They definitely are, although that doesn’t justify actions.
Not all, but most. Family members of mine at the VP/EVP level in “enterprise” type companies regularly work 12+ hours on weekdays and ~8 per day on weekends. It’s brutal and their families suffer for it, but it pays exceedingly well.
As another poster put it, it’s survivorship bias. Most people who work that long and consistently end up with a destroyed family life and eventually the collapse of their professional life as well. Those who “make” it by and large keep their family intact because they can afford to make it difficult to leave - or because they’re married to someone of similar lifestyle.
Family members of mine at the VP/EVP level in “enterprise” type companies regularly work 12+ hours on weekdays and ~8 per day on weekends.
What do they do in all those hours?
My only experience with executives is the CEO at a "startup" (it really wasn't) in SF. He had to have his email password reset every week because he couldn't remember it. He was furious that asses weren't in all the seats at 9am, but he knocked off at 3pm on Fridays to go drink with his executive chums. I never saw any sign of leadership, vision, or actual work. Just demands on others.
The boring answer is meetings. Chapter 3 of High Output Management has a great treatment on the topic, and it covers both middle management and the executive level, including a timetable from one of Andy Grove's days. Here is a quote where he summarizes:
> As you can see, in a typical day of mine one can count some twenty-five
separate activities in which I participated, mostly information-gathering and -
giving, but also decision-making and nudging. You can also see that some two
thirds of my time was spent in a meeting of one kind or another. Before you are
horrified by how much time I spend in meetings, answer a question: which of the
activities -- information-gathering, information-giving, decision-making,
nudging, and being a role model—could I have performed outside a meeting?
The answer is practically none. Meetings provide an occasion for managerial
activities.
Family members of mine at the VP/EVP level in “enterprise” type companies regularly work 12+ hours on weekdays and ~8 per day on weekends.
At that level, they’re in the club and guaranteed to advance as long as they don’t make enemies and get kicked out of the club (which is rare, but happens, and usually means they spend a year or so finding another club.) So while some of them do work long hours, they don’t have to. They’ve already been judged to be in the in-crowd and could work 10 hours per week from wherever they want, and they’d still make every promotion.
So why do they work so much, and why do they go to the office? Because most of those guys (a) mutually dislike their families, (b) have psychological disorders, and (c) have office affairs. To psychopaths, 70 hours per week sunk into high-stakes office politics is fun.
> So while some of them do work long hours, they don’t have to.
Or so you say. But it sounds like a rationalization of why that doesn't matter/makes them morally bad people. First it's "they don't actually do any work, lol", then it's "but they totally don't have to, they could skate by on 2 hours a day, they are already pre-selected for success".
But really, it's perfectly fine if you don't care that much and won't go to that length. You don't have to justify that by coming up with narratives that others who do are evil, mentally ill, or hate their families. You can just say "that's not for me".
