So only if you're hating your job then you are a bastion of free will and free thinking among us mortal capitalist slaves?

What about truly enjoying your job and getting paid handsomely for it (compared to almost all other jobs) being sufficient to one's happiness?

Also, if you don't realise that being the one running the show is orders of magnitude harder than following the lead and doing your stuff then you never really done it before. Having ALL the control has advantages and many less obvious disadvantages.

Imagine taking pride in your craft rather than doing only the bare minimum to pad your ego, what a crazy approach!

Taking pride in your craft would mean having enough self-respect to both not burn your soul out for the sake of a corporation that wants to make you redundant and using it in a direction that directly benefits you.

I've been in the industry long enough now to see those 10x engineers having pride in their work get their mindset shattered because John from financials thinks they can juice the next quarter by laying them off.

If you want to have pride in your work as a supposed 10x engineer, work at 2x or 3x and save the remaining for yourself.

A lot of commenters seem not to work with very skilled individuals.

One (engineer-turned) manager I have in mind: show up at 10am, leave at 4pm, solve a zillion hard problems in the mean time. Are they 10x? If they save me 2 weeks of work with their insight then I guess I have to admit yes.

Why, though?

Lots of people are happy to just do whatever, go home and not work on personal projects. Plenty of people here defend it.

Why should productive engineers change their habits just not to be called a sucker?

Save it for myself how, ditch half the work day to go to the gym? I'm going to work 9-5 either way.

Exactly, I'm not saying do the bare minimum

I mean more that the optimal amount of work to put in is still above average but way below 10x

I worked like this. You could have phrased it better.

If you're not making someone with a lot more money than you even richer you're probably not earning much yourself.

This is about how capitalism is structured it's not at all a matter of personal choice.

That honestly doesn't matter if you (no longer) pursue riches yourself, have enough already and enjoy your hobbies. Besides, not everyone working in IT is working in a chique billionarie mill. A lot of IT is just plumbing. Majority even.

if you also make yourself rich in the process, are you still a slave?

I'd love to hear your take on those dumbass medical research scientist slaves who haven't figured out life. Probably wasting their time looking for cures, when they could be starting their own crypto or podcast or innovation-firm instead.