My last job was a little similar, and only towards the end did I realize how other people dealt with this. Here is what they did (I never did it):
Get to work kind of early, put your stuff on your desk, fill coffee mug, etc. Make it look like you're there. Re direct your office phone to your cell.
Take your laptop or books you want to study to the nearby coffee shop, and do whatever you want there - side projects, learning, teaching yourself programming languages, etc. etc. Be sure to answer your cell and respond to work emails.
Come back into the office around lunch time and sit in the lunch room to eat, then head out again for the afternoon.
It's easy to cover your tracks by saying you were in a meeting, or working with so-and-so, or whatever.
It took me a long time to understand it was better to do the above, than it was to sit at your desk and be seen to not be working hard (i.e. reading a programming book, or reading HN)
That's a pretty sloppily run place if nobody notices structural behavior like that. And even if nobody notices, that's pretty bad behavior. I've worked in a place once long ago where people did everything they could to avoid actually working and I left simply because of that. Being told to 'slow down because you're making us look bad' is extremely de-motivating.
I've been told that at just about every job I've been at in the past, and you're right.. It's incredibly de-motivating.
Most recently, I quit my job after 4 months because I tried to make too many improvements. Every time the topic of an improvement came up, I was told "You're the new guy. You can't expect to know the nuance of our infrastructure/application/code." It's the biggest cop-out, especially considering it began with, "You're the new guy with a fresh pair of eyes and great experience. If you see any problems, let us know!". It's a silly state of affairs when folk think of good intentions entirely in the lens of a threat model.
In fairness, I suppose I was a bit too critical. Maybe it comes from reading too much HN. :)
Hang in there, not all employers are equal in this respect. Try to find a company with a high hiring bar, that will improve your chances of finding a team without that mentality.
You'd be surprised. Most places I've been to initially say that they aren't, but as soon as anything goes mildly south, that mentality changes in a heartbeat. I'm generally "the young rockstar", so a lot of it is an aspect of a lack of trust, I think.
I stopped hanging in there, rented out an office and started working on my own thing. ;)
For the record, I tried getting my phone to work back when I was hired, and it just wouldn't. I never contacted somebody to fix it, why bother. I virtually never got emails either. People would just show up at my desk unannounced if they needed me, which was quite rare.
Get to work kind of early, put your stuff on your desk, fill coffee mug, etc. Make it look like you're there. Re direct your office phone to your cell.
Take your laptop or books you want to study to the nearby coffee shop, and do whatever you want there - side projects, learning, teaching yourself programming languages, etc. etc. Be sure to answer your cell and respond to work emails.
Come back into the office around lunch time and sit in the lunch room to eat, then head out again for the afternoon. It's easy to cover your tracks by saying you were in a meeting, or working with so-and-so, or whatever.
It took me a long time to understand it was better to do the above, than it was to sit at your desk and be seen to not be working hard (i.e. reading a programming book, or reading HN)