I was a independent contractor for about 12 years - I never did fantastically, but always scraped by reasonably well and had enough free time to keep the stress

I was a independent contractor for about 12 years - I never did fantastically, but always scraped by reasonably well and had enough free time to keep the stress levels down. Then I got a contract working on a website that somehow turned into a enterprise B2B company and I got sucked into burnout for 4 years, due to my not paying attention, excessive psychological ownership (I was the ONLY IT person on staff, it was a 2 founder, 2 salesguys, and me company), and the founders turned out to be a) a slimy manipulative asshole and B) a full blown sociopath who couldn't understand why customers he'd lied to got upset and threaten to sue.... Yeah, excessive sense of responsibly.... A lesson in the dangers of not paying attention and getting hooked on work and not understanding the bottom line of some businesspeople is to screw everyone else over Anyhow, after my nervous breakdown was over, I got a job working at a largish startup-ish mobile app company. It's a nice place, the co-workers are fine, but god almighty, the English are lazy fucks. Half the day seems to be spent chatting. I do not remember this atmosphere when I was working full time 20 years ago (I'm American) and open office plans just plain suck. I really hate being distracted. Perhaps it is my still-a-contractor mentality, but I was hired to do some work and churn out code, or write a document and pointless stories about the latest traffic jam are slightly annoying. I can't imagine this is a atypical UK company - there is a saying about "tea-breaks every 20 minutes" that I now understand... My co-workers know what they are doing, I don't want to seem like I'm disparaging them. But the idea the English are going to create IT companies on the order of Apple or Microsoft is pretty laughable. My only other exposure to the quality of IT in the UK is cleaning up other idiots' messes. OTOH, I am an American and Americans have an excessive work ethic... So yes, when you are a contractor, you learn how to think of yourself as a corporation unto yourself. Thus you get into that mindset, which being a salaried employee is diametrically opposed to. Until you grasp the enlightenment that any company these days is going to treat you like trash when it becomes profitable to do so. I'm not advocating screwing a customer over, because my alliance is primarily to the profession and not to any employer, and most clients are not malicious. But you always have to look out for number one - there is no such thing as loyalty anymore like they had 30, 40 years ago I'm still making sure to be productive because I'm a professional. But 5pm comes and I do not worry about anything else, unlike when I was younger. No one else really is going to care and unless you are keeping the profit from the surplus labor you generate (yeah, Marx does have some useful things to day), you are only one of the Clueless