>> He leaves work at 5:30 p.m. so that his employees will not feel obligated to stay.
Bret is pictured in his expensive home, standing in front of a gas range that was at least $10,000. He can afford to take it easy. He's already sacrificed and put in the 16 hour days.
You may login after hours to wind up your day's work (it is, in fact, expected), but you are to make damned sure nothing hits your subordinates' inboxes until 8:30AM the next day. If that means putting delays on your messages in Outlook, so be it.
Makes for a much more relaxed and productive team.
When the top guy leaves, that signals to the rank and file it's OK to leave. It tends to look bad when the rank and file leave before the boss. It's an extremely well understood social signal (whether you buy into that or not, doesn't matter. It's the signal).
So there is a strong understanding of this in aware managers - they will leave in the 4:30-5:30 bracket, so their employees don't feel compelled to work long hours.
Hours worked is a useless signal at best and a misleading signal at worst. (as an aside, I also believe the 40hr work week is a waste for both companies and employees)
Number of hours a superficial signal that it easy to imitate. People know that productive "hustlers", "gamechangers" "showrunners" get promoted. They tend to know who the hustlers are and thus they know that hustling often requires more than 8 productive hours a day of work. So they stay after hours despite diminishing returns and lower median throughput.
Once a large enough percentage of the imitators stay afterhours, now your average operational employee has to stay in order to conform to the perceived status quo.
So I agree with with the CEO leaving early as long as he enforces a culture that not only encourages people leaving at 5:30, but penalizes people who stay late. Then the hustlers will follow, and then the imitators will follow and the operational staff will feel comfortable to have their 40 hour work week.