Shouldn’t “Work” be About Production not Hours Completed?

I have to ride an elevator to the 20th floor for my internship. There’s also no restaurant on the floor and I don’t usually bring my lunch, so I find myself riding up and down the elevator quite a bit during the week. There was one interesting conversation I overheard this past week riding in the elevator.

On the way down, the elevator stopped a few floors after I got on and two gentlemen walked on. The elevator began descending again and I one of the guys said that he finished his “code” (work product) an hour early. (The hour early referring to how much time before, presumably, he was allowed to go home.) After a short pause, the same guy then said that he should have waiting an hour and then submitted his code. There was then a long pause and the other guy called the first guy an idiot.

While I didn’t exactly care for the unnecessary demeaning term, there is most definitely something to be gleaned from this situation.

Even with the all of the academic research that has been done allocating time at work, the numerous case examples of companies implementing it, and the various popular business books published on the subject, there are still companies that operate under the impression that giving an employee autonomy, mastery, and purpose is a non-optimal solution.

On account of this example, I wonder how many similar companies/organizations there are out there that don’t operate under these principles. More importantly, I wonder what the state of the business world (and by extension, the rest of it) would look like if a great majority of companies gave their employees autonomy, mastery, and purpose.