(1) Who cares what fellow workers would say? Do work to make them happy, or yourself/your family?
(2) What kills morale for me is idiot work-a-holics who think they will get ahead in the company by parking their butt in a seat more hours then anyone else. I worked on a team once with mostly contractors (paid hourly) and a couple of moron permis who were like that. They were averaging 12 hour days across the year. The contractors did it because they were well compensated for it. But the permis did it because they thought they could stand out this way. Get promotions, raises and bonuses. The problem was that working 12 hours would only make you average. I continued doing 42 hours. My boss told me I was not up to the standards of the team and needed to work more. I told him that wasn't going to happen, so they transferred me to a development team where I became a stand out (not hard to do given the kind of developers in IT), getting raises and good bonuses every time.
Our salaries were comparable and bonuses have a cap, so basically they were throwing away 3-4 hours away every day to keep up with the little rat race they had created for themselves.
Certainly there are cases such as you describe. But when I am working on a team, I would prefer not to do so with 'four hour work week' types. I know a loafer when I see one. ;-)
What is the ;-) for? You think you've found one? If so, you would do better not to judge people for whom the sum of your knowledge is: "they don't completely agree with me". ;-)
The last project I did at my last job I did several hours overtime every day until the projects completion. Not because I was asked, or because I felt it was expected. I did it because I was 40% into a refactoring that I didn't want to back out of. I could have, as my manager suggested, gone back to the main branch and added the new business feature requests and avoided the overtime, but the maintainability of the code means something to me. How "beautiful" it is, if you will. It didn't bother me to invest the extra time because I knew the several-months-long refactoring that was desperately needed (6+ year old code base that had changed hands 8 or so times) could happen no other way.
I think you over-simplify and focus in the wrong area. In any thing people set out to do, the best ones truly love what they're doing. Micheal Jordon didn't wake up every morning saying "Oh, god, do I have to play basketball today?". This is also why many fighters retire so many times. They just can't stay away. The thing to look for in other programmers isn't "oh, look! He only worked 7 hours today, he's a free-loader!". What happens when you ask them about programming projects they do outside of work? Does the thought create an instant grimace on their face? It will for most, but not the best ones.
Personally, I'd rather have one guy who works 4 hours a day that's passionate about programming then 2 of your non-loafers. They tend to cause me the most work in the end. ;-)
> Personally, I'd rather have one guy who works 4 hours a day that's
> passionate about programming then 2 of your non-loafers. They tend to
> cause me the most work in the end. ;-)
(2) What kills morale for me is idiot work-a-holics who think they will get ahead in the company by parking their butt in a seat more hours then anyone else. I worked on a team once with mostly contractors (paid hourly) and a couple of moron permis who were like that. They were averaging 12 hour days across the year. The contractors did it because they were well compensated for it. But the permis did it because they thought they could stand out this way. Get promotions, raises and bonuses. The problem was that working 12 hours would only make you average. I continued doing 42 hours. My boss told me I was not up to the standards of the team and needed to work more. I told him that wasn't going to happen, so they transferred me to a development team where I became a stand out (not hard to do given the kind of developers in IT), getting raises and good bonuses every time.
Our salaries were comparable and bonuses have a cap, so basically they were throwing away 3-4 hours away every day to keep up with the little rat race they had created for themselves.