I may be an anomaly here, but in my experience, at companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Intel, engineers already only code productively for a few hours a day. That has been my observation.

Absolutely. I think my dream work situation is that all meetings before, say, 2pm are banned. I'm so much more productive, coding-wise, in the morning than in the afternoon. Afternoons can accommodate meeting time.

Really? I find I don't get up to steam until 12 noon. Before then I'd rather have my half asleep self in meetings. If you want to change that schedule though, consider working at a satellite office for a place where HQ is in an appropriate time zone (say you're in CA, try to work at an Australian headquartered company).

Interesting. Not being a morning person I'd find the 8am start hard, I wonder if anyone has done this with a later start?

Not at all a morning person either, but I think I could adapt: since I know that I can nap in the early afternoon, most of the stress of waking up without having slept enough is gone (one might take it as a split sleep in some case), that's already a major thing.

The stress of having to do never-ending hours too.

Also the stress of wasting a full long day if I am not in condition, and having little chance to recover for the next one because their is little available time to do so. I would know that I have a much greater chance to recover, that I have wasted only a short day of work, and that I can easily make up for it on the next day because there is a lot of available time to make extra hours and yet not arrive at home at late night.

Then there are more opportunities to practice a bit of sport or any outdoor lighter activity every day or every other day (you don't have to put everything on the only available day(s) of the week and hope that you are in a shape, that you have time, and that the weather is OK, and then cancel...), and that's often good for the sleep, the morale and such.

I was living (and working) much better when I had a 8-4 job (7:55--16:05 home departure--arrival) then when I had a 9:30/10-6/7 job (8:45/9:00--19:30/20:00 home departure--arrival). I could have a life after work, especially an outdoor life, and that more than compensated the often tough wake-up (I mean 'tough' for me, I know it is nowhere close to 'tough' in absolute value :-) ). Pair this with an even earlier ending, and I should be OK.

But yeah, I could take the 1PM-6PM shift too :-)

I'd like to hear the story from an employees point of view. Are they having to come in evenings/weekends to get it all done? What work is the boss not seeing?