At Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Michael Scheidemann, assistant director of recruiting, says that "some employees charge forward as fast and furious as they can, and others have decided that they don’t need to be a partner in the practice." Ambitious fast-trackers set their own pace and "know what they are getting into," he notes.

    At the New York Times, where daily deadlines create enormous pressures for many of the newspaper’s 4,500 employees, "people complain, especially in the news department, but they love their jobs," says Dennis L. Stern, vice president for human resources. "They came here knowing what the hours would be. There is self-selection."

    Still, there is some indication that employees view long hours as a prerequisite for advancement on the job. In a recent FutureWork Institute survey of almost 6,000 people, "only 9 percent identified themselves as fast-trackers," Gibbons says, "but 29 percent of senior managers identified themselves as fast-trackers, and that tells the whole story. These people are setting the cultural standard."

    Catalyst studies have identified professionals and managers who would like to take the fast track for a while and then plateau for a period. "Once you plateau, however, you are no longer seen as being on the advancement track," says Marcia Brumit Kropf, vice president for research and information services. "In many companies, re-entering the fast track is very hard and not acceptable because you are written off in certain ways."