You are right @pulsater, i should move away from them. But i cant do it until i get a new job. I badly need the pay, whatever little they offer. I have not signed any bond or contract.
I have even tried to put up what i feel through an annual performance planning chart and a feedback form. Nothing worked. They pretend to listen to whatever an employee says, but never act. This is the same story for most of the lower lever employees (other than those put chingu cha for the management).
As you said, many of us have talked about what we need, but they keep bluffing something that is senseless. So i started acting up, i arrive at the office at 10am instead of 8:30 and leave at regular 6pm. I stopped working on week ends, and even on week days i wont be as productive as i used to be.
I hope they try to put me in trouble, so that i can give them a heavy dose of something they least expected.

@Pulsater & Keerthy - Guys, this is just one example where people speak out in frustration. Bet you dollar to beer, if you take any project, say of about 10 members...
2 will act like boss & will start politics & want to implement each of their ideas
2 will side each of the above guys
1 of them will need to be pushed to get the work extracted
1 of them will actually do no work & will provide a moral support
1 or 2 of them will be part of core guys but get exhausted soon
1 or 2 of them will be actual or core guys doing the actual work

So if you see the entire burden falls on just 2-4 guys in a 10 member team. If this is the case, then, naturally they've to work for the remaining guys.

But I would say only one fact like what Nitin says...
Every employer don't want to see a problem of work or deadlines missed because someone sticking to timelines. Even if we start a company, we wouldn't want to miss the deadlines. But giving extended deadlines also makes us loose business in the competitive environment. The competition has gone beyond 2 companies & its now between 2 countries.

I would want to ask Keerthy one question. How about people working in Japan? Have you observed them? Aren't you seeing few of them working regularly for 12+ hours a day & yet keep working?

Be very sure of what you are doing. Take this route only if you can switch before next appraisal cycle. Else this can have long-term implications. Experience speaking here

@aargee: I am on employees side here!! Mazdoor zindabad. Yeah, Japnese work for 12+ Hours/day but it is also suicide capital of the world. I don't understand, whats the point of working so much?

I would be happy to do a proper 9 to 5 job at 30% salary of what I am currently getting and an yearly increase of 3% like central government employees get. But there are no jobs like that :-( And that seems to be the problem, there is no middle path. Either you have very low paying jobs in unorganised sector or the typical corporate jobs which squeezes the life out of you.

Getting back to Pulsater's basic question, extended working hours I would still say is because of employees. Its a sort of a given now to expect people to work harder for more money. People who look for work-life balance are odd ones out. Message on the wall is if you are not greedy its your problem. Greed is good!!! So work like crazy al through the year and make life difficult for your manager during appraisal cycle.

I understood that Girish, what I tried saying was the business demands people working harder & people demand salaries based on competitiveness. So its from both the ends, but business driving the game.

And that's the reason why BSNL is disinvested while Airtel is showing steady growth

Its both Girish; say for example, your manager asks you to do a job after 7 PM, you walk away; enraged manager hires or finds a competitor for you & gradually replaces him with you. If the other person is not willing to cooperate, he might look for 3rd person.

And to save one's job too!!!

Well, the current culture is, work like crazy & party harder when the project is completed; however, the sad truth is that, before one project is over, they always find another one for your to work crazy.

But again it depends on the project & work that one undertakes; usually the fixed price projects are hell & the last few months of any T&M projects are hell & the 8 hours support job is hell. IMO, out of these 3, support jobs are better than T&M. The worst of this lot is FP & unfortunately, FP is the growing trend in India today.

I dont think to run a business/company and to grow, overtime and working for 10-12 hrs is the right and the only way. few exceptions aside, not every business need its people to work like bees.

In service industry, the competition is intense and every business try to cut each other by some or the other way to bag the contracts/projects, be it on cost, efficiency or time frame and many deals are done or undone over such factors. So if companies can come with strategies to finish the job in a set timeline, they can also come up with strategies to do it without creating an environment for its worker which is extremely hard to cope and frustrating in the end.

I am not against working for 9-10+ hrs every day, I am just against the fact that most of that hard work and dedication is NOT realised and respected by the companies.