The IT staff that leaves at 5pm.
My fellow InfoWorld blogger Bob Lewis is running a letter
he received that deals with an earlier discussion of what it means when
IT staff are out the door at 5pm regularly. While the discussion
between Bob and the letter-writer centers around morale and management
issues, I think it ignores one important point — so much of IT can be
(and is) run remotely that staying in the office late makes little
sense for many IT employees unless their goal is workplace martyrdom.
If the guys running the backend web operation are sitting in the office
doing performance tuning at a remote data center at 4:30 and they reach
a good break point at 5pm then head home to complete their work and
maybe get some dinner going in the oven for the family, it's a win-win
for all involved. I would go so far as to say that it's absolutely
critical and important for well-performing IT teams to be proficient in
working outside the office — only being able to fix problems from
within the four walls of the office building can actually be a serious
liability when unexpected but urgent problems occur during off hours.
In the end, I'll take the well-performing IT staff that heads home
at 5pm most of the time over a stay-late crowd that can't ever seem to
get ahead of pressing IT issues. Staying late regularly for the sake of
staying late leads to a culture where no one wants to stay late when
someone really needs to stay late. It's the management version
of crying wolf every day. It's much better to know that your team will
respond quickly at any time when needed, not that they stay until 7pm
at night just because [Chad Dickerson: CTO Connection]