Very few, and I don't think it's a reasonable parallel.
I don't think 8 hours of cognitively demanding, yet physically sedentary work, is part of our human nature.
If you frame it in the sense that we are just monkeys in shoes, it wouldn't be at all reasonable to expect someone to crouch in the grass and be highly alert for hours at a time.
The corollary would be a job that's physically engaging (read, not demanding) but cognitively basic, e.g. moving boxes in a warehouse, gardening.
The difference is one form of labor has leveraged output (writing code), vs linear output (moving boxes).
You are completely right but that is precisely my point.
Counting hours for a job like programming is pointless. If you also agree that it's not reasonable to expect 8 continuous hours of intellectual labor, it should also not be reasonable on part of employees to be wedded to their 8-hour-workday. No one seems to have a problem chit-chatting at work, or engaging in other forms of recreation, but everyone seems to love counting hours when it comes to reasonable work expected from them.
I notice this in my job working with a team in Europe that my company has acqui-hired (this is relevant because until then they were a purely European company in terms of composition and culture). We are a pretty standard SV startup in terms of culture, we are in the office for ~9 hours a day (that includes lunch etc.) but we trust our employees to manage their work, which includes the self-awareness of knowing when you have not done enough during the day and compensating by working a bit more whenever you see fit.
In contrast, the European team does strict 8 hours a day (including lunch), does NOT have better average productivity than ours, but gets very upset at the occasional expectation that they meet deadlines with similar 'vigor' as their SV counterparts. I'm sure the same people would complain about pay disparity between the bay area and Europe and find it unfair.
I don't think 8 hours of cognitively demanding, yet physically sedentary work, is part of our human nature.
If you frame it in the sense that we are just monkeys in shoes, it wouldn't be at all reasonable to expect someone to crouch in the grass and be highly alert for hours at a time.
The corollary would be a job that's physically engaging (read, not demanding) but cognitively basic, e.g. moving boxes in a warehouse, gardening.
The difference is one form of labor has leveraged output (writing code), vs linear output (moving boxes).