I'm a developer and I work 37.5 hours a week. Never in my professional life in the past 8 years have I been coerced to overwork (although, due to flexible worktime, I occassionally work on a few days a bit more, and on some, a bit less).
I would never describe my work environment as a "cage" of any sort.
Please, if you are overworked, do not expect it to be a good thing or an universal rule. Rather, I would suggest you approach it from an engineers perspective - "Ok, this time allocation thing is broken, I cannot seriously work this much, I want to have a life, how can I fix this".
This rule is often quite true in the workplace: You get what you are willing to accept. It is surprising how many things you can change (within limits) if you stop accepting things because they are, make up your mind about your limits (within agreed boundaries) and politely but firmly stick to them. Usually, if you explain your point of view politely, calmly and with confidence you can get pretty good results out of negotiations if you set realistic goals.
Of course, some people enjoy working long hours but in this case I would not describe their status as 'caged'.
I work at a great company now and the hours are very reasonable. But in the past six years, most of the companies I worked for pressured me in various ways to work (unpaid) overtime. Direct management pressure is only one kind of pressure, and was not the predominant one for me.
Was it a cage, gilded or otherwise? It was certainly unfair and unpleasant.
At some point in one of the companies I worked for, when the hours became truly insane, I just decided not to do it anymore. I was still working a lot, but just chose not to work 60+ hours a week. I would say this choice led to some discomfort at that company, and I might eventually have been fired if I had not moved on.
The point is you can't negotiate your way out of everything. Some places are just bad news, and your best option is to leave, if you can. My experience tells me this is fairly common, especially in a bad economy when employers think you have limited alternatives.
I'm a developer and I work 37.5 hours a week. Never in my professional life in the past 8 years have I been coerced to overwork (although, due to flexible worktime, I occassionally work on a few days a bit more, and on some, a bit less).
I would never describe my work environment as a "cage" of any sort.
Please, if you are overworked, do not expect it to be a good thing or an universal rule. Rather, I would suggest you approach it from an engineers perspective - "Ok, this time allocation thing is broken, I cannot seriously work this much, I want to have a life, how can I fix this".
This rule is often quite true in the workplace: You get what you are willing to accept. It is surprising how many things you can change (within limits) if you stop accepting things because they are, make up your mind about your limits (within agreed boundaries) and politely but firmly stick to them. Usually, if you explain your point of view politely, calmly and with confidence you can get pretty good results out of negotiations if you set realistic goals.
Of course, some people enjoy working long hours but in this case I would not describe their status as 'caged'.