I'm an engineer at a massive media and technology company. What keeps me motivated is the freedom to experiment and develop ideas on my own, outside of the iteration's expected deliverables. We have a very open culture, where engineers can spin up production servers with the click of a button, deploy things, and tear it all down without interacting with a single approval chain or ticketing system. So that's really it outside of pay... Freedom to learn and experiment on your own is a really powerful motivator for me.