You should be curious if you wan to progress within the company, or when changing jobs. Knowing significantly more than a job requires was propelling me quite effectively when I was younger. This slowed down when I started to spend less time on lateral research (aka "curiosity").

Look at the leveling guidelines of every major tech company. You don’t get promoted based on “knowing more”. You get promoted based on your ability to handle a larger scope of work, your “impact” and “dealing with ambiguity”. Different companies state it differently. But it all boils down to this.

As far as knowing more, the best way to get promotions raises and job opportunities is via networking, the ability to market yourself inside and outside of the company and soft skills.

Well the best way to make more money is to work for companies that pay more money - ie BigTech and adjacent [1] - and then learn the politics of promotions.

[1] Yes “grind leetCode and work for a FAANG” (tm r/cscareerquestions)

You can be curious and learn without gifting your energy to an uncaring entity

Eh idk, there are certainly wage-labor jobs I’ve seen that I could get really excited for and fall for it all.

Luckily though, none of those places would ever even look at my resume.

I weep for a world that is increasingly dominated by corporations, filled with people who are insistent (probably correctly) that they are being taken advantage of, doing the bare minimum, all resulting in an awful experience for everyone. Behind every support ticket that you just can't seem to get resolved, every horrible experience trying to use some product seemingly designed to drive you insane, behind every hare-brained decision that makes your life miserable for seemingly no reason, there's an apathetic worker who's taken your mindset. The impact of your efforts doesn't just affect your employer. We all work together to create the world. What kind of world do you want to live in?

I would hope there to be a healthy medium between "pulling all nighters" and "Do bare minimum" -- perhaps somewhere where we all try to do our best, but don't push ourselves too hard for no reason? I mean, that's more reasonable than imagining we'll one day overthrow our corporate overlords. Probably, I'm naive and idealistic. But I can't help but feel like the result of apathy is not satisfaction.