As it turns out, that's a lot harder than you're making it sound. I absolutely loved my previous job, where I was building a quality product that I knew my customers would enjoy. There were some leadership-related issues that came up there, so I thought I could build a product on my own in my extra 40 hours a week. Now I have no product (or product ideas) and no customers. Instead I spend my time networking with people who might have those two things. I feel like I lost out, even though I'm getting higher pay.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effec...
If you mean to say work as defined by the specified project you need to determine if there is something else they are seeking that provides worth. Do they want to be seen as necessary? Do they need to learn the whole system/program to have a sense of job security. Some people love the whole idea of saying they have spent more time than anyone else working on the program/app at hand. It's BS I know but for the non technical manager those are the sweetest words.
It's not easy to make utilitarian calculations based solely off monetary units divided by time. Exchange value is never easy to determine. For you it may be easy to find another job that pays same or more for same monetary value divided by time. For others, it may not be so easy.
Not everyone is a slave to a job they hate, which seems to be your perspective here.