Yeah, that's the horror of it: they don't want your work output, they want your time. - - - - edit to add: I worked at Google as a TVC for a couple of years

Yeah, that's the horror of it: they don't want your work output, they want your time. - - - - edit to add: I worked at Google as a TVC for a couple of years and somewhere in there I became convinced that (at least part of) what was going on was that they were sequestering talent. Hiring people and parking them in idle tasks to keep them from becoming competitors. It's probably not true, but it was slightly more reassuring than believing that they were just that wasteful. (I.e. our five-years-and-counting project and team of dozens could have been replaced by about three people and finished in a year. But nobody wanted to hear that. In other words, the situations was "works as intended".)