When people complain that work-life balance is out of whack, I don't think that means you need to go to the other extreme, and let everyone leave work at two in the afternoon to go to the movies.
Bingo. There is only so much coding I can do in a single day at peak efficiency.
The reason employers fear this idea is they fear that their employees might just slack off.
The cure for that is meaningful profit sharing. When the company's success IS your success, people get very motivated, and that motivation does not drive them to say "I'd better sit here surfing the web until I am the last person in the office". It drives them to cut out the dead time in their day with work, and when they cannot work, to do something they enjoy.
I've never seen profit sharing work as a motivator; in most companies it's too decoupled from individual performance. You can work yourself to the bone and still receive a pittance if the company is doing poorly for reasons beyond your control as an employee.
Where 'profit sharing' works, it tends to be called something else: a commission, for example. Works pretty well with sales staff. Equity is also a good motivator if there's a reasonable chance it will be worth something. What's important is being able to connect individual effort with reward. Otherwise, it's not much better than a lottery.
Since we are both obviously just talking about our own experiences, I can state quite definitely that knowing my team was gets 25% of the REVENUE from each of our projects is a great motivator. Not to work insane hours, but to do our best, knowing that we were being treated very fairly for our efforts.
If the success of the company is not influenced at all by your efforts, then that must be pretty depressing. Maybe a good sign that you would be happier somewhere else...
wouldn't the other extreme be micro-managing workers to the other side of work/life balance (e.g. mandatory workweeks of no more than 35-hours, mandatory vacations).
the balance is letting employees plan their work day as they see fit, as long as they are delivering on target.
