Hyperrealistic Work-Like Activities
As orgs grow, work supply runs out and people fill the gap with fake work that looks exactly like real work
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 94%
As an organization scales, the supply of 'known valuable work to do' (work you both understand and know is valuable) runs out faster than headcount grows, so people unconsciously generate activity that is superficially identical to real work — meetings, decks, analyses — but creates no value. It's a leadership diagnosis tool paired with Parkinson's Law.
Origin
Butterfield ties this to Parkinson's Law (a 1956 Economist article: work expands to fill the time available) and the observation that nearly everyone hired wants to hire more reports, illustrated by a Slack thread-notification A/B test that cost thousands of person-hours to move thread length from 2.14 to 2.17 messages.
Core principles
- 01Work expands to fill the time available (Parkinson's Law); idle capacity generates fake work
- 02'Known valuable work' means you know both what it is and that it's valuable — abundant at a startup's start, scarce later
- 03People generating fake work are not stupid or evil; they're rationally seeking recognition and advancement when real work is undersupplied
- 04The further someone is from full context and decision authority, the easier they get trapped in it
How to run it
- 1
Spot the mismatch between work supply and headcount demand
Recognize that early on you have near-infinite known-valuable work; as you hire, demand for work-to-do outpaces the supply of obviously-valuable work.
Pro tip Watch the tell: every new hire wants to hire a report so they can 'do strategy' — 17 product marketers create 17 product-marketers-worth of demand for work.
- 2
Identify hyperrealistic work-like activity
Look for activity that is superficially identical to work — a meeting to preview a deck for another meeting, an analysis whose cost dwarfs any possible value — but advances nothing.
Watch out It's so subtle that founders, board members, and every executive do it without realizing; don't assume seniority immunizes anyone.
- 3
Weigh the cost of the work against its maximum possible value
For any initiative, compare the effort (instrumentation, dashboards, meetings, decks) against the largest plausible upside. If the cost exceeds the ceiling on value, it's a guaranteed loser.
Watch out The Slack thread A/B test could at best move a metric 'this much' while costing thousands of person-hours — mathematically impossible to win.
- 4
As a leader, supply enough known-valuable work and clarity
It's the leader's job — not the team's fault — to ensure a sufficient supply of known-valuable work, create alignment, and explicitly say no to low-value paths up front.
Pro tip Don't chide people as time-wasters; frame it as your failure to create clarity around priorities.
Watch out This is harder than it appears; there almost always is valuable work, but surfacing and aligning on it takes real effort.
In the wild
A pre-populated @-mention Butterfield had removed reappeared six months later, justified by research showing threads were 2.17 vs 2.14 messages long — a tiny, arguably-meaningless difference that required feature flags, instrumentation, queries, dashboards, and meetings involving a dozen people.
→ A guaranteed loser: the cost of the analysis vastly exceeded any possible value, and a longer thread may not even be better.
Slack hired young PMs who immediately wanted to hire someone; asked what that person would do, the answer was 'the product management, and then I would do strategy.' Not evil or stupid — reports correlate with pay, authority, and career trajectory.
→ Illustrates the structural pressure that inflates headcount and thereby manufactures fake work.
Common mistakes
Blaming the team for wasting time
Telling people they're idiots wasting time is both rude and wrong — the root cause is a leadership failure to supply clarity and valuable work.
Assuming activity equals value
Because fake work is superficially identical to real work — same conference room, same projected slides, same discussion — leaders mistake it for progress.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders, CEOs, and senior leaders of scaling organizations trying to keep teams focused on high-leverage work
Not ideal for
Tiny early-stage teams still swimming in obvious, known-valuable work with no headcount slack
From the transcript
“that hyperrealistic work-like activity is superficially identical to work”
“work expands to fill the time available for its completion”
“it's on you to ensure that there is sufficient supply of known valuable to do”
From the episode
Slack founder: Mental models for building products people love ft. Stewart Butterfield