If you provide value X to an employer for payment Y, they're not going to increase your payment in proportion to your increase in productivity. Frequently employers won't give you any additional compensation for increased productivity. So the game theory really favors workers optimizing the time it takes to provide value X
The agreement isn't for X, the agreement was for "whatever you can provide". You don't provide a unit of work, you provide "your brain as applied to the problems of the company".
Game theory is for the company to fire you and find someone who will honor their contract...
Your employer hires you to solve a problem, they don't get rights to unlimited productivity. You're held to a specific quality/output of work, and as long as that's satisfactory, you remain employed.
The game theory is to produce enough quality/output to remain employed. An employee increasing their productivity without increased compensation for said productivity is a bit of a sucker.
Depends on your contact with your employer. If you're exempt and not hourly, they don't rent your brain for a period of time, they rent it to solve a set of problems. The volume those problems, and the rate they expect you to solve them at is up to your employer. Their only limit is to not assign you so much work you quit. That's it.
>> The game theory is to find the people who believe this, and to get rid of people who don't.
> Companies prefer to hire suckers if they can, yes.
Pretty cynical, no? Obviously employers make more money off their employees than they pay them, otherwise they wouldn't be in business, but that doesn't make an employee a sucker.