Working late, responsibly

Just to provide a counter-point, some people ebb and flow in their energy and ability to produce high-quality work. Some people prefer working odd hours. They siesta during the day. Some people go on three-day benders doing amazing things, and then crash for a day. And that's their preference. They just get into the zone in different ways.

I think that if you want to hire the best people and let them do the best work, you should work around the schedule that works best for them and judge them on their work product and that of their peers.

As an aside, in the venture-backed, growth-focused startup world I work in, I doubt there is a single high-performing successful company that operates with the mentality that OP suggests people adopt. It's just too hard when the focus is to grow insanely fast. It's not for everyone, and it has serious consequences to work/life satisfaction, but it's a choice a lot of people on YC have made, or make... I'm fatter, with more gray hair, and more stressed than I would be working at a larger company with more reasonable hours and stress. But I enjoy what I do, feel it has purpose, get paid well to do my job, and get paid even more if we do something incredible. So I keep doing it because despite the downsides, I feel quite privileged. :-)

As articles like this attest, there is a deep resentment on HN with the idea that success requires long hours and slavish commitment to work. But then every article about a successful company bolsters the sense that success requires exactly that kind of sacrifice. As Michael Bloomberg put it in his autobiography, Bloomberg succeeded "because we worked harder."

It's nice to read about the exception like 37Signals, but Apple, Google, Facebook, Dropbox, etc. are not known as places where work-life balance is a priority (and they have done more than anyone technologically to make work ubiquitous). Those mega-successful companies are also the entire reason the VC model (including YC) works, which can be an uncomfortable truth if you work at a venture-backed startup.

Worker productivity has been steadily rising over the last half century, and yet people aren't working less, as originally predicted. You can view that as an indictment of American consumer culture, or you can view it as evidence that we're motivated by something else.

Just my observations.

In my current position I can't have work email easily accessible on my phone. I have a security token on my keychain that changes every 30 seconds or so, as well as 2 additional passwords I need to remember. This is enough to deter me from checking my work email outside of work 95% of the time. I used to be the person sending emails from bed at 3am.

I go hiking in the Smokies almost every weekend, and I enjoy the fact that my post-hike tranquility won't be interrupted by work emails that inevitably hijack my brain even if they aren't pressing.

"Ultimately you should remember that downtime is precious. It’s not healthy to be in front of a computer, let alone working, all day and night. You might not be doing other people harm but you may be doing harm to yourself."

This is spot on - screen fatigue is real - and spending 8 hours in front of a screen at work and then maybe 3-4 at home is not natural for the human mind or eyes in my opinion. I sleep much better if I shut everything off by 8 or 9 pm for an 11:30 bed time.

Really don't agree with this. Sometimes I work 18 hours a day, sometimes just 5 and then I go home and take a nap. Sometimes I'm remote for a week, sometimes remote just one day a week. I really don't need my work hobbled by having to queue up anything noticeable for official office hours just to lie to my coworkers that I'm not actually working when I am. Tell each new hire what they are responsible for and what they aren't, don't tell your current workers to hide what they are doing and get in their way just to tell it in some weird passive indirect way.