I've never seen this at any Western STEM company I've been at. ICs have been rated on tickets and tickets alone, no matter how lossy the metric, in my experienc

I've never seen this at any Western STEM company I've been at. ICs have been rated on tickets and tickets alone, no matter how lossy the metric, in my experience. I've only seen this at Asian companies which don't track work through tickets. But let's assume this is true. What does this have to do with "It feels like a waste to pretend that we just don't have anything in common despite the time.". Let's assume, to play devil's advocate, that 40% of your 8 hour day is a waste, that 3.2 hours of your day was a waste used to prop up performance reviews. This leaves 4.8 hours of a day with your coworkers actually working. That's 4.8 hours of building connection. To recreate this effect, I'd need to equivalently spend 4.8 hours per day connecting/socializing with others to build the same rapport. That's more than I've ever spent in any social context with friends sans events like week-long concerts or vacations and those are special occasions. This 4.8 hours of daily connection is now lost under a scenario where people don't form bonds at work. I'm not sure how this complaint is relevant. Just because the time was superfluous or used to pad performance reviews, a claim that seems dubious for ticket-based companies, doesn't negate the time spent connecting. Getting annoyed/angry at a culture that rewards face-time is unrelated to the reality of time spent together in the same context.