That ideal job can exist, though you may have to create the company yourself (that's what I ended up doing). We were very small (5-7 people) and thought it'd be

That ideal job can exist, though you may have to create the company yourself (that's what I ended up doing). We were very small (5-7 people) and thought it'd be fun to try out different forms of compensation, so after some experimentation we settled on: - very healthy hourly rate - min commit of X hours per month (I think it was 80), then work as few or as many as you want beyond that (though for planning purposes we'd often ask people to give us a rough idea of their plans for the next few weeks) - various bonuses that would kick in when the group reached different milestones each month (this was a consulting company, so a lot of them revolved around billable hours) - no additional paid benefits at all That last one took the most time for people to get on board with initially, but ultimately proved to be really popular. I think it had to do with how entrenched the mindset is around the norm, but concepts like getting paid even though you're not working, or having your employer be involved with your health insurance are pretty odd if you think about it. Things like sick leave, paid time off, etc. are also things that look nice on paper but IMO tend to be a net loss for employees - they tend to be assigned inflated values by the companies and are used as leverage against employees.