It's exactly this. Management loves to impose scrum (I've yet to hear being implemented from a bottom-up rather than a top-down initiative) as it's an excuse to

It's exactly this. Management loves to impose scrum (I've yet to hear being implemented from a bottom-up rather than a top-down initiative) as it's an excuse to micromanage: daily status reports, extra meetings, fixed working hours. That said, this may be a benefit for people who aren't passionate or interested in their work and want to clock out at five. That's fine, but that's not for me: my work is tied very closely to my personal identity, I put in many night and weekend hacking sessions and (voluntarily) work more than the usual 45-50 hours a week. At home, when not working, I frequently hack on personal projects and read technical books (indirectly benefiting my employer as well). I chose to work for a place that judges me by what I produce, not by when I come in to the office. The beauty of being a software engineer in Silicon Valley (and I imagine this is the same in other technology hubs such as Seattle, Rte-128 and Austin) is that I get this choice. Here's a prediction: companies that micromanage in this fashion simply won't attract the required engineering talent. All else equal, engineers will choose a place that gives them more flexibility. The market seems to confirm this. Here's an interesting thread on hours engineers work at Facebook on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Does-Facebook-have-fixed-working-hours http://www.quora.com/Does-Facebook-have-fixed-working-hours Note: I'm not opposed and frequently make use of "lower-case-A agile" i.e., unit testing, re-factoring, iterative development but they are just common-sense tools; much like editors, IDEs and programming languages they are frequently treated as objects of religious devotion, overlooking the fact they may be right for some (in some organizations, even most) projects, but inappropriate for others.