[adamsmith143]

Sure but I guess depending on the place I'd think unless you had an explicit agreement about leaving early that there would be pushback. "If you have enough free time to leave early you have enough time to pick up another ticket"

[paskozdilar]

Which leads right back to the "screw around until the clock strikes five" road, which leads to stress, boredom and resentment. Humans are not machines. 100% efficiency is a pointy-haired manager's pipe dream.

[b3morales]

I've left these "time to lean, time to clean" jobs in the dustbin of my teens where they belong. It's a seller's market for us geeks right now; we should take advantage of it while it lasts and find good conditions for ourselves to work in.

[ipaddr]

How do you filter for that in your job search? Questions during the interview help but it's easy to misunderstand.

[willcipriano]

I put together these questions for my job search and they have worked ok for me.

"What has turnover looked like in the past year?"

Sweat shops have high turnover, press for a number for this question.

"What are your on call expectations? How do you manage incidents out of hours? How frequently do incidents like that happen?"

If they don't mention comp time or anything like that during those three questions they probably don't offer it, and if incidents happen with any frequency you can assume you will work a good bit of unplanned overtime.

"How is my work evaluated?"

The harder the criteria here the less likely they use butts in seats management. If it's someone vauge about "how well you collaborate with the team" or similar it's probably a subjective measure probably related to if your butt is where they expect it to be when they look.

[b3morales]

Yeah, fair point. I think the best way is using your connections -- i.e. going to work with people you already know and whose opinion you trust.

[EddieDante]

Sure, I have time enough to pick up another ticket at 3:30pm. I also have time to fuck it up because I've already racked my brain fixing two other tickets, attending a morning standup, and sitting through a company-wide DEI webinar when I should have been having lunch.

So, what would you prefer? That I clock out early because I've put in a solid day's work despite not getting to have lunch, or that I do a half-assed job just to look busy that I'll just have to revert and fix the next morning?

One gets so utterly weary of all this Taylorist bullshit that managers get in the process of earning their MBAs.