Yep, I do my 8 hours then stop. If something's on fire in prod and I'm the best person to help, I'll respond.

But I'm a firm believer that having to put out fires outside of business hours is a sign of a fragile system.

And anyway, I learned my lesson about the unidirectional flow of loyalty in most businesses at a previous company.

I gave them untold unpaid hours outside of normal work time for years. About a decade of doing so when the next paragraph kicks in.

I unexpectedly got sole custody of my five children, and wanted to work from home when they were sick, as my sick leave had been quickly exhausted because, well, five children, and sick leave provisions in my country were minuscule - 5 days a year, recently changed to 10 days a year to the disgust of the business community.

After all, I wasn't sick, and could still write code while looking after my sprogs instead of not writing code and using my annual leave. Shit, when I was taking leave when they were sick, I was still writing code ( in between nursing duties) for my company because loyalty and my desire to deliver... .

...So it made sense to me, instead of me not working at all, I'd work from home on those occasions, knowing it wasn't ideal, but it was far more productive than not working, and I expected the company would understand and support me.

After all, how much had I done for the company for free in my personal time in the years prior? I'd had years of late night firefighting, and regular video calls in my evening with product owners 11-13 hours behind me.

An occasional bit of flexibility from the company was a fair and decent recognition of my years of flexibility and unpaid labour, I thought.

Haha, no, I got a verbal bollocking/warning.

(This was pre-pandemic, naturally.)

So yeah, these days, I give you 8 hours, and I'll do my damnedest to make sure you don't need me outside of those 8.

In Spain we finish at 6pm.

Some people even work until like 7pm.

Sure but you guys take daily hour+ long afternoon breaks and relatively longer lunches no?

At least that appeared to be the case when there on my honeymoon :).

Not really, I think the shops close during the day, but those guys work until 9pm.

I mean it's 9am-6pm with an hour for lunch so it's still an 8-hour day if you don't count the lunch hour as working. But if you are working in the office it still kinda sucks as you can't really do much in that time.

Spain is also in the "wrong" timezone. It's directly south of Britain and should fit in the +0000 timezone, but politics and history put it in the same timezone as France (which should also be in +0000) and Germany.

That's true but most people still start work at 9am though.

I think it used to be more common to start at 10am, but not anymore.

No, only shops do this. Office employees typically don't take an afternoon break.