> a 100% sane assessment of his situation. Nothing could be a more accurate picture of most of our working lives than the OP's post

To be fair, it is extremely hard to tell, even for me (OP). Sometimes I feel like I'm nuts because everyone else seems to get by and just deal with it. Am I so special or fragile that I can't just suck it up and do like everyone else?

No matter what angle I look at it though, I don't see how this could not make anyone at least a little bit sick. Spending 40 years (or 10 years if you're aiming for FI) using your life and health away to make some stranger even richer while the best you can hope for is keeping your job. It's absurd, and I can't understand how a lifetime of taking one for the team doesn't make people revolt.

But maybe we're the crazy ones because we're the minority, and can't adapt. I honestly don't know and struggle with this question.

I've been grappling with how unjust it feels to be an employee working in service of enriching another. I'm looking for a way out myself. But it helps to think about this in terms of risk. The owners of my company originally shouldered a great deal of risk, for a very small chance at a very high reward. It's worked out well for them. I, years later, benefit from their original and continued risk-taking in the form of a salary and benefits. In exchange, I give them 8/hr a day of decent work. The rest of my time is completely mine, and my livelihood does not depend on what I do in this time.

This does not always ease the day-to-day pains I feel about working for "the man." It still makes my blood boil sometimes. But I do appreciate the relative cushiness this position affords me: benefits, decent salary, and perhaps best of all: a full life outside of my working hours. I never have to worry about business development, annual revenues, appeasing shareholders, and all the other risky behavior required to run a successful business.

To be sure, I will never get rich as an employee (without deliberate frugality and smart investments). That's not how the system is set up. But you might find you value a comfortable middle class existence with a lot less stress more than making a lot of money (which requires, generally, a commensurate amount of risk/work). I'm still figuring that out myself.

I don't quite agree with the risk angle because generally people who start their own businesses do so with strong family safety nets or with capital that they amassed in high paying professions. If their business fails, they are usually still ] better off than their employees.

I very much doubt this is the case. In 2011, over half a million businesses were started each month in the U.S. in addition to the 23 million small businesses that were already around. Seems unlikely to assume these were all from well to do folks with a strong safety net.

Source: http://censtats.census.gov/cgi-bin/nonemployer/nonsect.pl

How many poor people have you developed software for personally?

I can't comment on the sanity of adaptation - it may well be the most expedient reaction. But your original description of the relative economic positions of worker and employer, and of who accrues the most benefit from the energy expenditure of the worker (hint: it's not the worker), is just simple 20/20 clarity. Not even the most conservative economist could disagree with it. To adapt to this seems an act akin to Stockholm syndrome, but to struggle with it, though perhaps more clear-minded, is also unlikely to bring happiness. But once you've seen what you've seen, you can't unsee it.

> But once you've seen what you've seen, you can't unsee it.

What do you do then?

I do not know. But there are of course millions of people in our position. I suppose any possible solution can only come from the only strength we have, which is the knowledge of our shared, common situation.

EDIT: Jesus I sound pompous sometimes...

Pompous perhaps but sensible. Please don't stop ranting.

Darn it, you stopped ranting.

I only sporadically rant. But thanks for the encouragement.

amiuba, we're either both crazy or both sane.

I never said it was irrational. I believe it's extraordinarily rational, if a bit narrowly scoped. I'm a big fan of depressive realism.

However, I also believe that this can be accurate of your life (let's be honest, it's accurate of 80%+ of people's lives) and yet not be a cause of constant misery. This seems to be the case for many people, who have much harder jobs than the average HN type and yet are quite happy. I think getting to that state is a route worth exploring.

Unexplored areas of the psyche and rational situational assessment are not at all mutually exclusive. They get along just fine.