Laid back or Worked To Death? You Decide

This past Saturday, there was a long-awaited opening of the new Rose Garden Branch Library here in my neighborhood. I was all excited because I haven’t been to the library since I moved to this part of San Jose — there wasn’t one until the opening on Saturday.
So, this morning I made my way over to pick up a few books and look around. Except that it wasn’t open.
It opens at 11am. I guess that the amount of money it cost to build it means that they can’t afford to open it.
I’ve noticed that a lot of establishments here open relatively late in the morning. Back home, everything was open by 9am, and some places opened much, much earlier. Here in Silicon Valley, people work from 6am to 7pm, so I guess they don’t care if the stores open at 10.
Speaking of which, I know understand all those perks at big companies around here like Google and Yahoo. At Google, they have a world-class chef and cafeteria, and all meals are free. They have rooms devoted to free snacks. A lot of companies have such odd perks as on-site dentists, dry cleaning, and the like.
This is because people here never leave the office. A full timer here is expected to work about 50 hours a week, sometimes more. So, those high salaries you hear about are not so high when you think about it — the per hour compensation is actually lower. And free lunches, in my opinion, can’t make up for missing dinner at home.
I made a relatively low salary at my old job back in DC; but since it was based on a 37.5 hour work week — and I rarely worked in the office for a complete 7 hours a day — it had more compensation than just money. Here, it’s a vicious cycle: in order to afford a decent place to live here, I have to make nearly a six-figure salary. And I’d have to work long days every day to be able to afford a place to live that I’d be spending very little time at.