That also has its disadvantages. Being stuck in an office with little work, but little else in the way of entertainment slowly burns you out. Having next to no work for two months wasn't as pleasant as I thought it would be.
Fields where you don't make other people wealthy aren't so rosy either. They bring their own drama to the table.
The trick there is to work remotely. You can just build software, make art, do your own side-business 8hrs/day while hitting the employer's bar of "I'll keep paying this guy" and keep that income flowing.
I would like to see a government sponsored campaign on the benefits of working at home. I feel like most employers are counting the seconds until they can bring us back in? "You can All come back to the office! I bet you have been waiting for this? Marg had a baby over Covid? We increased the lux rat of our office lighting--yea! Jerry Suckup made assistant to the assistant manager, but this is on a probationary basis. Gas up the jalopy, and come in! Oh yea, we have a new facial recognition system instead of a punch clock. Those kooky tech guys?"
The benifits I see:
1. No commute. (Getting cars off the road is good for global warming?) And my sanity when I do need to go somewhere.
2. More sleep.
3. Less busy work to keep some middle manager happy.
4. Happier employee.
5. I have no clue over productivity.
negatives:
1. I guess schmoozing is important for some people. I did make most of my younger self's friends at work because we were both at the same lousy job?
2. Some people find office banter comradery important for their mental health? I used to be one of those people, but would happily give up a little socialization for more sleep, and less hrs driving.
If the government spent some tax money on a campaign to keep workers home, if the job was doable at home, I would be behind it.
I wouldn't even mind if they gave credits to employers who didn't drag their employees into a office.
Frame the promotion over Global Warming, and not employee satisfaction. We all know employees are way down on the list of what they care about, but a tax credit, and some kind of carbon rebate whatnot might keep many of us home? And less cars on the road. In my county, it seemed like everyone went out and bought a second car. Traffic is back to unbearable in the Bay Area.
If you produce [salary]$ worth of value, then it does not really matter how you produce it, right?
I'm not GP, and I'm self-employed, but I think it's fair to compensate people based on the value they create, and not how much time they spend at the office. If a guy gets his work done in half the time, and his employer is happy with the cost, then everyone gets what they want.
Companies pay as little as required not to lose employees or break laws. Work is a transaction, and it looks like both that person and their employer are satisfied with the arrangement.
Use your free time to build stuff, save the money to bootstrap and when your project gains traction, leave and build your own things so that you're not making someone else wealthy.
The brightest absolutely do spend their time and energy making others wealthy (ex: I would consider most senior eng at FAANG to be bright and although they are definitely rich, they are not wealthy). I suspect that's because of the cycle of responsibilities and spending most of their incomes.
The thing about FAANGs and BigCos is they have more money than they know how to spend. The majority of that headcount spend is just to capture "talent" so others don't have it.
I've seen millions of dollars-worth of software development waste as FAANG and BigCo. Nobody bats at eye. Because it's a bizarro world with no consequences. All you gotta do is not get wrapped up in it and collect checks ;)
> The majority of that headcount spend is just to capture "talent" so others don't have it.
I think people on both sides forget this. You don’t need 300 engineers to solve very many problems, but if you use 300 it means 2 other companies don’t solve it too.
And just because you’re making a ton of money working for a big company, doesn’t mean that what you’re doing is that important. It might just be to humor you. Even at small places, sometimes the established players get thrown a bone, working on something frivolous because it makes them happy, so they stick around.
Or different people just have different value functions, and many of them don't care about "wealth maximization" when they're already comfortably in the 1%...
Fields where you don't make other people wealthy aren't so rosy either. They bring their own drama to the table.