The average workday increased during the pandemic’s early weeks (2020)

And people work for businesses for their own self interest. A more successful business can afford to pay its employees more. Employees get more satisfaction from completing accomplishments. Tasks which make employees lives easier are more likely to get done. There is less stress when things are less crammed schedule-wise.

I mean we've all experienced the feeling of "I want to get this done but there just isn't enough time." Taking more hours of your day just exhausts you more, but eliminating a task that doesn't help you, whether it be busywork or a commute, is fantastic. If given the choice between sitting in traffic and knocking things off my to do list, what kind of freak would choose the former?

There is a huge gulch and lag in most businesses between profit and benefit for the employees. Increased profit in the short and medium term rarely goes towards the employees benefit while losses tend to more directly impact employees (layoffs) rather quickly.

Oftentimes profit means hiring more people, not pay existing people more.

The problem is that a disproportionate amount of the additional profit when an employee works more hours (or just all of it) tends to go to the business not the employee who is actually doing the work.

outside of tech I'd agree, but the execs keep giving me big stock packages (I'm a mid-level at a company you have heard of) and the line going up has pretty immediately paid off for me.

isn't that normal for engineers? the sentiment you're expressing is one I can relate to more for employees who are only compensated with salary

If you're a mid-level employee at a company on heard of (this describes me too) then I find it difficult to believe that the company stock performance is meaningfully related to your performance. I know for sure that our stock price would not suffer a penny if I dropped dead tomorrow, even if nobody noticed for years and my paychecks kept piling up in my bank account).