[gaius]

But why would I want to do all these things for the benefit of a toxic organization? That system feeds off people who try to do the right thing, then it chews them up and spits them out. In fact it relies on there being people who will do the right thing even tho' it means extra stress and no extra reward. Organizations like that deserve to collapse under their own weight.

[dasil003]

Same reason millionaires want more money: it's about the game.

[nl]

Not quite.

I read it as a strategy for firewalling off a section of the organisation from the useless people, which enables you do enjoy your work.

[gaius]

... For the benefit of the management tier above that allowed the toxic situation to develop in the first place. You can bet that you won't see any of the profits yourself, and they're laughing all the way to the bank, they took their eyes off the ball and still scored.

[nl]

It's not as simple as that.

Firstly, money isn't everything for most people. Enterprise work can be interesting and rewarding, because you deal with problems that are quite different to the consumer space. If you can escape the toxic situations somehow, that is enough for many people

Secondly, enterprise work can be rewarding financially. Contract rates of $70-$150/hour mean that you make pretty decent money very reliably. Those rates let you hire pretty talented people, and if you can firewall them off from the wider issues in the company you can do pretty good work.