Hackers should never take 9 to 5 jobs, imho. If they're geniuses and do their work for the day in half an hour, their reward is more work and/or complaints that they're slacking off. The other people in the company, however, being total idiots, will managed to spin the same amount of work out into 10 or 12 hours, thus getting raises, promotions, and/or overtime.

A hacker who works on a consulting basis and is paid by the job, however, can put in his half an hour, get paid several hundred dollars, then go off and play Quake.

I myself do all my work by phone / email. I can pretty much work my own hours (within limits), and I get paid from $25 to $50+ per hour overall depending on whether I'm doing design work or programming. A 9-5 job would probably kill me, since I'm handicapped and can only manage five or six hours of work per day without my health taking a death spiral, so consulting is definitely the best option here.