>Why isn't there someone disrupting software development paying experienced people like me a low salary for 20-30 hours a week? I've wondered this for quite aw

>Why isn't there someone disrupting software development paying experienced people like me a low salary for 20-30 hours a week? I've wondered this for quite awhile myself. Many companies would benefit from being able to keep software developers "on retainer" like a lawyer even. That sort of arrangement might mitigate the cycle of a product becoming excellent, and then immediately starting to go down hill because the company feels compelled to make the developers do something. I'm not confident it would help as you would still face managers who want to 'make a name for themselves' pioneering changes just to get some credit regardless of how beneficial the users would find it. My personal theory on the matter is that it's a combination of "this is just how things are done", lingering influence of the Protestant Work Ethic, and managers who measure their personal and organizational value based upon how many people they control and how much they control them. It's always good to keep in mind that the 40 hour work week and the way work, offices, and much else in society is structured was optimized for very predictable constant physical labor in manufacturing. It was never meant to be used for mental labor or intellectual pursuits at all. We're still adapting to pure mental work being the most valuable sort of work to society. We haven't dealt with things like human beings having much different capacities for extended exertion between physical and mental types. We recognize an awful lot of problems (the destructive nature of interruptions, the diminished returns of long work days, etc) but there are very few organizations dedicating themselves to finding working solutions.