>And if you have to tell yourself a comforting lie about what the basic nature of the relationship is to be happy about it, I think that may be a signal that th

>And if you have to tell yourself a comforting lie about what the basic nature of the relationship is to be happy about it, I think that may be a signal that the "good working environment" isn't so good. Okay - I'll bow out here. I think you've probably latched on to a minor detail that's not really relevant — my main point being that focusing on "selling time to an employer" is only one interpretation of the employee-employer relationship. Maybe I could have described it as "charging a fixed rate to a client and doing interesting research" – the point is, in a market such as the current one for software developers, employment is as much under the control of the employee as the employer. To be clear, I don't have any intention of misrepresenting or lying about my work environment, so please don't make such assumptions.