I've found that long hours are indicators, sometimes of good things and other times not. Long hours over a lengthy duration of time have shown me two things: 1) an individual's work ethic, and 2) bad management.
In the tech industry, specifically with software development, I've had teams I've managed where we needed to pull longer hours in order to meet a deadline. And my teams stepped up, because we all wanted to succeed. The long hours were a known entity, and weren't the negative long hours.
I've also had teams forced into the negative long hours, and those were my fault (or rather, they were my responsibility to manage and I didn't do a good job.) Environments that somehow believe that those of us in the tech industry somehow enjoy acts like the "diving catch" and being "the savior" offer no value, other than learning what not to do.
The biggest thing to be cautious with long-hour situations is burnout. The negative long-hour scenarios can lead to resentment, but those feelings often pass after a while. Burnout, on the other hand, can have very real long-term consequences.
In the tech industry, specifically with software development, I've had teams I've managed where we needed to pull longer hours in order to meet a deadline. And my teams stepped up, because we all wanted to succeed. The long hours were a known entity, and weren't the negative long hours.
I've also had teams forced into the negative long hours, and those were my fault (or rather, they were my responsibility to manage and I didn't do a good job.) Environments that somehow believe that those of us in the tech industry somehow enjoy acts like the "diving catch" and being "the savior" offer no value, other than learning what not to do.
The biggest thing to be cautious with long-hour situations is burnout. The negative long-hour scenarios can lead to resentment, but those feelings often pass after a while. Burnout, on the other hand, can have very real long-term consequences.