I suspect people do it as social signaling because they don't want to be thought of as not dedicated. If people were more worried about results than appearance

I suspect people do it as social signaling because they don't want to be thought of as not dedicated. If people were more worried about results than appearances, they would not do this though as working that much leads to stupid mistakes and burn-out. It might make sense if you are just trying to cash out and want to put on a good show for investors by sleeping under your desk, though I would think this only impresses stupid investors. Is instructive to see the environments where this goes the other way. In Oxford and Cambridge Universities there is the concept of the 'Grey Man'. These are the people who are seen to work hard and it used to be considered a terrible affliction and an indication of mediocre talents. Consider this quote from Stephen Hawking “The prevailing attitude at Oxford at that time was very anti-work. You were supposed to either be brilliant without effort or accept your limitations and get a fourth-class degree. To work hard to get a better class of degree was the mark of a ‘grey man’, the worst epithet in the Oxford vocabulary.” Hawking calculated that he worked on average for about an hour a day as an undergraduate physicist: “We affected an air of complete boredom and the feeling that nothing was worth making an effort for.” from here - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e59f5792-1a23-11e3-b3da-00144feab7de.html http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e59f5792-1a23-11e3-b3da-00144feab7...