Maybe some tech people are over optimizing, but 99% of people in the real world do not.
This article reminds me of some friends in tech who sit down and over analyze shit and never get anything done.
Imagine a world where you can get enough pay to eat and go out and pay rent in four hours of work per week. Your landlord can rent to you or to the person who decides to work eight hours per week, so he raises the rent and rents to the other guy who is willing to work more and needs housing as much as you do. So now you have to work more too. Everyone works more because everyone else works more, just like you have to not cooperate on a prisoners dilemma because you know the other guy won’t cooperate either (because he knows the same thing you do).
No one does anything, the hierarchical structure is so meaningless hundreds do nothing at all. People get stressed out when they are expected to work a little.
Everyone is chatting on meetings about which button is the best.
Yep, it’s a career suicide and leaves you with no future prospects but it’s pretty stable.
Some play the politics to get higher paychecks, some squeeze the newcomers that actually do the work but things stabilize pretty quickly.
Which country and which kind of work? I might relocate when I get older so it’s good to know... ;)
Collecting overtime gives opportunity for under-performers to make progress in the company.
I've been to more than 5 banks in Croatia and Austria (Most of the banks in Croatia are subsidiaries of Italian and Austrian banks). The contracts make overtime mandatory but one can negotiate to remove overtime completely.
Most people that tell their wives and friends that they work overtime either do not work during the overtime hours, are unnecessarily inefficient for the purpose of collecting hours (unpaid) or have periods of struggle because most of the time they do not work and have no idea what's going on (so when they have to catch up, the stress and the lack of knowledge forces overtime).
Some cases I encountered of people who complain about working too much in a bank are those that prefer the company of their coworkers more than that of their spouses.
I hope you find an area that you like.
I would also go ahead and say that the "tragedy of the commons" is an even better way of looking at this (i think that's basically a N-player prisoner's dilemma)