Interesting timing. The NYTimes has a piece today on Dick Costolo[1] which mentions Peter Thiel talking about Twitter employees heading home early and how Costolo is staying at work late to get employees to do the same thing.
Even the leading companies/leading people in our industry seem to look at 'hours spent at work' as a signal of overall productivity.
It's broader than productivity alone. A team that's working long hours can be perceived as more committed, dedicated and in a fighting mood.
It's really all about team dynamics and corporate culture.
See, successful entrepreneurs are, more often than not, binary beings that totally devote themselves to their company and expect other the other people in the team to do so as well.
Someone can come and work for 5 hours and accomplish just the same as he would over 11 hours but it may send the wrong message to the group - that the company is secondary to personal life and that just meeting your obligations is really enough, no need to do beyond that.
Furthermore, some people wouldn't be able to accomplish the same over a short working day; how would that make them feel spending 11 hour days in the office, while their colleague leaves after 6 hours and still gets appreciated?
From the article it doesn't sound like he is trying to enforce long hours for everyone. Being CEO he wouldn't have time to talk in depth to employees about non critical issues.
So providing he doesn't burn out doing it, it is probably going to help the company a lot if he can put in the extra hours to be across some of the lower level stuff.
Even the leading companies/leading people in our industry seem to look at 'hours spent at work' as a signal of overall productivity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/technology/dick-costolo-of...