And there's a difference between working with curing cancer or optimizing people wasting money in Candy Crush
Lots of people are just tuned out. And just don't care. With or without the comp.
>>It comes back to the work itself being interesting and whether you actually care about the field that you are working in.
There was this HR in a company here in India. She spoke at length about what attracted people to IT. Basically the employees wanted the realisation that they were creating tremendous value for the company, at the same time earning very high, and of course wanted work life balance. It was more or less impossible to achieve this. There aren't even enough projects of substance to make this happen. At least not for everyone, all the time. The net result was people tuned out, or just don't involve themselves enough at their work, or associate the outcome of their work at personal level.
Another additional factor how quickly the product/projects get shut down/eol in our industry. There are not many things that last for years that you take pride building them.
The thing is this is hard to pull off even for the actual founders. For starters its just hard, and tiring(and even pointless) to keep jumping over the ever increasing bar. Even more so when you are aging, know you are going to die and you are better off enjoying some of that money you earned, in the time and health that remains. At that point, you let things go on autopilot and begin to reduce engagement with your work.
The middle managers and employees you hire don't have incentive to even care this much. They are neither paid this high to care, nor have much to lose if they don't. Younger people show some passion because they wish to learn, but once they have enough of it, they go on the same mode.
To summarise. For people who made big money making a little extra doesn't matter all that much. People who don't get paid, don't even bother to try.