> Let's be honest this is far from what people call slavery. They are being paid multiples of six digit salaries, RSUs and work in one of the most happening tech ecosystems of the world.
> I would love to be a part of something like this. Heck most of us would love to be a part of something like.
> I kind of envy those guys working on these projects. I hope I was the one there.
So, unfortunately, your post encourages what the ones at the top with all the capital love: getting the rest of us fight over the scraps. Because the truth is that it's all scraps to them, and that's how they want to keep it.
That's only a negative for one side.
If someone likes that work environment - great, let them work very hard on interesting and meaningful projects, these are the kind of people Elon Musk seems to want to leave at twitter. People who don't like this kind of work environment are free to leave for companies more focused on work-life balance.
If that is not the case, it doesn't matter how much I'm being paid, I'm not going to be happy ("self-actualized") for long. Likewise, whether I work 40 or 60 hours a week has no bearing on this. I imagine quite a few people joined Twitter because they believed in the company's stated mission and the vision of its founder. The mission and vision have now changed, so it's appropriate for some of those people to move on, voluntarily or otherwise. Framing it as some kind of Marxist class struggle sheds no light on the issue, and isn't helpful in the least.
This can and should be a condition on top of respecting yourself enough to expect that you are paid for the time you work and have the freedom to establish a good work-life balance based on those hours. Assuming for one second that the folks running the business--if they are any good at it--think about you in anything other than economic terms at the end of the day is simply foolish.
If you're exchanging time for money, you ain't on the capital side of the struggle.
The fact this is even legal indicates congress sold out the working class in the '80s.
Sure you may be able to slack off a lot in some jobs, and effectively make more money per hour. But it's an absolute certainty that if you work 80 hours a week, you're not going to be paid more as an exempt employee. It's one of the nice things about being a contractor, you can actually get overtime pay. And as a result most companies will be strict about not making you work more than 40. Funny how that works.
So you’re privileged, you say. What about your employer?