It’s a transaction. The goals of the company and employee parties is to maximize their own gains with as little effort as possible. The moral imperative argument is very dubious, and sounds one-side to further the gains of the company party at the expense of additional energy from the employee. Raising matters of social change as if the employee should have some gut wrenching “come to Jesus” because “they’re so lucky” relative to global social and market changes is a bunch of smoke and mirrors to, again, unevenly place the gains from the employee-business relationship on the company. Business is only a transaction; maximize gains for minimal effort, between all parties.

That “million people would kill for a chance” to be at a FAANG is not the employee’s problem anymore. The moment the company extended the job offer already created “a million” job applicants who didn’t get an offer. Behaving in a way that suggests continually begging “to stay in” just to get to create the net gains for other people, the investors and top management, deserves a therapy session on personal self-worth, which is a personal problem not a business matter.

Now, as for the matter of personally going above and beyond, that’s actually a separate matter - no need for emotional entanglement of the the business reality and personal reality. If the employee wishes, as they’ve expressed, to go above what is satisfying the business (given they’ve reported no management has complained) then by all means, find more work with outside teams within the company, tactfully speak to the manager about the concern, or just leave and start a new job or venture.

The moral guilt argument over the transactional relationship between an employee and the business, though, is at best naive, and at worse unevenly extracting more energy from the employee than the business. If the company has continued to pay the employee without complain, that’s their own moral dilemma for allowing it.