Well, yes. As a non-equity employee, why should you care about "them", other than how you'll come out of working for them five years down the line? Will you have enjoyed your time there? Will you have grown as a developer?
"Creating something meaningful" only only really affects the lives of employees inasmuch as they now have something out there in the world that they can point to and brag about. That's not really as important to most people as you'd think.
The ones that it is important to? Too busy being entrepreneurs. :)
> Well, yes. As a non-equity employee, why should you care about "them", other than how you'll come out of working for them five years down the line?
Because when you work at a company you don't care for, you are contributing to a toxic environment, which can hurt your career prospects much more than a sub-par salary, by making you caustic and bitter. If you come out of a job in anything other than high spirits, that will subconsciously, but seriously, hurt you in your hunt for the next job.
As far as I can tell, this is quite untrue. Many of the most successful people I know are quite bitter about their previous employers. It's all about spinning that, though. It's not enough to just be bitter. You need to flatter your new employer, showing them that you jumped ship to them because they're so excellent, unlike those previous schmucks.
Everyone is bitter about their previous employers. If they wouldn't be bitter they probably wouldn't have left (except in odd case of, starting your own company,academics, research). What you are missing is - people generally have good time in companies but they leave when things go south.
For example, the startup I left - I slogged there for 4 years and I left because of some leadership changes(pressure from VCs), heck I had to leave without taking the stock options because of some technicality. Yes, I am bitter about them but out of those 4 years, 3.5 Years were incredibly fun and I learnt quite a bit. I think story repeats everywhere.
I didn't say you should work at a company you don't care for. I meant that "whether the company does something I care about" will be, for most every employee, an instrumental value in their utility calculations, not a terminal value. You'll care about it, but you'll care because of what's in it for you.
Is there a chance that the toxic environment derives from the people who "care" about the company, giving the culture a bit of a "too many cooks" problem? That is, not caring about the company itself can contribute to a "pure work" attitude that benefits the actual success of the business.
I'd like to add 3 !!! after that last part, and add ... especially if people warned you ahead of time that they just fired ("lost") half their employees last year, and you shrugged.
Why wouldn't you optimize for salary, if it is a bad place to work, you could, you know ... leave ... As far as becoming bitter ... sounds like a personal problem!
Well, yes. As a non-equity employee, why should you care about "them", other than how you'll come out of working for them five years down the line? Will you have enjoyed your time there? Will you have grown as a developer?
"Creating something meaningful" only only really affects the lives of employees inasmuch as they now have something out there in the world that they can point to and brag about. That's not really as important to most people as you'd think.
The ones that it is important to? Too busy being entrepreneurs. :)