These two sentences do not jive: > They expect that you treat your position not just as a job where you work so many hours or do just the tasks that you are as

These two sentences do not jive: > They expect that you treat your position not just as a job where you work so many hours or do just the tasks that you are asked to do, but that you take more personal responsibility for doing the very best job you can, improving your own productivity, and making the company function better and more efficiently. That's actually how I prefer to treat my job, and why I like startups. But... > The company managers don't care about you and your work/life balance, only the work they can get out of you. And in terms of efficiency, that means paying you the smallest salary and benefits that you'll accept. If the company treats me like that then I'm going to start punching the clock, that's only fair. There are a lot of employees that take advantage of their employer, and there are a lot of employers that take advantage of their employees (with more leverage FWIW), but such an adversarial relationship is a drag on overall resources and productivity. In knowledge work trust is paramount, there are no metrics which you can use to guarantee that an employee is "100%" productive, and management attempting to do so is a huge red flag for me.