Facetime

A curious concept permeates the modern workplace - known as Facetime (aka "Face Time"). It is the result of a desire by subordinates and managers alike to be more dedicated than the next to the company cause. It's definition is being at work for the sake of being at work, not to achieve a particular gain in whatever a given company produces. My opinion is that it is ubiquitous among companies that maintain high profit margins. This is the result of strong barriers to entry, strong emotional ties with clients, or some other market inefficiency. Otherwise, Facetime would be replaced by a) actually doing work in lieu of Facetime or b) when there is no work to be done - going home. But neither of these exist in practice. Some mention must be given to the concept of moral when there is a large deficit of work. People don't want any more explicit acknowledgement of a dearth of prospective revenue or other type of results of work and effort. Also it must be mentioned that substantial shifts in time and work allocation are probably not the best way to structure an office atmosphere. That being said, the ebbs and flows of workloads I imagine can be managed by most people with a high degree of autonomy. A further analysis probably reveals that if this were the case, remote and work from home type setups would be more common - and possibly they increasingly are. But to be precise, what I am addressing here is just a situation when there is no work to be done, and people still working ~ the same hours.

However, the above discourse is not the point of this post. This post is to discuss the more curious concept that I have witnessed regarding gaming this system and something of a negative-feedback effect that is related. My boss likes no one to leave before he. Fine. I can deal with that and indeed regularly subscribe to his need for this subordination. Regarding arrival time there is no analogous system in place. To be succinct - he does not require everyone to arrive before he. So the following situation has arisen: people show up substantially after him, and this later arrival time is not offset completely by the subordinates later time of departure. To compensate for this he has been leaving increasingly (and regularly) earlier than before this phenomenon had began to really be capitalized on. This is a net gain for me. I arrive later - and leave earlier than I would otherwise. Game theory at its finest? Some might agree.

Thank you Professor Thomas Ferguson.