If you care about the products, the emotional investment in your work might propel your income, which is the reason why you're working in the first place, so ostensibly a follow-on goal of that might be to raise your income.
This is an interesting theory. My experience has been quite the opposite, in that typically jobs that people care about and connect with on an emotional level are those which pay relatively little. Teaching, social work, caring, and so on.
This has been my experience so far. It seems employers/supervisors can sniff out when you really care about something, so they use that as leverage to take advantage: heap on more responsibilities without accompanying pay increase, cut benefits, delay raises and promotions, etc. I really wish that weren’t the case, but as a person who’s passionate about my work, I’ve encountered it at every employer so far :(
I’m not in SV so maybe the situation is different there
It's not guaranteed, but caring and working hard can pay off over time and can give longevity to what you do. If you are working with the right people, they tend to notice and reward this.
The result of not caring shows over time and companies that operate like this tend to fall behind and become obsolete.
Caring just as often leads to burnout, since many people wind up dealing with organizational dysfunction. If you truly care and the resultant product gets butchered due to politics or simply killed on an executive's whim despite having promise, that's going to affect you longer term and could make you less efficient or unable to dedicate good effort in the future, especially if that cycle is repeated several times. Getting too invested in something that you only have marginal control over is a two edged sword.
I’m surprised I had to scroll this far to see this.
I think most folks want to care about their jobs and the default is having a healthy level of investment. But especially in larger companies, it’s so easy to get burned by workplace politics or leaders just not seeing things the same way you do — just as you said.
Emotional disinvestment in work is a defensive mechanism. Honestly, it feels like the two camps in this thread are almost talking past each other. Yes, it’s good to be invested in your work — it’s better for your emotional/existential health and good for your career. On the other hand, investment being a net good for an employee is hugely dependent on your work environment.
While one could argue that the right thing to do if you feel you can’t be invested is to leave, and I generally agree that leaving is the only real long-term solution, there are also a million reasons why it might not in the short term.
Yes, I think that the folks who haven't been burned like that before have either not been in the industry for very long, or they have been very, very fortunate in their work environments. Having a supportive work environment that rewards passion is something that everyone who puts in solid work effort deserves, but unfortunately much of the industry works like slash and burn agriculture: exploiting, exhausting, and then moving on.
Like all those Microsoft developers, who worked long hours, made their company $15B in profit last quarter (and $5B in stock buybacks) and are now not getting any raises?
At-will employment isn't a valid reason to not care about what you do. The armchair theory is the emotional investment would still lead to promotions, higher raises, etc than someone who otherwise wouldn't be. The macroeconomic climate is orthogonal. For example, suppose that by caring, they got promoted to a new job that will make them a more competitive candidate in the job market. Now that person can more easily leave Microsoft for a non-pay freeze company, so the advantage remains.
It seems employers/supervisors can sniff out when you really care about something, so they use that as leverage to take advantage: heap on more responsibilities without accompanying pay increase, cut benefits, delay raises and promotions, etc. I really wish that weren’t the case, but as a person who’s passionate about my work, I’ve encountered it at every employer so far. Because of that, my career mobility has come entirely from job-hopping (which I’m not a fan of, but I need to pay the bills).
I’m not in SV so maybe the situation is different there
Eh, there's quick diminishing returns in making more income, especially in software engineering. Being interested in the products you're building is a better path to work contentment in my opinion.
