Nah. I know a guy who does this, he views it as a game and all the money coming in is his score. Tripling his salary would just raise his high score and he'd keep playing as hard as ever.
Isn’t it, though? Why do most people work? For the joy of making their employer richer? Or to take home the bacon and make a better life for themselves and people they care about?
I used to be the type to make loyalty to my great exalted employer first and foremost, sacrificing chunks of my personal life beyond what my salary required. Then I wised up and now view it as how much I can extract as quickly as possible. Coincidentally, the quality of my work shot up when I viewed myself as mostly a mercenary, consistent raises, consistently good reviews even though I care less and less. So I see where he is coming from and I wish more people thought like him.
People work for satisfaction as well as money. You even give your own examples of a non-financial motivation before you got "wise". Only caring about money sounds like hell to me. Look at everyone that chooses a calling or career that doesn't pay well like teaching or much of our health system. Please don't assume they are stupid people making bad decisions - they often know exactly what they are doing (e.g. my extremely smart teacher friends) and part of their gross income is the non-financial payoffs of the job.
Personally I think society depends strongly on people chasing satisfaction from their jobs, and sectors which only chase the money have a rather sick ambiance (although perhaps necessary sectors?). Every good tradie is proud of their work.
There are a lot of taker/user jobs and bosses - perhaps avoiding those is the trick if you want satisfaction.
I work because it's a nice way to live. I made enough to retire on a long time ago. I know a (eg) fancy car isn't going to meaningfully affect my happiness.
I've been in jobs with nothing to do. It sucks.
Work is an important component of a happy life. If I ever get tired of software maybe I'll go garden or something.
100%, and I have a ton of respect for how he thinks about work. While I can't bring myself to do the multiple FTE positions thing, I've spent half my career doing freelance/consulting work for multiple clients at once, and I love the mindset since I feel like it gets to the core of what "work" is.
In a lot of ways the "overemployment" thing comes down to treating full-time jobs like agency clients. Which I'm all for in theory and I'm a lot happier when I'm working with clients instead of employers. But I can't personally handle the dishonesty required.
