I'm a programmer, so Benefit Number One is that my job requires me to sit at a computer. I can sit and play around on the Internet all day if I so choose. I have done so in the past. As I type this, right now, I'm on a 1.5-hour web meeting which is required training. That's happening on my other screen, and the presenter is blabbing away on my cell phone, since I'm sitting in my basement, in my pajamas, officially on the clock. What a country!
Okay, that's kinda flippant, but it's pretty much the truth. I'm salaried obviously, so basically if my work is getting done, they don't give a shit how many hours I put in on any given day. Driven by a weird combination of laziness and a ruthless sense of efficiency, I've automated almost every process I'm responsible for. Right now, in addition to getting credit for "being at work" and participating in the required training, one of my PCs at work is cranking away on my regular Wednesday processing. I got up at 7:00, downloaded some data, and started the process. Some time this afternoon, the jobs will be done, and I will have generated over 10 gigabytes of data, with a few clicks of the mouse over about ten minutes time. Again, they don't care how much time it actually takes me, what matters is they look and see the shitloads of data that Bob produces, and isn't he fucking amazing?
Sure, there are days when I'm coding for ten or twelve hours straight. But when that happens, it's usually because someone built a timeline that's basically impossible to meet, so the higher-ups actually pay some attention, and then when I come through, I'm a fucking hero. Also, I've been doing this for over 20 years. Even as I'm pulling code directly out of my ass and typing it in, it's structured, organized, and efficient. Tomorrow there might be questions, or they might ask me to re-run certain pieces of it because that was test data before and now we have the production data. Sure, a couple of mouse-clicks, I go get some lunch, and later I say "Here's that production data you wanted." And it's all perfect and again I'm a hero.
What I love about my job is that I'm good at it, and everyone else seems think so, too. I'm lazy as hell, but I've got them all fooled.