And why the differentiation between folks who leave after 8 hours of work and those that don't?
You literally work inside a room with no windows, poor ventilation, and sound dampening. Anyone who doesn't go home after 8 hours has something wrong with them.
At the margin, in corporate america salaried professionals have a focus on deadlines and deliverables (because a. If the company goes under They’re out of a job and b. If they consistently miss deadlines they’re out of a job), so if that means the occasional late night, or an an expectation around a 10 hr work day - ok. On the federal government side the attitude CAN be “if it’s late, it’s late - what are they going to do, fire me?” Without some sense of urgency (however that is inspired) productivity is bad and tends to get worse.
Employee breakdown is as follows:
1/6 extremely capable and dedicated high performers
1/6 extremely capable and dedicated but go home at 5pm
1/3 average (not going to screw things up massively, but also never going to make a large contribution)
1/3 shocking (as in where do you even find people this useless and disagreeable - if you’re lucky their managers put them in an office and don’t let them touch anything, if not, they wreak havoc)