I just had a flashback to a job I had years ago - I worked for a company who's owner who was highly ADD. He would hire me to come in extra hours, because having me around "helped him focus." I didn't do much but sit in the room with him, listen to him talk, and ask him questions when he'd get off task. So I wonder if it's a matter of perspective, sometimes... they earned a lot more money as a result of the owner finishing tasks vs what they were paying me!
Oh God... Both my current manager and my previous one were like this. My previous one was eased out of her position that last time I went on maternity leave. I expect the same fate for my current manager when I go on maternity leave early next year. They have both been promoted above their competency level, not because their job is particularly difficult in and of itself, but because it requires relatively quick decision-making, and both just temperamentally can't handle it - they freeze and become paralyzed and can't get anything done, which they process as the job imposing overwhelmingly high demands on their time. Both used me essentially to make decisions - and then to reinforce, when they became uncertain and started to doubt - and to outline a rationale for those decisions that would be persuasive to others in the organisation.
In exchange, I got a much higher level of control over my day to day working conditions that would be normal. I can't stand sitting in an office doing nothing, and this arrangement has made it possible to negotiate working from home up to four days a week (basically, I come in when needed, with at least two days on deck for meetings - I'll come in every day if face time is actually needed, but average about three days a week in the office). When I'm not in the office, I'm available constantly on email (and, for my manager only, by phone and text) - the mails are frequent enough that I can't do anything particularly productive with my time, but there's less time wasted with commuting, and I have to deal with fewer people dropping in wanting me to problem-solve for their own work (I still do a great deal of this - it passes the time and maintains pleasant relationships with people who could otherwise become jealous - but channel it into the days when I'd be physically present in the office anyway). I also get nice incidental interactions with my kids when I can work from home, and I can run mindless errands as long as I'm prepared to pause and reply to a mail while I'm doing it. All up, it gives more time for things I'd rather be doing.
The thing is, I could do the substantive aspect of my managers jobs much more easily and effectively than they could - it takes /hours/ to brief my manager to handle a single brief meeting with his higher-ups, and he's still less effective at pushing things through than I am. This isn't speculation: I stand in for his actual role when he's away, and things just go much more smoothly. However, his job also involves a lot of social nonsense that I can't stand, and that would severely intrude into hours outside of work - retreats and other "bonding" activities with other managers, expected forms of socialisation outside regular working hours, etc. So, while I could do what I regard as the "job" much more efficiently, I would end up with all this other nonsense... Do I don't rock the boat; I do what I can to help my managers function; I negotiate what I can to make my working life more pleasant - and I plan to get the hell outta Dodge as quick as I can swing it.
In previous jobs - including previous positions with this same organisation - where I was expected to front up to the workplace for a standard working schedule, I've generally ended up needing to accrue additional roles in order not to be completely and utterly bored. It's hard to balance this such that you end up with just enough to keep the day full, without ending up with overtime obligations, which I don't want - happy to leave as soon as I'm allowed - but I often ended up with accidental peaks involving much more work than I wanted, in order to have an actual full-time schedule the rest of the time. It also led to ridiculous situations when I left a position - organisations suddenly needing to find multiple people to take on roles I had been handling.
At the moment, I'm working a ridiculously light schedule, for me, with the work from home period making it largely invisible to other staff, since I'm running every second that I'm physically in the office, and I have a few very visible "high impact" roles that bring me to the fore more than would normally be expected for someone at my level. (The exception are the admin staff who have to be in during standard business hours every day, and who make regular passive-aggressive comments about my schedule - this requires some social facilitation, since I need them to respond to my requests, but otherwise this is their problem, not mine.) Even so, trying to plan out my maternity leave replacements makes clear that they will have to spend more to replace me while I'm on maternity leave, than they need to spend while I'm here, even though everyone they will replace me with, will be paid significantly less than I am. So my current schedule is apparently still more than a "full time" load in terms of the actual outputs it produces...
