I am not an advocate for that in the least. If it’s what you want to do, there’s no reason that means you shouldn’t be paid market rate. But that’s entirely different than distilling everything down to a single monetary dimension, which was my original point. What’s “cringe” to me is when all work is reduced to transactional measure of time and salary, implying the only measure of work is economic. That makes you nothing more than a wage slave in every sense of the word. There are certainly cases where that’s warranted like when it’s necessary to survive but if we’re talking about the difference between a SWE and EE that’s just not the case. That singly-focused economic mindset also seems to correlate with misery. My position is actually the opposite of the exploitative one you’re framing it as. When you are working solely for the paycheck, it’s easy to exploit yourself, foregoing a fulfilling career chasing dollars. Again, my point is people only talked about money. Not that SW providing them with a lower stress life, or the ability to work from home so they can spend more time with family, or any other reasonable goals. Even money is worthwhile if you frame it as a means to a good end, but I didn’t that. It was treated as an end unto itself.

We already know this isn’t intuitively rational. Why aren’t you spending all your free time taking side jobs? Presumably because you realize there’s an opportunity cost that is not merely economic. I’m saying the same thing, only people often somehow have been duped into thinking their 9-5 is somehow different.