Facebook…erhm Meta.. makes cool and useful services. My uneducated guess is about 20% of their efforts go to delivering something compelling to the user. The remainder goes to figure out how they can manipulate, coerce, farm, and monetize said users. The problem is the level of perversion they have done and justified due to the need to monetize.

I had a guy pitch me on Comcast's tech office once.

He said you get to work on cool stuff, but it never actually gets deployed. And that everyone hates your employer, but you'll never get fired.

I definitely see how "work on cool stuff" + "don't worry about getting fired" could be pretty cool, if you don't have any investment in really creating things that are used.

That value proposition of stability is a high for those that have a life outside of work. Why does a typical engineer optimize for leetcode and FAANG salaries? Because they have shit else to establish self respect.

That seems unnecessarily harsh.

I've known a lot of people who have a thriving life outside of work, but are also very driven and value their work highly.

Essentially its ok to sell your soul for 40 hours (likely more) a week as long as it allows you to pursue your own interests outside of work.