OT?

I personally don't believe in OT unless absolutely necessary. I see OT as a lack of efficiency in completing work-related tasks and affects my quality of life. "I'm the 5.30 maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!"
My mum just nagged me for not doing OT... she fears that it will hurt my promotion chances* and increase my chances of being retrenched. What a load of crap!!! This is the type of mentality ingrained in most people resulting in them being screwed by "The Man" who take advantage of this. You think they scrutinize the number of OT hours you put in when some heads have to be placed on the chopping block so that they can cut cost to protect their own pockets?
I've been in the situation where I experienced colleagues getting retrenched. Did they deserve to be retrenched? No... if you go by the sadly mistaken perception of securing your job with tons of OT. Some of these guys probably clocked the most hours of OT in the company and a few of them were actually given the news when they were performing OT!!!
Instead of firing X number of employees to save S$Y... why don't top management volunteer to take a temporary paycut until things turn around? This would be a sign of leadership and inspiring to employees thus spurring them to work harder to get the company back in the black instead of demoralising them.

* The only chance that I'm going to get my boss's job is if he falls over and dies but then there are other engineers waiting in the wings.