I've heard the argument about people only being productive when nobody else is around before, sometimes it's even been me saying it. With the benefit of hindsig

I've heard the argument about people only being productive when nobody else is around before, sometimes it's even been me saying it. With the benefit of hindsight I know that it's just another symptom of bad management. It tends to be caused by people being responsible for both support and new development, and the latter gets squeezed out by the needs of the former; or domain knowledge being concentrated in a few employees, who feel they are swamped helping others instead of doing the work they should be doing. Being too busy is a problem in itself, people who are busy are less efficient in the long run because they are focused on short-term goals. It's why you see people fighting with terrible build systems, they don't have the time to fix them even though they are wasting time every day due to them. There's no right or wrong answer with things like hours, we operate in the big grey area in the middle. It's about finding the best compromise where the happiness of the group is maximized without negatively impacting the business.