I've also seen this. I think when a company trusts its employees to get the job done, a few really good things happen. High performers (where "performance" is

I've also seen this. I think when a company trusts its employees to get the job done, a few really good things happen. High performers (where "performance" is directly tied to revenue, or goal completion, or actual metrics and not "ass-in-chair" fluff) produce quality work quickly. Middle performers do fine. Terrible performers, if you have any, stick out - instead of having a hard conversation with them about how many hours they put in, you can have a hard conversation with them about how they need to improve. What I think is fascinating is how frequently, when working in an environment that gives someone room to be creative, or less stressed, or even given more responsibilities, middle performers often become high level performers. I'm sure there are lots of reasons as to why, but I've seen it happen a lot. I suspect that when you trust someone to do what they're good at, they have room to get even better at it. At least that's been my experience. I have also seen insanely pedantic levels of tracking and reporting and dogma at companies, and those are miserable places. High performers leave. Everyone else spends their time figuring out how to juice their numbers and play within the system so they look like high performers. Tracking everything builds a new, unspoken system that, when you're in it, becomes your first concern above all else, and even pits you against your coworkers.