As PMPDM mentioned, things are much different on the private side, and some surgeons do work insane hours with very little breaks in-between. I do agree with TM, however, that it's less common on the academic side.
Most "barefoot in the snow uphill both ways" surgeons are very audible/histrionic with any extra work they have to do without resident help, so this tends to amplify things a little.
Some of the reasons that attendings can have worse hours than residents:
1. Income is production based.
2. It's difficult and dangerous to tell a consultant "no," even if you're tired and beat down.
3. Unlike residency, the show can not go on without you. If you have a couple long nights, you'll still have clinics and elective cases that need to be done, and they can't be skipped or moved very easily.
Income is production based in almost every job out there. You actually can tell a consultant no (another myth of academia) although there are tactful ways to do it. True that the show will always go on, and we all have some tough stretches, but overall "the show must go on" analogy is way overblown.
What I observed in residency was that unhappy and "overworked" attendings had the following characteristics:
1. Slow in clinic. They could spend all morning seeing 15 patients even with residents seeing them first and teeing everything up.
2. Slow in the OR. How many times were you waiting around for an attending to come and time out? Or how about the simple case that took 3 times longer than it should because the attending was inefficient and slow?
3. Poorly organized overall. These attendings were always late to a meeting, a case, or something else. Consequently everything took longer than necessary.
4. Attendings who relied so much on resident labor that they claimed they didn't know how to use the EMR so they wouldn't do a single note or documentation/consent themselves.
5. Attendings who could not do anything without having a resident by their side.
6. Attendings who insisted rounds be done before the first case.
Granted, most of these things occured in my general surgery years. General surgeons in my albeit very limited experience are the poster children for "my life is so hard" complex. However in academia, the above occur all the time in all specialties. Residents can learn bad habits too, and may be shocked to discover that life as an attending no longer has to be the inefficient mess that it can be as a resident.
My advice is to make your practice what you want it to be, and don't feel obligated to ape the bad habits of inefficient (and usually unhappy) attendings you knew in residency.
