If you care about the products, the emotional investment in your work might propel your income, which is the reason why you're working in the first place, so ostensibly a follow-on goal of that might be to raise your income.
The result of not caring shows over time and companies that operate like this tend to fall behind and become obsolete.
I’m not in SV so maybe the situation is different there
I think most folks want to care about their jobs and the default is having a healthy level of investment. But especially in larger companies, it’s so easy to get burned by workplace politics or leaders just not seeing things the same way you do — just as you said.
Emotional disinvestment in work is a defensive mechanism. Honestly, it feels like the two camps in this thread are almost talking past each other. Yes, it’s good to be invested in your work — it’s better for your emotional/existential health and good for your career. On the other hand, investment being a net good for an employee is hugely dependent on your work environment.
While one could argue that the right thing to do if you feel you can’t be invested is to leave, and I generally agree that leaving is the only real long-term solution, there are also a million reasons why it might not in the short term.
It seems employers/supervisors can sniff out when you really care about something, so they use that as leverage to take advantage: heap on more responsibilities without accompanying pay increase, cut benefits, delay raises and promotions, etc. I really wish that weren’t the case, but as a person who’s passionate about my work, I’ve encountered it at every employer so far. Because of that, my career mobility has come entirely from job-hopping (which I’m not a fan of, but I need to pay the bills).
I’m not in SV so maybe the situation is different there