Sure they do - even if the workload does not demand that I sit in my chair in front of my screen all day, I do need to be committed to be available. If a project hits a crunch, or some crisis arises, and I say that I'm too busy with other commitments to do my job, that is a major problem.

A lot of us have integrity. We would like part time work but are not willing to lie and steal from our employer to get it.

Employers are generally paying for your output not the hours spent.

Depends on the job. If you are in customer support, I don't want you to be working for another company and switch back and forth if you are full time employee. I want you focussed 100% on my company and hence you are paid as a full time employee.

Also, legally you are bound to work for a company according to contracts. I don't want you working for another company on the company's time. It introduces potential liability and risks especially if you are remote.

> Also, legally you are bound to work for a company according to contracts. I don't want you working for another company on the company's time. It introduces potential liability and risks especially if you are remote.

Just on this point, what you say is common but it's not universal. A lot depends on the type of contract.

I'm working full time at the moment. Yet my contract is structured to allow me to work on other companies' work if I want. And I control my time. It's quite explicit.

That clarity has a real positive payoff for both me and the company I'm working for. I'm more enthusiastic about the work in large part because this arrangement is compatible with me keeping open several research projects on ths side, and I'm confident if they lead anywhere, there isn't a conflict - and that the company people recognise this.

They wouldn't want me not working on the company's projects or not acting as a responsible person. But the whole attitude is to assume I am and support that in an adult-to-adult way. I really like that I feel we could talk freely about outside business interests at work.

It helps a lot that this is a mission-oriented open source company.

TL;DR it does depend on the job, but it's not an inevitable fact that remote work contracts bind a person's time exclusively, even during hours worked.

This is HN. It's a bunch of entitled mediocre programmers copy-pasting from stack overflow or automating the process via copilot. We're not talking about your average wage slave.

That would be awful considering how hard it is to measure a developer's output.

Definitely. It's a minor annoyance, but there's already slack bots pestering people for daily status / scrum updates, retros, and such.

I could quite easily do 2 full time jobs simultaneously except that it would be impossible to get them not to schedule overlapping meetings. Wish I had a reliable way around that because I’d love to get paid twice as much for working maybe 50% more since I typically have a decent amount of idle time within a 9-5

True enough, but a fair few require at least some commitment every day. For some that's not as easy of a commitment to make, but I totally see your point.

They shouldn't, but it's clear we're not at that stage of societal development quite yet.