We have scrum inside mandatory hours. There's a fairly strict company policy that you cannot schedule _recurring_ meetings outside mandatory hours, and if you do, you cannot expect people to attend, so scrum here is 9am. Even scheduling non recurring meetings outside mandatory hours is frowned upon.
As for the schedule itself, it fits nicely with (european) family life. My kids start school at 8am, so i usually drop them off at school on my way to work, and get in around 8:30am (before COVID anyway). I get off work at 4pm, and have the entire evening with my family.
I'm aware that at least some parts of the US has (or had ?) a much more fluid line between work and free time, where people will leave work to have lunch with their family, return to work, leave to watch a soccer game (or whatever), and return to work, and leave work around 7pm.
To me that sounds much more hellish than just working 8am to 4pm :)
Also at least in Seattle it seems like every doctor’s office keeps bankers hours (M-F 9-5) so you would have to disrupt your own workday to go to an appointment, though in practice I haven’t known people to bother putting in extra work if their projects are reasonably getting done on time.
I've always liked an early start for an early finish, I was one of the very few working early though in most places.
My second software job was with a company that was just as old but much more modern (not startup-ish). the boss required the team to be in before 9am, daily team meeting was at 9.
My job now has flextime with core hours between either 10-3 or 10-2 (can't recall which) but very few people arrive after 9am. All other jobs I've worked have flextime with similar core hours, there was only one job that had a true "no rules" approach.
There are only two rules:
- get the job done
- be in the important meetings/calls
Unless i was in serious financial trouble, or in a learning situation, i would never accept a contract that "allows for unpaid overtime".
Most of the companies i know don't allow for "paid free time", so why should i give away my time for free to increase profits for the company ?
The exception to this is of course "job salary", but i never accept those either unless i have a say in what exactly makes up the "job" part, and i usually tell the employer that "job salary" goes both ways, so if i'm done with my job Wednesday afternoon, i'll say "enjoy your weekend" and be back next monday. That's when we usually agree on paid overtime :)
At least in the UK the law specifically forbids working more than 48 hours a week, so it's pretty common to see contracts where you opt out of this regulation. Not because the company even intends to make you work overtime, but because if you happened to work more, even entirely out of your own free will, you could still sue the company for working more than 48 hours in a week. So it's a very common thing to add in contracts here.