It's not that misguided. I'm one of those people who can't really work full steam for many hours, so to get 6 real hours out of me, I need to be in the office for about 10 hours.

You are the reason for all the pain and suffering in the world.

Kidding.

I'm not completely disparaging the long workday and loads of perks to keep you at the office. It is nice to have good food nearby most hours of the day, and amenities such as gyms help coalesce my time at the office around the "productive" part of my day. Where it falls apart is when managers have to justify their employees' work: even if the 6hr worker and the 10hr worker are equally productive, they're going to point to the 10 every time to justify their employees' salary and their own ability of a manager to get more out of them. Then the 6hr worker is asked to stay later for "team morale," which often amounts to little more than twiddling thumbs and waiting out the clock, with hopefully some of that time spent wondering why they're even there in the first place.

Sorry :) ... I do wonder if I could actually work 6hr/day whether I would spend them working harder. One can dream...

Also, fuck people asking you to stay for "team morale". If you left earlier, I'd think "If I worked harder, maybe they would let me leave earlier, too..."

An equally cynical explanation is that they do it to kill anything you have going on outside of work (social life, side projects), which could compete with work for your attention.

Except that nobody's actually that interested in you.

Unfortunately that isn't how this would play out long term. With a six hour work day, people would just work for 5 hours and goof off for the rest of the time. If we reduced to day further, we would see a corresponding, proportional decrease in the ratio of productive to unproductive time.

Well, I don't believe that for a second and it sounds like you made it up.

I (and others) anecdotally lose steam part way through the day. The last couple hours are a waste. I see no reason why that would happen earlier if the day ended earlier.

People often project their work aesthetic onto others. Americans live at work, joke, etc and put in longer hours because it is expected (this leads to more goofing off actually) where some other cultures just do work while at work and then go home. Don't assume everyone is the same.

Sorry I disagree. See I work in Paris. Where the populace regularly work 35-45 hours and then take month long holidays. My contract allows a minimum of 35 hours/week. Anything after that is voluntary. I normally work the typical 8x5 week. When I decide to do 7x5 I strip out all the extra bullshit and focus on getting out the office. No breaks, meetings, phone calls, etc. my colleagues in he US don't care and don't know. I've worked a full day just like them, but an hour less.