I'm British, but used to work with a lot of Americans, all white-collar workers in the oil and gas industry, across a few different companies.
It seemed to me that the US has a toxic overtime culture, where your perceived value to the company was based in large part by how much time you were at your desk. And of course, you didn't get paid for that overtime. I don't think I met a single person who worked less than 50+ hours a week, every week.
I did ask about this, and was always told it was "normal".
Also, and I might be remembering this wrongly, I think employees only got ten days annual leave.
This was all in a single industry, in a single state, so I don't know how well the observation extrapolates, but it was my perception at the time.
Not all, no, but a good few do (I'm sure this varies by industry, region, etc.) Ambitious people tend to do so more than others; there are only so many promotions/pay raises/etc. to go around and I'd rather I get it than one of my co-workers, so it becomes a bit of a positional arms race.
