Interesting. I know several Googlers in the SV area and none of them work on a 40/hr schedule like that. They work like a regular salaried person where they just do the appropriate amount of work to get their tasks completed on schedule. Sometimes they will have a relaxed week where they only work ~20 hours and other times they will be in a code sprint and do 60-70 hours.
I meant average, yeah, not necessarily that you work the same hours every week. However countries also vary a bit in how normal it is for people to work outside of a standard daytime, M-F workweek.
I think even in the U.S., it's only really in the Valley (and maybe also in NYC finance) where a regular salaried job has wild week-to-week variations in working hours. Occasional variations, yes, but in most industries it's expected that you'll work standard hours most of the time (e.g. 8-5, M-F), deviating only when there is some major issue. Every engineering company I've heard of works like that, for example. The main exception is that people do do quite a bit of email outside of work hours.
There are all sorts of practicalities that rely on a predictable work schedule: scheduling your carpool, arranging childcare dropoff/pickup, etc. How does that work in the tech industry? Do people at Google not have carpools, kids, etc.?
That's pretty much what I said. I work more in the crunch times, less in the slack times. But my variance isn't that wide. My working week is between 28 hours and 48 hours, but most weeks are just 38 hours.
