Learn Hardcore Russian: Иногда начальник позволяет сотрудникам уходить домой раньше. - Sometimes the boss allows the employees to go home earlier.

позволять кому? что делать?
- кому? → dative case (the person who gets permission)
- что делать? → infinitive (the action they are allowed to do)

So in the sentence:

начальник – subject (nominative)
позволяет – verb
сотрудникам – dative plural, “to (the) employees”
уходить – infinitive, “to leave”

Singular would be:

начальник позволяет сотруднику уходить домой раньше – “The boss allows an employee to leave home early.”

Why is it уходить and not уйти?

Both уходить and уйти mean “to leave,” but they differ in aspect:

уходить – imperfective: process, repeated / habitual action, “to be leaving / to leave (in general).”
уйти – perfective: a single, completed action, “to leave (once, completely).”

Here we have иногда (“sometimes”), which describes a repeated, habitual situation. In Russian, for general, repeated permission we usually use:

позволять кому-то делать что-то with an imperfective infinitive.

So:

Иногда начальник позволяет сотрудникам уходить домой раньше.
“Sometimes the boss lets employees leave for home early.” (regular, repeated situation)

Compare:

Вчера начальник позволил им уйти домой раньше.
“Yesterday the boss allowed them to leave for home early.” (one specific case → perfective позволил
- уйти)

Could we say Начальник иногда позволяет сотрудникам уходить домой раньше instead? Does the word order change the meaning?

Yes, that word order is also correct:

Иногда начальник позволяет сотрудникам уходить домой раньше.
Начальник иногда позволяет сотрудникам уходить домой раньше.

Both mean the same in basic content. The difference is subtle emphasis:

Beginning with Иногда gives extra emphasis to the frequency:
“Sometimes, the boss lets employees leave early.”
Beginning with Начальник gives a bit more focus to the boss:
“The boss sometimes lets employees leave early.”

Russian word order is relatively flexible, and in neutral speech both versions are natural.

Why is it домой and not в дом or к дому?

Домой is the normal way to say “(towards) home” in Russian:

домой – “(to) home,” direction, without a preposition.

The alternatives have different nuances:

в дом – “into the house” (physical movement from outside to inside a house/building, not necessarily your home).
к дому – “towards the house,” but not necessarily going inside (to the vicinity of the house).

In this sentence, we mean “go home from work,” not “go into a building” in a physical sense, so домой is the natural word.

So:

уходить домой – to leave (work, school, etc.) and go home.
войти в дом – to enter a house.
подойти к дому – to walk up to / approach the house.

Is домой a form of дом, or is it a different part of speech?

In modern Russian, домой is treated as an adverb of direction (“homewards, to home”).

It does not behave like a normal case form:
- You cannot say в домой, из домой, etc.
- It doesn’t decline.

You can think of it as a fixed adverb that happens to be historically related to дом. Common pairs:

дома – “at home” (where?)
домой – “(to) home” (where to?)

Why is раньше used here? Could we say пораньше, and what’s the difference?

Both are possible, but they have slightly different nuances:

раньше – simply “earlier.”
Neutral, factual: just a time comparison with the usual time.
пораньше – “a bit earlier / somewhat earlier.”
Softer, more colloquial, often sounds more friendly or informal.

In the given sentence:

Иногда начальник позволяет сотрудникам уходить домой раньше.
Neutral: “Sometimes the boss lets employees leave for home earlier.”

You could also say:

Иногда начальник позволяет сотрудникам уходить домой пораньше.
Slightly more conversational: “Sometimes the boss lets employees go home a bit earlier.”

Both are grammatically correct; the original is just more neutral.

What is the difference between позволять and разрешать in this kind of sentence?

Both can mean “to allow / to permit,” and both fit this pattern:

позволять / разрешать кому? что делать?

In this sentence, you could say:

Иногда начальник позволяет сотрудникам уходить домой раньше.
Иногда начальник разрешает сотрудникам уходить домой раньше.

The difference is mostly nuance:

разрешать
- often feels like giving explicit permission, an official “yes.”
- slightly more concrete: “I give you permission to do X.”
позволять
- can be permission, but also “to allow” in the sense of not preventing or “to afford / allow (oneself).”
- can sound a bit more formal or abstract in some contexts.

Here, either works; many speakers wouldn’t feel a strong difference.

Why is it уходить домой, not just идти домой?

Both уходить домой and идти домой are possible, but they emphasize different things:

идти домой – “to go (walk) home”
- focuses on the movement itself, especially walking.
уходить домой – “to leave (for) home”
- focuses on the act of leaving a place (work, school, etc.) with “home” as the destination.

In a work context, уходить домой is more natural because it highlights that employees are leaving work:

Сотрудники уходят домой в шесть.
“Employees leave for home at six.”

If you used идти домой here, it would be understandable, but it slightly shifts the focus to the act of going rather than the act of leaving work.

Why is начальник masculine? Can it refer to a female boss?

Начальник is a grammatically masculine noun in Russian. Its grammatical gender is masculine regardless of the actual person’s sex.

So:

мой начальник – “my boss” (could be a man or a woman).

When the boss is a woman:

In formal or neutral speech, adjectives and past-tense verbs still usually agree in masculine, because they agree with the noun начальник:
- Мой начальник сказала… and Мой начальник сказал… are both heard, but many speakers still use masculine agreement (сказал) in formal contexts.
In colloquial speech, many people use feminine agreement to match the real person:
- Мой начальник сказала, что… – “My (female) boss said that…”

So in this sentence, начальник can be male or female; Russian grammar here doesn’t show the sex of the boss.

Why is there no explicit word for “from work” in the Russian sentence?

In Russian, уходить домой often implies “from work / from school / from wherever you were” if the context is clear.

So:

Иногда начальник позволяет сотрудникам уходить домой раньше.
is naturally understood as:
“Sometimes the boss allows employees to go home earlier (from work).”

If you want to say it explicitly, you can add it:

Иногда начальник позволяет сотрудникам уходить с работы домой раньше.
“Sometimes the boss allows employees to leave work for home earlier.”

But in most real-life situations, домой alone is enough when everyone knows you’re talking about leaving work.

What is the stress (pronunciation accent) on each word in the sentence?

Stresses (the syllable in CAPS is stressed):

иногда – иноГДА
начальник – наЧАльник
позволяет – позволяЕт (po-zvo-lyA-et; stress on the я / е sound in that syllable)
сотрудникам – соТРУдникам
уходить – уходИть
домой – домОЙ
раньше – РАньше

Putting it together (rough guide):
иноГДА начАльник позволяЕт соТРУдникам уходИть домОЙ РАньше.

What is the general grammar pattern of this sentence that I can reuse with other verbs?

The core structure is:

[Subject in nominative] + позволяет / разрешает + [кому? in dative] + [infinitive]

Pattern:

кто? (nominative) + позволяет / разрешает
- кому? (dative) + что делать? (infinitive)

Examples:

Учитель разрешает ученикам пользоваться словарём.
“The teacher allows students to use a dictionary.”
Родители не позволяют детям смотреть этот фильм.
“Parents don’t allow children to watch this film.”
Он позволяет себе есть сладкое каждый день.
“He allows himself to eat sweets every day.” (reflexive себе in dative)

Your sentence fits exactly this pattern:

начальник (who?) – nominative
позволяет
сотрудникам (to whom?) – dative plural
уходить домой раньше (what to do?) – infinitive phrase