In fact, I need permission from my manager's manager's manager in order to stay past 7pm.
This company believes in a strong work-life balance, and this is one of the ways it achieves this.
Also, it "changes the world" in good ways, not by "connecting people" through bogus data siphoning addiction traps.
Yes my company benefits from it, but so do I. For instance, given a choice of trying to come up with an idea to learn about a feature of AWS and pay money for the resources I use, and take advantage of my work AWS (Dev) account where I am an admin, I would rather do a work related project where I have the resources and I don’t have to come up with an idea and I don’t have to pay for it.
What I don’t do is “signal”. I don’t stay at work late, I don’t send emails out after hours, and I pushback if they give me unreasonable deadlines.
Personally I strongly prefer no fixed working hours. If you want to work at night, so that you can do things when it’s light out (especially in winter), and you still get the expected results, what’s wrong with that?
Also, lone wolves working at night are harder to manage and communicate with.
Probably not fired. But the interior motion sensor alarms go on automatically at 7pm, which would probably alert the security guards that roam the campus.
When I first started, I came in too early once and set off the alarms. People were nice about it, but I was super embarrassed because I was a n00b.
Personally I strongly prefer no fixed working hours. If you want to work at night, so that you can do things when it’s light out (especially in winter), and you still get the expected results, what’s wrong with that?
I worked at a place like that once. When I was hired I was told I could make my own hours. I prefer to work early mornings, so some days I came in long before anyone else. A couple of times around 3am. But I always worked at least eight hours, and often more.
In my exit interview, my supervisor was rabid about how I wasn't a good fit because I "come and go as [you] please." She was so full of crap about other allegations against me that I didn't even have a chance to bring up that making my own hours was part of my employment deal.
On the other hand, say it would take me 50 hours and I knew I would have to work on the weekend because I’m not as experienced, but I thought I could still have it done by Monday.
I might be willing to volunteer, knowing it would take me longer but it would also be done on time. That extra 20 hours, I’m still working, committing code but zeal do trying to figure out the framework. I wouldn’t have a problem doing that because I am learning a new skill.
But, I wouldn’t work weekends to finish a project because I was given an unrealistic deadline.
The first scenario, the extra 20 hours benefits me and the company. The second, it just benefits the company.