Arguably the incentives aren't aligned, innovation isn't happening, and "bullshit jobs" all exist because we've hit some sort of maximal productivity trough where the free market doesn't feel a need to incentivize innovation/productivity any further.

This is often what a lot of people mean when they claim we've hit "late stage capitalism": it is possible the paperclip maximizers have already "eaten the world", turned everything to paperclips, and all that is left is "bullshit jobs". There's no reason to incentivize innovation because everything is already paperclips.

This is why innovation happens in startups where the incentives are better aligned.

I hate to break this to you but what you’re describing is capitalism.

Im in the same boat as you. Have been working 2 to 4 hours each night extra for my job. I needed to come in 1 hour late twice two weeks in a row and got called into my bosses office. He said "We are an 8 to 5 office." I told him about my extra work and he just repeated the quote above.

I now work 8 to 5 only and do much less.

I had a similar experience early in my career working in a call center. We received a lot of calls about 1 problem with customer modems. I wrote a script that detected snmptraps and automatically issued bounce commands to the remote modems.

Our call volume dropped noticeably. I told my manager why. He was pissed, and asked how we were going to justify headcount if our call volume was dropping.

Lesson learned. [edit: the ambiguous lesson is intentional. I stopped trying, but he kept everyone employed. So... lesson learned :)]

It appears the mistake you made was not going to your boss's boss. As someone who came up in the political mines I feel you on this.

Weird. I tell my folks to get their work done and I expect them to schedule their own time because I trust them as professionals. If they need to work between 6pm to 2am or 4am to 10am because that's when they're the most productive, or they're dealing with something in life and they're still getting the work done I trust them. I feel folks get fully jaded because everyone sets up all this rigidity and there's a huge lost of mutual trust and respect because of it.

Coming in twice an hour late and being ridiculed about it is ridiculous. This is professional life, not some strict grade school.

In all likelihood, those people are under pressure from their bosses. They need the appearance of everyone being there and working hard. For some people in managerial positions, any kind of data showing the employees still working won't be enough... They want to see asses in seats and all at the same time.

I've had to work under many executives like this and it's pretty annoying. They can't be reasoned with.

Oh and the faster your people work - the worse it is for people who rely on headcount for their job. They can't justify a larger headcount if everyone is working efficiently...