On my first day of work, I received a document containing company rules and guidelines. Overtime is never paid and it is considered "an engineer's pride" to fix any bugs in his own time. Of course this overtime isn't limited to bugfixing, and when there's a deadline coming up (there's always a deadline coming up) or when someting just isn't working you are expected to do whatever it takes to get things working.
One of my colleagues received comments on a recent evaluation after he refused to come in on a Saturday because there was a problem with a display driver on a project he hadn't worked on for weeks.
The 38 hours we work each week is more of a guideline than a rule really. Unless of course you want to work less, in which case that would be grounds for immediate dismissal.
You could even try proving you worked too many hours, but that's quite hard to do (a list of start and end times would surely not suffice).
Edit: Also, they will surely claim that they did not tell you to perform that overtime, and that in fact you did so without them knowing.
Basically for me is very hard to understand why I should work for free ( I could want to work overtime for free, but if I am imposed to work overtime I must be paid)
If you are in software engineering, the answer is that the US pays the best salaries in the world. You are not working for free if you are salaried. You sign a contract to fulfill certain duties regardless of the amount of time it takes.
No, a few small regions in the US pays amongst the best salaries in the world. Most of the US have software engineering salaries that are nothing special. And lots of places in Europe have plenty of jobs at similar salary levels to e.g. Silicon Valley.
> You are not working for free if you are salaried. You sign a contract to fulfill certain duties regardless of the amount of time it takes.
... and most of the developed world have seen through this bullshit. In the EU, for example, the Working Time Directive sets limits, and if the company assigns duties that are impossible to carry out within those limits, then that is the company's problem. For a reason: A lot of companies tried (and try) to abuse the notion of a salaried employee to pile on duties far in excess of what can reasonably be carried out within the expected contract period.
(looking to exempted groups in the UK: my ex was until recently a lawyer for one of the largest lawfirms in the world, based out of London; while on paper her contracted hours are about 40 and her salary on that basis seemed amazing, her actual hours based on assigned duties that would never be possible to fit into 40 hours per week brought her actual hourly rate below that of he secretary)
Honest question: where? Switzerland? And how much are we talking? A fresh 22-year-old graduate can easily make $110k + stock his first year out of school in SV.
I wished that for specific topics such as this one where the geographical location of a poster is highly relevant we would post our locations or have a switch in our profile to get a better outlook of where people are coming from.
And penalties for requiring employees to work over that, apply only when this is exceeded when it's averaged over a 17 week period.
But you're right, many fields pretty much bring up the 48-hour overtime exemption contract to you on day 1, many temp jobs, or things like catering/bar-work require you to sign one of these.