While I agree with the whole long term vs short term thing. One should be careful about how to apply this. For instance, devoting yourself to your soulless corporate job most often doesn't pay dividends in the long term. There are many companies out there who are happy with exploiting such employees. I say this because I have done just the same thing the last 4 years i.e. put in my heart and soul for such a company. Happily, I have moved on to better things and the company is worse off. So yay karma :) But, you sometimes have to make tough decisions now in order to achieve your long term goals.

[EDIT: I did become a really good programmer in the process and learnt a lot from my team lead who was highly knowledgeable, so that was the only good to come out of it.]