There's a nice Yugopnik video about a "capitalism survival guide" that tries to help navigate a disillusioned worker in the modern hellscape. There are some two VERY important things that he brough up as tips to the modern worker:
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Everyone is winging it. Regardless of the high expectations you see in job descriptions, you need to figure out how to bullshit your way past them: unless its something like a doctor, pilot, or engineer, you can probably learn the skills without getting a degree in them.
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Work JUST enough, the employee that stays the extra hours and stuff doesn't always get the promotion. Depending on your work and position, working more might just be a net negative, as your extra mile becomes next time's bare minimum. This can then hurt your co-workers too, and as for you individually, you might suffer the curse of being the "go-to" guy. Ergo, extra work for you for the same pay as before.
For computer jobs get really good at excel. Convince your company to pay for a training course for you, learn all the keyboard shortcuts, become a ninja in that shit. You will be able to complete tasks in 25% of the time of your peers which will then unlock 75% of your time for fucking around or for working more, depending on your personality type.
Don’t stress too much about how much work you’re doing, everyone else is too busy staying on top of their shit to worry about yours, just do what you’re asked in a reasonable time frame, don’t complain and you’ll be golden
I've seen major chemical engineering plants use Excel for production and it is sort of scary.