Part of that may be because I've mostly worked as a contractor, where you tend to be a replaceable cog providing 8 hours of service a day. But most of the permanent employees also went home around 6pm.
I don't think the consequences for going home at the end of your workday are very severe. You don't need to stay late if production isn't down. If production is down at 6pm that shouldn't have happened and you need to adjust your process. At my last permanent role I spent a lot of time telling people to stop deploying the daily build after 3pm. (I understand that there's project managers pressuring them, but that doesn't justify ruining anyone's evening.)
If you can't get your work done during work hours you should fix that, not work longer hours.
Part of that may be because I've mostly worked as a contractor, where you tend to be a replaceable cog providing 8 hours of service a day. But most of the permanent employees also went home around 6pm.
I don't think the consequences for going home at the end of your workday are very severe. You don't need to stay late if production isn't down. If production is down at 6pm that shouldn't have happened and you need to adjust your process. At my last permanent role I spent a lot of time telling people to stop deploying the daily build after 3pm. (I understand that there's project managers pressuring them, but that doesn't justify ruining anyone's evening.)
If you can't get your work done during work hours you should fix that, not work longer hours.