Well for me, development in cli. I do nothing that requires 16+Gig of ram. 8 is plenty for me (what i have in my macbook pro, iirc).

Sure, ram is always nice, but i am able to do my work and take my laptop (which i also code for fun on) wherever i am. Hotels/couch/offices/etc.

I'm not stuck to a single spot, in a single room, in a single building. It's a really, really important feature to me. Even just at my house i move around the house frequently.

> do my work and take my laptop (which i also code for fun on)

Sure, that makes sense - from the way you said you only worked 9-5 I took that to mean you were talking about a work computer.

Well even then - if i take my work-only laptop home it means i can reliably respond to issues on production. It's still a 9-5 job imo, because i have yet to have to respond to an issue, but an outage is an outage, and if i can't reliably work from home then i have to drive to the office. That adds considerable time to how quickly i can contribute.

I know that technically breaks the rule of "strictly 9-5", but i think nearly all jobs have people on explicit or implicit pager duty. Even if you don't have to do anything 12 months out of the year, it might happen, you might need to respond.

/shrug

If you're on call you're on call and should expect to be paid for it. It's not remotely a technicality, and by no means something "nearly all" jobs do. I strongly advise having a conversation with your union rep.

Haha, i don't have a union rep. Now am i specifically "on call". I want to be available. It's my choice. Sure, you could argue that i'm being taken advantage of or etc, and i'd understand your viewpoint, but i just know i'd rather fix the problem when it happens (if i can) than leave the product down for 12+ hours until i'm in office tomorrow or monday after a weekend, etc.

Keep in mind this has never happened for me. Nor do any of my home plans change because i like to be available. And even at my last employer (for example), i liked to be available despite us having a planned & paid for pager duty rotation. Why would my employer pay me extra for not doing anything at nights 365 days/y? I like to be potentially available, it's my choice :)

When you work for free it's not just you who suffers. You undermine all your colleagues by comparison. You contribute to the exclusion of people from other backgrounds (older people, parents, people who can't afford reliable connections at home) who might not be able to make themselves available the way you do.

If you have meaningful ownership (not just a handful of probably-worthless stock options) then by all means work as much as you like. But if you're an employee then it's not as simple as just being your choice, you're forcing your colleagues into a race to the bottom. There's a good reason we have laws about e.g. unpaid overtime.