at the end of the day, you're still selling your time and labor for the same or more hours per week.
as they say "time is money", except that while you can certainly earn more money, there's no earning ownership of your time as a wage worker until you're able to eject yourself entirely from it (whether through retirement, death, or taking your turn as the owner for workers).
I agree with your sentiment but this part is false. Everyone has a boss, even business owners; the boss just becomes the customer instead of a manager. Becoming an owner doesn’t release you.
To some degree you can choose your customers as the owner. My manager can tell me "stop coding and scrub toilets or you're fired" if they want, and fire me if I refuse. Owners may not have complete freedom, but they at least have more.
You only have that freedom if you don’t want your company to be paid. Saying you can choose customers is no different than saying you can choose to scrub (or not) those toilets.
Yes, you always have choices. Consequences are not very different.
Owners can turn down customers and employees can turn down companies. The trade-offs are different but that doesn't mean you are a slave. Changing jobs is extremely easy, the only hard part is wearing the pros and cons of different jobs.
Changing jobs is extremely easy? Maybe if you're single and can throw everything you own in a Uhaul, or you live in an area with plentiful jobs in your field of expertise.
Moving a family of four from one 1700 sq ft house to another is not easy nor cheap, no matter how it's done. Turning down a customer, assuming your business can afford it, is far easier.
Nice job comparing worst-possible job changing scenario vs „assuming your business can afford it“ turning down a customer. Changing job is easy too assuming you can easily do it ;)
You don't have a great imagination do you if you think the above is the worst scenario. Hint - it's playing out for visa workers right now, 60 days or leave the country.
Changing job on your own accord is not the same as getting fired. And worst-timing-to-get-fired olympics is a great sport :)
On a different topic, people working abroad on crappy visa schemes made their own bed. I'm pretty happy I refused an offer to come to US on some crappy visa many years ago. Fuck that. The sooner system fails, the better.
This is only true if you never expect to ever get promoted and your job has no performance based incentives. Especially in the US, engineering promotions come with huge raises and bonuses. Compounded over say a decade, extra productivity can land you in a very nice spot financially.
E.g if being more productive got you a $100k/yr more raise, or a $100k larger bonus, then it’s definitely not selling your time for the same money. If this compounds, like it does nicely in many industries (tech, finance, general “business” of really any kind), then your productivity now is worth real money in the future.
It also feels nice to, ya know, get things done. You don’t have to be an extreme pessimist about the good things you bring to the world because you don’t get 100% of the profit.
as they say "time is money", except that while you can certainly earn more money, there's no earning ownership of your time as a wage worker until you're able to eject yourself entirely from it (whether through retirement, death, or taking your turn as the owner for workers).