[prerok]

I have a few colleagues that told me they have a job like that. Not done in 15 minutes but 2 hours, then they goof off for the next 6 hours.

There are two reasons: 1. They have a specific job with a specific set of duties (think sysadmins, or administrative duties) in a large company or in a state beurocracy. 2. They would rather go home or do something more but they are not permitted: they have metered time in the office and other people would and do shut them down on any initiatives.

To me, a workplace like that is like a kafkaesque nightmare but they seem to be fine with it, or rather, have accepted it. It lets them focus on other things in life outside of work.

[chii]

> they seem to be fine with it, or rather, have accepted it.

i mean, i would imagine some people want to see purpose in their jobs, while others are just treating it as a job and whatever happens with the output of the job is of no consequence. And this is esp. true of gov't jobs, but by no means do the gov't have a monopoly on such inefficiencies.

But my opinion is that there's something systemic that is preventing these jobs from being competed on and efficiencies eked out.

[prerok]

Indeed, but there seems to be no incentive to do it. In government jobs nobody cares. In large companies nobody cares either, these are just operating costs. That is, until money is short, but then they either cut whole departments or sites.

The problem is actually in the work culture, where other coworkers would prevent another worker from becoming too efficient and proactive. So, nothing changes.