I admit it - I don’t get chair rash on my bum at work anymore. That is because I have to go home and do hubby/kid stuff. And I try to make sure my managers force people to work reasonable hours when we’re not, you know, actually on fire.

So I don’t worry too much about the attitude of the guys who are still there when I leave. They know I’m on email and reachable by phone if they need me. I also work some pretty fierce late night and weekend hours to make sure my administrative and project stuff is ticked and tied. And my guys know that - I lead from in front. You have to.

How do I know they’ll wind it up and leave at a reasonable hour. I can see the key card and alarm logs over the internet, so I can pull a spreadsheet of at-work hours once or twice a month. I figure if someone is at work for 60+ hours then we’ve got a problem. I’ve never actually found someone working too few hours.

We do have one guy who is not at the office as much as I’d like, but he’s super productive, so as a small company we have lots of latitude. Probably because he’s careful to show up to scheduled meetings we’ve gotten smarter about scheduling meetings. I do know he’d be more senior in the organization if he were around more - he misses the hallway techrock talk where he could show more leadership. I suspect he knows that, so there you go.

You may recall that I just wrote a post about how my Thanksgiving present was a buncha guys who were ahead of schedule. And I can look at the daily revenue numbers and see that we’re on track for our financial numbers (not that here is much you can do about that this late in the year!). So everything is going well, and everyone knows that.

Then why where there four people in the office when I dropped by today to pick up the “extra” frozen turkey? It was kind of funny: they all scattered within three minutes of me showing up for work. I’d made this rather serious edict about taking a four day weekend without email, etc. If they’re emailing each other on project stuff (as opposed to the stupid jokes they keep sending me) then they’re smart enough to keep me off the CC list.

No, I don’t actually have an answer as to why they were here. And I won’t ask - I don’t need to know the answer to everything.

When I left I did put a note on the door saying: “Go home. See you MONDAY.”