Yeah, I think that the quality of work (skill + conscientiousness), and the motivation for doing the work, are two separate things.

Off-the-cuff, three groups:

1. There are people who are motivated by having a solid income, yet they take the professionalism seriously, and do skilled rock-solid work, 9-5. I'd be happy to work with these people.

2. There are other people who are motivated by having a solid or more-than-solid income, and (regardless of skill level), it's non-stop sprint performance art, gaming promotion metrics, resume-driven development, practicing Leetcode, and hopping at the next opportunity regardless of where that leaves the project and team.

3. Then there's those weirdos who are motivated by something about the work itself, and would be doing it even if it didn't pay well. Over the years, these people spend so much time and energy on the something, that they tend to develop more and stronger skills than the others. I'd be happy to work with these people, so long as they can also be professional (including rolling up sleeves for the non-fun parts), or amenable to learning to be professional.

Half-joke: The potential of group #3 is threatening to sharp-elbowed group #2, so group #2 neutralizes them via frat gatekeeping tactics (yeah-but-what-school-did-you-go-to snobbery, Leetcode shibboleth for nothing but whether you rehearsed Leetcode rituals, cliques, culture fit, etc.).

Startups might do well to have a mix of #3 and #1, and to stay far away from #2. But startups -- especially the last decade-plus of too many growth investment scams -- are often run by affluent people who grew up being taught #2 skills (for how you game your way into prestigious school, aggressively self-interested networking and promoting yourself, etc.).

I’m in group 3 for sure.

The hardest part of any job I’ve had is doing the not so fun parts (meetings, keeping up with emails, solidly finishing work before moving on to something new)

You're on the nominally right Web site. #1 is engineers, #2 is cancer, and #3 is hackers (possibly also engineers). :)

The problem being that interviews are often more likely to favor 2 over 1.

As I progressed, I've learned I am more valuable for the company working on things I am interested in. Delegate the boring stuff to people that don't care. If it is critical to get it done right, do it yourself.

This wasn’t possible for me at my last job at all.

0 autonomy, the only people who got recognition were those who self promoted on internal blogs, etc.

I would definitely do this job even if it paid half as well. Nothing else is nearly as interesting to me, and I’ve tried quite a range.

#3 is the old school hacker, "a high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die" :-)

Blend of #1 & #3 here. Without the pay, I don't think I'd muster the patience for dealing with all the non-programming BS that comes with the job. So I'd have found something else with decent pay, and preferably not an office job. Sometimes I wish I'd taken that other path. I have responsibilities outside work, so I'm rarely putting in more than 40 hours. Prior to family commitments, I had side projects and did enough coding outside work. I still miss working on hobby video game projects. But I do take the professionalism seriously and will do the dirty work that has to be done, even if means cozying up to group #2 to make things happen for the sake of the project.