An extreme example of this is South Korea. The basic idea in most medium/large companies being that underlings must be present whenever their bosses are, so peo

An extreme example of this is South Korea. The basic idea in most medium/large companies being that underlings must be present whenever their bosses are, so people will turn up really early in the morning to greet the boss, and leave really late at night, often just waiting for the boss to go home. Hierarchy is a very important cultural concept in SK, socially and professionally, and generally companies are far more layered than they would be in most western countries, resulting in lots of bosses. Because of this you have a trickle-down effect of "work more than the boss" hours, with people at the bottom working completely ridiculous hours. This has two interesting consequences. The first one I call "gold star sticker promotions", whereby people get promoted on a regular basis, often without a pay rise, sheerly for "working" more hours than the next guy. While the promotions often mean very little by themselves, they tend to result in slightly less work hours. The second consequence is that people, as described in the article to some extent, actually end up doing very little work despite occupying a seat for so many hours. A friend of mine actually plays Diablo 3 while seating at his desk, and everybody's ok with that. In fact, he got promoted three times just last year. The point is not to get work done, it's simply to show that you're willing to give your soul to your employer.