Not to get too bleak, but I could imagine a future where people upload their consciences to some server to continue work indefinitely. Your conscience could move from code base to code base ad infinitum.
But why bother with some average Joe's consciousness if you can clone a couple Carmacks, patch them to remove copy protection / willpower / whatever, and get "10x output"
You could even get them to do boring grunt work by telling them it will lead to a promotion, then reset their memory so they don't realize the promotion never comes...
i am not even sure that 100% has to be a depressing notion