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Not all of my compensation is in cash. Giving me time to experiment, learn, or god forbid enjoy myself is part of the cost for employers of software developers.

You obviously can not want that as an employer but you’re either gonna have empty roles for a long time or pay out the ass for the lack of fringe benefits

Do you really think workplace norms should never adjust for their employees? I think a balance between doing the bare minimum to avoid bankruptcy and squeezing employees for every last drop of productivity is needed and I don't see how listening to employee demands is somehow wrong in that context.

Oh, I think they should definitely adjust. But it should not be adjusted by employees or between employees but rather by the business, to serve its goals (retention, productivity, etc...).

I think in these situations, the employee should ask himself: "what is good for the business?" rather than "what do I want to do?".

The answer often is "what is good for employees is good for the business". This is a known recipee for success that rarely gets implemented because of greed and shortsightedness

It's also true that "what is good for the business is good for employees". So it's a two-way street that needs to be walked by honest employees and empoyers. Not possible in toxic cultures. So it's important to keep the toxic employees and managers (even shareholders!) out. This is what hiring should mostly focus on (not sure on how to keep toxic shareholders out, and businesses often rot from their heads down because of this)

You can usually weasel your way to describing a personal benefit as useful to the business, e.g. "I want a new chair" -> "I need a new chair to be more productive by being more comfortable", so I'm not sure this distinction is useful. In the end, you're still weighing upsides and downsides, just a bit more directly.

>you end up in situations where it's suddenly justifiable to let developers use technologies unsuited for the situation because they're "fun" and "interesting" to use and keeping them happy means they're more "productive"

Well, companies already do that and justify the practice as something that selects for more passionate developers and makes job postings seem more attractive. Exhibit A: YC's very own Paul Graham wrote "The Python Paradox" [1] back in 2004.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html

>Yes, but as I said, that's a slippery slope to walk on - you're not there to make friends or have fun - you're there to do work.

Both are important. Without friends and fun, in a heavily intellectual cooperative field like CS, you'll do subpar work.

“Should”. But how do you actually move towards doing that? I’ve never worked anywhere that was the case. It might be that there is no way to make that happen if it goes against human nature.

If I could answer that question, I'd be doing management consulting, not software development.

But I think a good first step is to just be aware of it. Many people don't even notice these subtle biases. Once you're aware of them, it's a matter of training yourself to ask the question: is this good for me, or good for the business? Am I doing this because it's good for me, or good for the business?