I completely disagree with your first point, and agree with your second with caveats. The employer is usually not paying the employee for "the product"; they'r

I completely disagree with your first point, and agree with your second with caveats. The employer is usually not paying the employee for "the product"; they're usually paying for the employee's time and general ability. You can see this simply by the fact that most employees are explicitly paid a rate per hour/day/year and not something closer to a piecework basis. Differences in productivity don't effect the pay rate nor does the estimated value of the product. Employees don't work on a "fixed fee basis" on their assignments and for maintenance like work their pay doesn't fluctuate downward when the value of their product diminishes nor upwards when it increases. The product is a consequence of how the employee is directed to spend their time. If the trade is something else, it should be clearly stated in the employment agreement/contract that they employee is paid on some other basis. Unilaterally recasting the terms of your employment into some other basis is merely rationalizing not providing the real thing for which you're being paid. For those that might say that a job description sets product based terms for employment, it's rare that they are offered that way. Almost all the job descriptions that I've ever seen (and all that I've written) have some sort of phrase to the effect of, "...and other work as might be assigned." A job description isn't a Statement of Work, they're usually just general expectation setting devices.