Its totally disrespectful. They clearly view you as a means to their personal ends, and couldnt care less about you.

But, I wouldnt characterize it as 'forced' overtime, as its still your choice. Tell them no, you have plans that night, so you cant stay. What are they going to do? Fire you? And then how far behind are their projects going to be?

Programmers & IT folks have this tendency to let themselves be abused. Why, I dont know. But programmers can do things that most other people cant even be trained to do. Good ones, at least. Your boss wants you to workovertime? Let him finish the code. See who needs who. Or let them outsource it and see how well that works out for them.

Seriously, the modern world runs on software. Programmers have more bargaining power than they think. They just need to wield it.

It's totally disrespectful. They clearly view you as a means to their personal ends, and couldn't care less about you.

But, I wouldn't characterize it as 'forced' overtime, as it's still your choice. Tell them no, you have plans that night, so you can't stay. What are they going to do? Fire you? And then how far behind are their projects going to be?

Programmers & IT folks have this tendency to let themselves be abused. Why, I don't know. But programmers can do things that most other people can't even be trained to do. Good ones, at least. Your boss wants you to work overtime? Let him finish the code. See who needs who. Or let them outsource it and see how well that works out for them.

Seriously, the modern world runs on software. Programmers have more bargaining power than they think. They just need to wield it.