It's absolutely like work but it's the sort of work I enjoy. For the same reasons I messed with Project Euler years ago, occasionally try to leaderboard during the Advent of Code, or play a CTF from time to time - I find Factorio really fun. It's neat to see how quickly I can whip together a solution, however ugly, then refine and improve upon it. Once the circuit logic comes into play it becomes a lot more like actual programming or scripting.

For what it's worth, IT isn't my day job in any capacity. When I write Bash or Python scripts, Ansible playbooks, scrape webpages or whatever else - it's usually only ever for myself or because I'm keenly invested in solving a problem someone else has presented and that I find interesting. Maybe I'd enjoy automation games less if I had to do the equivalent for work all day, and without any personal interest or intrigue being invested into it. Fortunately, as it stands, games like Factorio exist as extensions of a hobby.

This is probably my favorite non-Factorio-player videos about the game in that he gives it such a really fair shake in spite of it not being a genre he enjoys. There's also videos that cover the general beauty of the game. Growing up on isometric RTS classics, the graphics tickle my nostalgia and the buildings are genuinely mesmerizing. Even the belt splitter animations, which remind me a bit of typewriters, old word processors with automatic return, or dot matrix printers, just look amazing to me.

It's definitely not for everyone but it's one of few "not-for-everyone" games that seems to command a lot of respect even from those who aren't into it. The only others that immediately come to mind would be Dwarf Fortress or Rimworld. Colony management isn't everyone's thing but plenty of people will readily watch 30+ minutes of somebody's custom scenario because the games generate riveting stories. My two cents, anyway.