> and b) people are forced by the principal to coop themselves up in an office for 8 hours per day, and they need to invent things to occupy their time. You could say that this is the agent not respecting the principal's investment, but it really goes both ways. Our employment model does not allow for "done", because as soon as this happens, the contributor is declared redundant and the revenue stream disappears. It's fun to brainstorm models that may not have that issue.

I think you might be overstating this part. I haven't been in many positions where if I said "hey, I finished that thing you asked me to do, and it took five fewer people and six fewer months than we thought" the response would be "ok, looks like we can fire you all now" instead of "great! get started on the next from the list of 100 things we think might be useful for the business!" + some good results at performance review time.

My usual frustration is the opposite: I can't knock out my tasks as quickly as I could because I'm waiting on other teams to figure out how to add an unexpected new feature to their overengineered buzzwordy codebase.

Maybe this is a high-growth vs low-growth environment type of thing, but even in more stable businesses, seems like the maintenance backlog never really empties. Just gotta make sure the bosses understand that you wouldn't fire the workers every time the shop temporarily clears - you're still going to need them for the next jobs that come in.