I'm in a situation like that currently, but in an open plan office, with a manager sitting behind me keeping me in line. And since our bug tracker is linked to

I'm in a situation like that currently, but in an open plan office, with a manager sitting behind me keeping me in line. And since our bug tracker is linked to timesheets, things like refactoring don't happen anymore, unless linked to a specific feature/bug (developers can't create these). The nett effect is that things that used to take me 2 hours now take 8 hours, so I can fill the day. Parkinson's law is not a joke.