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Comment by thedevilslawyer | Hacker News Reader

> if I am going to use my energy in pursuit of the company goals, what is in it for me?

Salary? Isn't the above definition of employment?

They all offer a Salary, so what makes me stick around (and want _this_ company to do better)?

A sense of belonging to a social group. With anything from families, to local sports teams, to nation states, humans have a natural (and quite rational) desire for their own (current) group to succeed. This desire for belonging, and often 'identity', is quite powerful and it typically requires some really bad circumstances for a person to decide to switch groups.

Not everyone sees their company as their group. Companies like to talk about how they treat their employees like family, but it's just a way to manipulate them into doing extra work. Once you see it for what it is, it's easy to start thinking of jobs as something you just do for a paycheck, not something you do because you care about what happens to the company.

But even if you don't care about the company as an entity, isn't it nicer to work for a company whose mission you care about and with peers why care about the same?

I would agree with it written like you just did but not like written before.

What I mean is that I really don't think of my co workers as family at all and any company actively trying to promote that is going to find me very annoyed with that. It's not my family. Don't force me into parties and such.

What I am looking for though is peers that care about doing a good job. I'm tired of working with people that don't know how to do their job. That don't care about clean code. That follow the letter of agile practices but not the spirit.

I couldn't care less about the mission. Every company I've been at so far has had a completely different domain and many of them I couldn't have cared less about.

I am not clear how does this logic work.

I belong to a social group that does barbeque and goes for beers. What would group succeed at if I go "above an beyond"?

Local sports groups dont win championships, most of the time they don't even compete. I struggle to find an example where this analogie hold.

>I belong to a social group that does barbeque and goes for beers. What would group succeed at if I go "above an beyond"?

Well, I suppose this would mean that instead of just being a passive participant, you go out of your way to look for that cool new pub that your friends might enjoy, or a way to make the hamburgers more juicy. You'd take some pride in your ability to provide this value to the group and enjoy the improved social standing of being 'the one who really knows this stuff', and of course just enjoying a better culinary experience overall.

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