"Working for free" after 40 hours never resonated with me. It comes out of hard fought labor battles, but an assembly line is difficult to relate to when I'm eating free snacks in my comfy Aeron chair and working on things that generally interest me.
I think the biggest issue here is misaligned expectations between boss and worker. Personally, I've always gone into a job understanding what it was going to take to be successful. My comp expectations are adjusted accordingly. In trading bonds, which is nearly a 24 hour market, it does require >8 hours on the trading floor. At the end of the year my boss doesn't really care about my hours as long as our customers are happy and I've produced PnL.
I think the biggest issue here is misaligned expectations between boss and worker. Personally, I've always gone into a job understanding what it was going to take to be successful. My comp expectations are adjusted accordingly. In trading bonds, which is nearly a 24 hour market, it does require >8 hours on the trading floor. At the end of the year my boss doesn't really care about my hours as long as our customers are happy and I've produced PnL.