> But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and more financial security to do something that piques your interest?
I actually used to think similarly. I might have worded it badly but when I mean the work becomes smaller I am talking about scope and impact - not necessarily the effort required. The example I can give is what I described above: config changes. At a high level it sounds pretty simple but when you delve deeper into how your company/team works with such technologies then there are many barriers in place which hinder you from getting work done efficiently. And processes are slow. In my old team it used to take ~a month to deploy our software world-wide.
You are correct about financial security. At least for me, I am not comfortable enough taking a risk to start something on my own or make a big career change.
I think the overall goal is that you SHOULD be told what to do - up to a certain extent. I am a software engineer so an example for me would sound like "design me a system that does this" or "a customer is asking for this feature request" and that's it. Everything else can and should be left upon the engineers to figure out. Good engineers will design a good system with respect to time for delivery and feature request compatibility.
