Overall, I would say there’s a fair bit of flexibility in the think tank world (certainly more than in government). But it does vary across think tanks, and across teams within think tanks.
As far as I know, the variance isn’t strongly correlated with the type of think tank. The nature of the work/team may be more predictive — if you’re in an external-facing communications role, you may have to be available/monitoring your email at certain times. Research and writing roles tend to be more flexible, but you could still end up on a team with a strong 9-to-5 culture.
If this is important to you and you’re considering think tank jobs, I’d encourage you to ask around — former or current employees of specific think tanks should at least be able to tell you about the norms at that think tank, even if they can’t give blanket answers.
Overall, I would say there’s a fair bit of flexibility in the think tank world (certainly more than in government). But it does vary across think tanks, and across teams within think tanks.
As far as I know, the variance isn’t strongly correlated with the type of think tank. The nature of the work/team may be more predictive — if you’re in an external-facing communications role, you may have to be available/monitoring your email at certain times. Research and writing roles tend to be more flexible, but you could still end up on a team with a strong 9-to-5 culture.
If this is important to you and you’re considering think tank jobs, I’d encourage you to ask around — former or current employees of specific think tanks should at least be able to tell you about the norms at that think tank, even if they can’t give blanket answers.