Yeah it’s hard to gain the high value skillsets these days, and I think it’s one of the reason those of us that have been in it for decades are able to do fine now. I got lucky where early on in my career I got in with a company that was small and had enormous growth over a 10 year span.
I’m similar paid to the person in question and am also an independant contractor. I make similar due to my experience level and rather unique combination of skills so I just cut my hours way back and typically work a few hours a day. So burnout is a non issue. I take no work where I’m on call or “first responder” and I make sure it’s always written into the contract that way.
It took 25+ years of busting ass to get here, although I have no regrets, and I recognize I am incredibly lucky to have the circumstances play out this way.
Maybe it depends on what kind of employees you are onboarding, but in tech it’s vastly simpler to onboard employees remotely, you want to be sharing screens so even if you were in an office you’d want to be at your own computers.