I used to be someone who worked only 4 hours max in any company and use remaining time to be on top of tech stacks(SysAdmin). But last four years i self trained on stock trading and it close to be becoming my main job in another year or so. Though i now look for trader jobs where i can trade for profit % but the salaries are no where near in my country for traders.

I'd like to think so, but the pay is good and there isn't much else in this area.

I'm stuck in the billable hour purgatory as well. It seems to be a trend that becomes more and more pervasive.

For my next job I'll move to an inhouse position, hopefully things will be better in a setting like that.