't know. When I was "junior" the talent shortage was dire. When I was "senior", I wouldn't put up with such things, but even in cases where I got recruited without having much of an idea of the workplace culture, I don't ever remember a "you should be thankful you are allowed to work here" attitude. Might have been luck of the draw, although in plenty of those places a failure to have hired someone like me at the time would have resulted in the company dying, so....

ADDED: D.C. might be a special case: The culture is overwhelmingly influenced by government contracting, and the government is loathe to pay overtime. And contractors tend to get paid by the billed hour, so unpaid overtime costs them money. And at least compared to Boston a decade earlier, the time you spent in the office was a greater factor in judging your performance.