But given that the average contract developer is charging themselves out at $100/hour investing the time to "program a thermostat" will rarely result in a ROI.
This has got to be one of the most impressive uses of "My time is worth too much to do X" I've ever seen.
It took me like 10 minutes to program my schedule into my cheap honeywell programmable thermostat. A leisurely 10 minutes. I can't speak to my ROI on the endeavor, but since the thermostat was ~$25 I can only assume I'm rocketing toward breaking even.
my hat is off to you if you are able to sell all the 16 hours that you're awake every day to someone for 100$ each without dropping in productivity and maintaining mental well beeing.