I would be careful with such blanket statements. I would agree with you that companies do not expect people to expect that and will do everything they can to ma

I would be careful with such blanket statements. I would agree with you that companies do not expect people to expect that and will do everything they can to make people believe that exploitative relationships are OK. Personally though yes I do expect tit for tat. And there are employers out there that understand this very well. At one of my previous places for example we had a few major traffic days which required a sort of "all hands on deck" for the day and part of the night. You probably worked an extra 2 hours in total but you were looking at the chat and production monitors regularly while going about your day and evening/night otherwise. You got an extra day off for that. Also for production support via 'pager' any call from the NOC to you, even if it took 5 minutes of you just telling them 'yeah restart service X' was an automatic 1 hour billed at overtime rates. No not contractors. Internal employees. Also I do love my work and it's not work in that sense. But that does not preclude me from wanting and working actively towards a proper work environment. If you pay me for 40 hours you get 40 hours. 40 hours of 100% of me. Not 60 hours of 50% of me.