Prior to accepting the role I'm currently in I had a prerequisite that I get to finish at 4.30PM on the button every day without fear of reprisal as it enables me to spend at least an hour with my son every evening before he goes to sleep. Once he's down I usually get one or two more hours of work in before I spend quality time with my wife.

I have a lot of respect for people who work 60/70/80 hours a week however to some (myself included), quality time with my family is infinitely more valuable than anything any employer could ever offer.

It depends where in the globe you are. Here in Germany people even leave work at 4:30 pm.

I'm interested in this as well. Quite a few people I know that have flexible hours tend to split their work day one way or another: 9-5 at the office + a few hours in the evening at home, 6-9 at home in the morning + 9-3 at the office, etc. There are so many permutations, I wonder if a poll would yield anything interesting.

A lot,

In my case its because traffic here in Bangalore gets too chaotic after 6. If you are leaving after 6, till 8 its foolishness. There are times when people who leave at 7 and 9 reach home at the same time. Given this, if your company has a set up where you can log in to VPN and get the work done. Rather leave at 5:30 reach home early and get the job done, than leave at 7 and spend next 2 hours just traveling.

Having said this- 'working' from home, requires a lot of discipline and being brutally honest with your own self about you productivity and impact of your work. Most importantly you need to get stuff done.

From an execs perspective, Big part of their work is designating work and sending emails. You don't need to be at office just to push Blackberry buttons.