>but I see no reason it should be accepted as ground truth.

Even if you ignore the moral reasons, it's for logistical reasons I just explained. I don't know why it's expected that your best workers will do their best work while being paid the same as "good" workers. Companies promote/bonus less and can layoff at any time, so there's in fact negative incentive for the best workers to do their best. They will either coast at some point or get snatched up by someone else (another aspect which companies accept for asinine HR reasons. Again, no retention budget, healthy hiring budget).

>Because you already signed a contract saying you’d get paid X on a full time basis.

No, I signed a contract saying I'd be paid X bi-monthly/fortnightly with expected working hours and some arbitrary standard of performing well. I can dig out my contract if you want the exact wording, but there's no expectation of "hours worked" on a salaried position. That's the whole benefit of salary; if I need a shorter day/day off I don't get dinged for hours not worked.

>You’d be upset, or deceitful, in order to maintain your half-time effort always and forever, which I don’t think is ok.

And I'd be upset to get more responsibilities for the same pay. I just see it as tit for tat. If companies incentived best workers somehow (i don't care how, encouraging days off when expected tasks are finished, small bonuses taken into account in review. Anything that doesn't try to put down other workers at the same time) then I'd sympathize more. But as I said that retention mindset has been slipping.

>Someone above mentioned working second jobs, which yes, is working hard, I’ve done it, but if it’s being hidden from someone that thinks you’re working full time, that’s not ok.

Depends on the working hours. Moonlighting =/= having a second job. I have some nightly freelance work I do after hours and that should not be looked at by my employees because it's no longer their time.

I don't approve of overlapping jobs in the same time slot (and frankly, that'd be a disaster to try in my industry) but I also don't think it's the most absolute evil strategy if you can choose more lax (likely non-tech) companies. I've even thought about two part time jobs myself, but tech part time seems extremely rare, for the extremely in demand.

>It sounds like your work situation sucks right now, I get that, I’ve worked bad jobs.

Well, I was laid off twice in 8 months, out of a job for 7 months (3 by choice) until I grabbed a part time role by complete luck, and am still looking for a full time job in a shitty market where 80% of my recruiter calls don't even get to a hiring manager, likely because I'm in that weird "between 5-10 years experience" in a market where large studios are on hiring freezes and small new scrappy studios want someone with a little more experiene than me (or Idk, maybe a lot. Maybe there's more 15-20 YOE out in the deep than I expect).

By this point I'm just thinking about taking some blue collar job and riding this year out because I'm so tired of interview calls going nowhere. I can frame the part time work to cover my gap so that's not an issue. So yes, to say I'm extremely biased is an understatement.

But I'll have you know that all my ire comes from management and above. I've loved pretty much every team I worked with in the day to day, and I've been blessed in that regard to have minimal (employee) office politics given my industry stories. Which is why I describe myself closer to a "80 hour work weeker" (note: I never actually worked 80 hours in a week. More around 65 at worst) to a coaster. I don't want to let my team down and I'm not some hotshot SWE that can do that work in 20 hours anyway.