[rayiner]

If you want to work a 25 hour week you can go to where my wife’s family is from and pick up however many shifts you want at the local convenience store. You can live a lifestyle comparable to my wife’s grandparents working far less of the day.

The problem is in knowledge work fields where manpower isn’t scalable (read the Mythical Man Month), and the industries are competitive and winner-take-all. A programmer who works 30 hours a week is far less valuable than than one that works 50 hours a week.

[fragmede]

Depends on what they do with those 30 and 50 hours. If they're burnt out, even 100 hours chained to an in-person desk, they aren't going to accomplish much, so that's just not true. The right software engineer can come in, have a pointed discussion, have some coffee, go look at some code, have a few conversations, and have a bigger impact in an hour in terms of setting future direction and avoiding pitfalls than a different engineer could do in a week.