Except that every productivity study shows the exact opposite. For a week or two, you can spend more hours to produce more. On any longer timescale, the extra hours decrease your productivity/hour so much that the total output goes down. It's not just abusive on the part of the employer, but is also just plain stupid.
Definitely agree on overtime-exempt positions. The terminology is also really messed up. Normally, being exempt from something is a good thing. Here, "non-exempt" and "exempt" should be referred to as "paid for overtime" and "screwed for overtime".
An “up-or-out” pyramid structure doesn’t see as much of that longer-term effect because it creates a selective environment for people who can work longer hours, and because it is overworking a stream of new interns and graduates who don’t stay for as much of the low productivity period as employees would in a traditional organization.
How long does it take to get promoted out of the initial hazing? Productivity at 40 hours/week beats productivity at 60 hours/week over any time scale longer than a month. I sincerely doubt that the turnover/promotion rate is only a month long.
I do agree that there is a misalignment of incentives. An employer is not financially responsible for the burnout that they induce. If it takes the employee an extra 2-3 months between jobs due to recovering from that burnout, that is a financial hit to the employee on top of the emotional hit, even though they were not responsible for causing the burnout in the first place.
Yes, they're around longer than an extra month, but as these organizations see it, they would never get the valuable work they really want out of the eventually promoted juniors who burn out that quickly, anyway, regardless of work hours. The shortened tenure just reduces the cost of their process to find people who will thrive when they are given seniority and staff on top of their ability to work long hours well.
If you want to put math on it, something like this might be the model:
Value of low stamina junior employee, overworked: x
Value of low stamina junior employee, 40h/week: 2x
Value of high stamina junior employee, overworked: 1.5x
Value of low stamina junior employee after seniority: 4x
Value of high stamina junior employee after seniority: 5-10x
This gap trend continues to widen up the ranks, up to the top, since the top executives of these companies still have to close deals with the most significant clients.
My opinion is that up-or-out is a worse model for most organizations than a flatter model that promotes and pays ICs and technical leaders accordingly and doesn't assign outsized prestige to deal closers--but I can't deny these organizations are effective at selecting the right people for them.
It depends on the role as well. Organizations bring on junior sales people--admittedly often in lower impact inside sales positions--and they hit their numbers or they don't. And, if they don't, well sales managers don't have any trouble firing people. And this applies even to companies with good ladders for tech people.
Definitely agree on overtime-exempt positions. The terminology is also really messed up. Normally, being exempt from something is a good thing. Here, "non-exempt" and "exempt" should be referred to as "paid for overtime" and "screwed for overtime".