There's one more reason - the one I use to rationalize my idleness to myself: in addition to our work output, the corporations are also paying us to be a part of their "reserve army". We might work 3-4 hours a day, but when things escalate, the company taps into its reserves to get stuff done. Having doldrums about that is like soldiers worrying they only spend 3 hours a day in combat

That reminds me of this article for some reason :)

"Google has a secret ‘bench’ program that keeps execs at the company even when they’re not leading anything"

https://venturebeat.com/2015/05/09/google-has-a-secret-bench...

I used to work in Operations...there were 2 of us on shift for a 1 man job.. The extra was 'insurance' :-)

In my experience if the system is important enough, once you ship a couple of features to production you can coast there until the system is replaced. If the features were core the better.

I don´t like it but after 2 decades of coding I have come to accept it as it is.

I think a good way to frame the role of a SW developer is you are in a sense a manager of a new "team".

But instead of developing new hire training material and recruiting/managing people to do the new task, you're developing/training/creating/deploying software programs/scripts/bots to do what needs to get done for the organization.

While infinitely easier than dealing with HR problems that humans bring along, your team of programs/bots still needs some manager.

And just like a traditional manager, if you set up your "team of bots" just right and handle all the corner cases in the training manuals, a good managers job will actually ideally not be that hard day to day - particularly since the meatspace problems have been abstracted away.