I've actually experienced it from both sides; mostly as an employee though. If you're a little on the shady side of unethical it's equally easy to game the sys

I've actually experienced it from both sides; mostly as an employee though. If you're a little on the shady side of unethical it's equally easy to game the system from either direction. For every goldbricker like the OP there is someone running a 'design competition' where the top prize is having your entry fleshed out by vietnamese contractors working at 1/10th the going rate of any of the contest entrants. There are multiple problems with the social construction of what work is and it's place in our lives, for one thing our society is constructed so that much of what passes for work is in fact random noise, this is more pronounced at large companies where the wastage of time, attention and psychological energy are well worn clichés; but it exists at small companies, and solo acts as well. For another, we are not for the most part able to work effectively; somebody who can pull a reliable twenty minutes of productive flow out of a day can be a miracle worker, especially in a shop where the standards are already low.