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I've only ever worked in the UK public sector (almost-a-civil-servant), at two places which were partly government funded, partly academic and partly a business

I've only ever worked in the UK public sector (almost-a-civil-servant), at two places which were partly government funded, partly academic and partly a business. I've heard lots about this "proud to overwork" style culture but never seen much of it; not from most of my friends either. Is this a cultural thing, i.e. we're not so proud about overworking ourselves in the UK? Or is it because I'm outside of the tech bubble -- my work as a software engineer is mostly supporting science and research rather than pushing business products through the door before the next VC funding round? Or is it just that we are generally more relaxed in an academic environment, where the salaries aren't so lucrative but we get appreciable amounts of time off?

mostlystatic 8y ago
I'm also in the UK and my experience is similar. Part of that may be because I've mostly worked as a contractor, where you tend to be a replaceable cog providing 8 hours of service a day. But most of the permanent employees also went home around 6pm. I don't think the consequences for going home at the end of your workday are very severe. You don't need to stay late if production isn't down. If production is down at 6pm that shouldn't have happened and you need to adjust your process. At my last permanent role I spent a lot of time telling people to stop deploying the daily build after 3pm. (I understand that there's project managers pressuring them, but that doesn't justify ruining anyone's evening.) If you can't get your work done during work hours you should fix that, not work longer hours.