Because if they got their job done and left they would be fired. If they got their job done, they would be given more work. So one takes the maximal amount of time to do a task given the requirement that they be in the office for 8+ hrs a day.
Parkinson's Law, which was a sarcastic joke about bureaucracy, only really happens when employees are not engaged in their work or they're forced to be in the same spot for 8+ hours a day. I have 10 things to do within 2 week "sprints". Should I get everything done in a first week (maybe work a few hours on the weekend if need be) and then be tasked with more tasks and not get rewarded for this at all? Or should I just do 5 things the first week and have fun on the weekend and then finish the other 5 things later?
This is why hourly pay and salaries are crap. You aren't getting paid for value; you're getting paid to sit in a chair (even if you work remotely) and you're getting paid so that the competition doesn't hire you away.
A degree of laziness might look like having your priorities in order, but they're not really the same thing
I had a bit of breakdown towards the end of my university days, due to setting some unrealistic requirements for myself. I wasn't allowing myself time off because I had 'quotas' to meet, and that took a toll and I had to basically hide away for a few months, while it dawned on me that the quotas didn't come from anywhere and I needed to calm the fuck down and get my priorities in order.
Now I have a regular job and I'm doing OK. But I don't let my time estimates rule me, I make time for breaks, and I don't stay after hours unless there's a deadline. And honestly even now I hope to knock a few hours off my weekly contract soon, because I feel like I'm spending too much time at a desk working on other people's projects (for money) when I could be, you know, baking bread or reading Wikipedia or hanging out with friends (if they weren't all at work, that is). In contrast, I have a co-worker who seems to love staying till 8 in the evening closing Jira tasks being "productive". Hatever. That's not where I want my wrinkles to come from.
edit -- I suppose maybe you're right, though. What I mean is maybe more that "what looks like laziness from one perspective can be called prioritizing from another". Less sound bite-y, though.
Chances are those bugs or low level tasks are truly unimportant and not a priority for the business, right? If they were, then one of your team mates would have been working them as a priority.
You probably can't start tomorrows work since you are waiting on a team mate to finish their work for the day. If you try to help them out it will slow them down.
This is probably only for knowledge workers. If you are doing manual labor like building a shed for bicycles, you should be able to help out and do other tasks.
i.e. Lack of leadership
Wouldn't a traditional company also benefit from using the same or similar tools for managing work as software companies? (mostly a rethorical question)
A lot of white collar workplaces have their homebrew Excel workbooks to keep track of tasks and a lot of meetings that fill up everyone's time in order to organize activities, leaving little time for the actual work to be done.
That's essentially lack of leadership.
I have worked on plenty of projects that are time critical where compensation scales with the quality of the output. Think a theater performance or catered event. Time on clock matters, but completing the project faster and with a higher quality benefits ALL parties involved via profit sharing. The owners of capital want to pay based on time because they want a higher payout.
Because managers get a malus for allowing too much non-accountable hours for their managees.
Because that's scope creep and it can create the expectation that it's part of my job, so then I'll be responsible for it. Down the line, if one of those misc tasks becomes the ire of someone else and my name is attached to it (comment, commit, etc.), they'll contact me further down the line, perhaps when I'm dealing with something of my own. Then, at least, I have to explain that I don't maintain that and in the worst case (which has happened), I have to fight to not be responsible for it right then.
There's a balance in having your name associated with 'things' in a business. Some people might be good at being a know-it-all, being well-known, and handling everything (why aren't they running their own company?), but you'll increase your chances of interruption the more wide-spread your name is.
It feels like in software dev we can just make messes and move on without accepting responsibility. Increasing scope on yourself with those small misc. tasks also means accepting more responsibility than most software devs accept which makes you a target when things don't go smoothly either through your fault or someone else's.
The biggest catch is that those 2 hours that you have butt in seat means you can't work on your own skills/side project for fear of the employer owning the code. The only thing you can do is take online courses at Coursera or Udemy as they're general enough skills.