A lot of the time, the work we do doesn’t get much recognition, and barely gets seen.But maybe it still helped in some small way.
Thinking about that makes it feel a little less disappointing.
That is true for any organisation or any person that's different from you. Companies ain't special here.
> The reason it isn't paying you is that its main goal is to make more money than it spends.
Making money is the main goal of many companies, but not all.
Almost any goals of any organisation or any person can be furthered by having more money rather than less. So everyone has a similar incentive to pay you less. (This includes charities. All else being equal, if you can pay your workers less, you can hand out more free malaria nets.) But as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44179846 points out, they pay you, so that you work for them.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence