I worked at a small startup like this once. The boss/founder came from a non-software background, so he was used to expecting everyone in the office by 8 am. The way I explained it to him was "You pay me to think about the software, and solve the problems. I do this not only in the office, I do this in the shower, I do this on the way home, I do this on the way to work. Now, is it more important for me to be thinking about the performance issues we are having while I am drinking my coffee and walking to work, or do you want me to be preoccupied and stressing about being 5 minutes late so you do not yell at me?"

That made him think for a bit.

I work at what the owners call a "15-year old startup" and they're very strict about being on time for the office hours. And the reasons you cite (in the shower, while commuting) are among the reasons they pay us salary. We're expected to work a small amount in the evenings and weekends as well as our 40 hours during the week. Our management uses the excuse "Well, it's the tech industry, we all work extra."

Left unchecked employers will use all kinds of BS to extract more hours out of their employees.

Being expected to 'work a small amount in the evenings and weekends' is ridiculous if you're not being compensated for that.

Hm. That's the difference between salaried and hourly.

This is major bullshit. "We all work extra" can be translated to "we're all shitty at managing our time, and so you must be too"

Wow that is somewhat surprising. I work at hedge fund, what one might consider a fairly stogy industry, and nobody cares when I come in to work, which is 9 or 10 usually.

What time do you usually leave? In my experience people will come in at 9 or 10, but then work until 8 or 9 pm.

8pm would be a late night for me, I try to leave at 6pm but sometimes a bit later.

Do you really want to work for someone who thinks getting to the office 5 minutes earlier is more important than your child?

There are many jobs (though largely not office jobs) where you HAVE to be on time, where not being on time seriously throws a lot of scheduled things out of whack. It is not unreasonable at all in these professions to expect someone to always be on time, and get rid of them and find someone more responsible if they cannot be. One good example would be all of the elementary school teachers I've ever known; they NEED to be at work at their start time because that's when they get a roomful of children handed over to them. Being habitually tardy or unreliable in any way is completely unacceptable.

The friction here is probably from someone used to working in one of the job fields like this coming into an office environment where your hours aren't as relevant as the quality and volume of your work.

I will say though, I was a lead developer at my last job and I had some issues with an employee (with two young kids) not putting in forty hours a week, and he wasn't otherwise making up for it either. He'd be the last one in and the first one out, and it was problematic because he was supposedly the senior developer on the team but he was not meriting his higher salary. In the end I suppose you could say the real problem was with his output, not his hours, but they did seem like interrelated issues.

I would argue in this case that people simply need to plan a bit more around the inherent frailty of humans.

You can have supply teachers on call. Or you can pay them a bit extra to arrive early and mark work in that time. (e.g. make the actual working day 5-6 hours; other hours used for marking, planning, etc). There are other solutions.

One that sticks out in my mind is that when I used to work retail, our hourly pay stopped when the store closed. Obviously you don't and can't leave then. The last customer is slow, you might need to lock up, etc.

In most cases, all you need is for management to actually think about these issues and to not allow the quest for margins to result in abusive practices.

When you're a contractor then yes, you are The One, you have chosen and need to be reliable. When you are part of a massive organization with profit in the billions (e.g. a supermarket), it really is a deliberate choice they are making which results in stress being loaded on you.

Did he do architecture? Design? Mentoring? Its not all about the hours. A manager, for instance, was probably paid higher than anyone in the group and didn't do any code.

It's not that they think work is more important than your private life. They want you to think that work is more important. This peculiar brand of totalitarianism is popular in startup-land, hence the beer outings every damn Friday.

Does he know that's why I'm coming in 5 minutes late? Maybe he just thinks I'm a slacker who doesn't want to get out of the bed in the morning. I think I'd rather try and explain to him the situation I'm in before walking out. He's probably doing it out of ignorance, not out of malign. You can talk to him about it and explain your side and maybe understand his.

Right now you're making the same kind of judgements of the boss as he is making of you.

It's a pithy story, I wouldn't take it 100% literally.