Exactly my point. But if you are a manager, you might wanna consider if that is the incentive structure you wanna have at your organization: People who do good work get "punished" with more work, people who keep it low don't.

I certainly have left jobs because of that.

I think about incentive structures from an opportunity cost standpoint too.

Everyone has finite amounts of time they can spend on work.

Ceteris paribus, if you spend 90% of your time working and 10% politicking, at most companies you will be out promoted by someone who spends 60% of their time working and 40% politicking.

The parallel IC track that tech popularized solves this to some degree... but most non-tech companies don't have that track.

What mechanisms successfully address this?

> She doesn't have to tell anyone

She doesn't because there is an app on her work machine that gathers all kinds of useful data on usage of such computer. Sooner or later someone will notice and there will be consequences for doing so. There are no trophies for running some unauthorized software on companies data and documents.