The best teams I've worked on were ones where we managed to locally have pride by feeling like a little team who cared about each other's work and occasional sacrifice (being on-call, etc) and it felt like a little family. As soon as further-away managers start reaching in and "fiddling" with it, from their prideless vantage post where everything is just a system to accomplish quarterly goals, the family-feeling fades away and it goes back to soul-crushing pointlessness.
There are certain very high-paying companies where the above doesn't apply. But they have to pay high salaries to retain staff who _do_ give 100% every day.
I believe, strongly, that this reverses the cause and effect. No one wants to be a cog in a dysfunctional machine; and the sheer density of dysfunctional machines in our society has induced a renaissance of individualism. Its a reasonable response; you can't trust the machine to reliably arrive at the correct outcomes, but you can trust yourself.
The biggest reason why I believe so strongly that this cause and effect is reversed correlates toward human nature, which has always angled toward social organization. Some philosophers would argue that there's nothing more fulfilling than being a part of an organization larger than the individual; taking any form from marriage and starting a family, to organized religion, government service, or capitalistic corporations.
Individualism isn't a symptom of maturity; its a symptom of systemic dysfunction.
And even despite all that engagement, the "passion" doesn't make you save you from layoffs. Even Epic in all its billions made from Fortnite money decided it didn't care. Nothing is sacred. I don't personally mind some inefficiences and the occasional incompetence (though, in games there's rarely IME intentional incompetence. Of course a designer won't understand performance impacts on a game, and a programmer won't necessarily have the best UX for artist tools in a first pass). But companies some 20 years ago at least pretended to have loyalty and reward tenure and that's all but gone now. Why put your heart into something that you know will break it 2-3 years down the line? or 18[1]?
I don’t accept that all of those people intrinsically are lazy morons - maybe some or even most are, but a lot of people get that attitude metaphorically beaten into them by lazy and disengaged coworkers. I know this for a fact because I’ve witnessed it happen to many people as they mature as workers and also noticed it in myself. I can’t prove it’s not related to age, or position in life (eg a young single person eager to prove themselves at work, vs someone who prioritizes family) but I know firsthand that there are at least some experienced workers with families, responsibilities, and hobbies that manage to stay focused and engaged for a long time.
I expect some pushback against this, but I really do think this phenomenon - whatever you want to call it - is the basis for ageism. It frankly is a real, observable thing that life has a way of beating the passion out of people into a point they see their job as clock-in, clock-out. It doesn’t happen to everyone of course. One of the reasons I love working with interns and recent college grads is that, despite their lack of skills or knowledge in many areas, they mostly haven’t gone through that transformation yet.