I've actually noticed a completely inverse relationship between how hard & how many hours I'm (actually) working and how well I'm perceived by my peers and by management. This is unrelated to acute problems caused by errors on my part, or anything like that.
I don't get it, but if I feel like I'm working hard I now take it as a very serious alarm bell. Some of my best feedback has come when I was starting to get nervous because I felt like I was hardly doing anything.
If you're working hard at a lot of places you're not getting noticed. If you spend more time talking to people (about work?) They think you're busy.
Sometimes the person who is fixing problems is seen as better than the one who is not - it's hard for people to tell which challenges are self inflicted.
Sometimes I think the way to get noticed is to spend money. Someone always has to approve your purchases so you get noticed. Sitting in your cube hammering out code, or design, or documentation isnt visible.
These things aren't optimal ways to measure effectiveness, but I think they all come into play.
I don't get it, but if I feel like I'm working hard I now take it as a very serious alarm bell. Some of my best feedback has come when I was starting to get nervous because I felt like I was hardly doing anything.