This seems to be common sense to everyone who is not a "boss" and unheard of to anyone who is. Find me a company that actually follows this philosophy, and sign me up. I have yet to find one real example.
Here's the real problem companies face with people like me. If I only had to get the work done, I could be in the office for maybe one day a week. With all that free time, I would be able to do something on my own so that I wouldn't even need to work for them at all anymore. Then what do they do? By trapping me there for 40 hours a week and limited vacation time, it's very difficult for me to comfortably escape.
I worked in an office where we got the work done... and we did.
And then we were given more tasks. And more tasks. To the point that there was no way to get everything done on a deadline.
At some point I said to myself, I could pull an all-nighter, still have missed deadlines, or I could go home at 5, and have maybe one less missed deadline. It was an easy choice.
Unless you work in a place that only has need for a finite amount of work, no matter how effective you are getting things done, there will always be more things to do. If there is only a finite amount of work to be done, then an employee is not what you need - a contractor is.
(Of course a good manager will balance the number of engineers to the work load. Ours did say that he had enough to hire two more engineers -- but didn't know if he would have this much work for them next quarter.)
how much you work at a salary job is a constant negotiation between the worker and the boss.
It sounds like your boss screwed the pooch on that one, though. Killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.
It's a hard negotiation, really, for both parties, as different people function differently at different stress levels. But yeah; most bosses optimize for but-in-seat time rather than for actual productivity, which, of course, does not increase shareholder value or employee happiness; It's bad for everyone.
Personally, I think it's a symptom of 'optimizing for appearances' - the managers run the companies, sure, but they don't own them, so they don't care about real productivity, only about the perception of productivity.
This is silly. A company doesn't hire you to get a specific thing done. A company hires you to achieve specific results continuously. If you are able to achieve those results, they raise the bar to take advantage.
For example. A company goal might be to increase revenue 10% month over month. This might get broken up by each level of management into smaller and smaller tasks until it hits your desk under the guise of 'Make sure the website is internationalized since we're translating to 3 languages at the end of this month'.
If you are able to accomplish that task early, that doesn't mean your job is done, that just means that you can do more to help contribue to the company increasing their revenue by 10% month over month.
Also: Keep in mind that no one knows for sure if the tactics chosen to accomplish a goal will actually work. They are guesses. Redoing the website, starting the new marketing campaign, landing the new client, delivering a project on time, are all just things we do to increase the odds of achieving our goals.
At best, I've seen a few instances where very (very) small consulting firms may internally adhere to this and then just bill a client whatever they feel the appropriate amount(s) are for their work, split out into chunks of hours on invoices, so as to give the appearance to the clients that the billable model is in effect.
This is clearly fraud and worth suing and winning over. Charging standard "shop hours" like a mechanic, in advance, is one thing, but just making up a price afterward and pretending it was hours worked?
Billing client for reading internet, paper or chatting by the watercooler is also a fraud. Yet noone cares. As long as client is satisfied with results and the price everything else doesn't matter all that much.
Here's the real problem companies face with people like me. If I only had to get the work done, I could be in the office for maybe one day a week. With all that free time, I would be able to do something on my own so that I wouldn't even need to work for them at all anymore. Then what do they do? By trapping me there for 40 hours a week and limited vacation time, it's very difficult for me to comfortably escape.