Thing I've observed about pretending to work most of the time: no one notices that you're pretending to work. I still get raises, no one has a long chat with me about my future with the company, nothing.

This strongly suggests that the company just really doesn't expect much out of me for what they're paying, so why should I give them anything more? It's bad enough I have to give them 40 hours (plus commute) of my week when I can apparently get done what they want done in a fraction of that.

Is this laziness, if the alternative is essentially doing extra work for free?

I hear you-- why try more than you need to anyway? It's not your business on the line, and if they don't want more from you...