[baronswindle]

I’m sorry, but your description of a relationship with an employer doesn’t match mine at all.

I don’t feel anxious. I feel comfortable.

I don’t accept as little as possible. I negotiate with the knowledge that I have options.

I don’t toil in the mines for 80 hours a week to barely afford to feed myself. I spend 40-50 hours a week doing something I rather enjoy, and for that, I’m paid a salary that affords a lifestyle few could have imagined even fifty years ago.

I understand that my employer would pay me less if they could. Then again, if I could find a plumber who could fix my shower for $200 instead of $250, I’d patronize the former, all else equal. Does that make the plumber my “subject”? I don’t think so.

[Apocryphon]

Your employer can also choose to terminate that relationship at any time. No problem, you could just get a job at another shop, right? Except when the black swan appears and all the other companies are doing layoffs and freezes, flooding the market with talent while limiting positions. Then, in that hour of crisis, is the true nature of the relationship revealed at last.

[badpun]

That's why you have savings to wait out that period...

[nickd2001]

As software devs. we can save, right? :). Not sure the same logic applies to people on low wage jobs. Or people like the characters in the movie "Nomadland" (which is supposed to be true to life)

[red-iron-pine]

Or live in a country that affords you a safety net and has rules for terminations.