[derealized]

I have intrisic motivation, I just like what I work with and like to do a good job. I often have high standards for my work.

What changed? It's very tiresome to swim against the current. You can only care about so many things that your team doesn't until you get tired of barking at the tree.

At my new job it's the same, as usual, but I'm not forcing things and just getting with the flow. If I can, I'll suggest some ocasional improvements but if it falls on deaf ears, I'll let it go.

[agumonkey]

I just suffered the same fate. There's a thick fog of absurdity in teams where people who lacks knowledge, drive and desire to do great work waste time on nothing, bragging about nothing, while slowing everything you try down (even when done with a wide care about the team operations in general) [0].

I lost the will to fight even though I think about it on a daily basis but now I just coast along. My issue is that time passes and I don't want to live my life like this so I keep dreaming of a way to sustain myself and then do better work for better purposes.

[0] it's a common pattern in groups, I've seen that in many different jobs.. it can be jealousy, old age fatigue making you sour, mob think, lack of communication but in the end, there's a natural tendency to create friction. It's the complete opposite of childhood playtime.. where everybody had one goal : maximize fun together in some game (Intrinsic motivation 100%). Adult life makes this very rare.

[automatoney]

This is so relatable. I was looking forward to working on projects that I cared about more, but then when I got there I realized how much energy actually caring takes.

Especially in terms of emotional investment - I've decided to save my passion more for personal projects instead of spending it all where it won't necessarily go anywhere.

[LargeTomato]

I know how you feel. It leads to burnout. People don't value what you're doing because it's not on their radar. Maybe I'm misaligned with the company, maybe they're unaware of the scope of what's going on.

I'm at a new company now. I care but I keep my passion elsewhere. I can't keep getting burned out so I've just fallen in line with everyone else. People are more receptive to it. I spent my time drafting emails instead of commits. I make 4 tickets instead of one mega ticket. It is what it is and I'm happier for it.

[agumonkey]

I noticed that in teams without high pressure or high leadership, the tendency is minimal effort in all dimensions. People don't want to try.. maybe it's seen as being an idiot, or ambitious i don't know, but I often see a mediocre spirit and people bailing out at 5pm because the job is not worth staying (not that i encourage staying late).

[raybb]

At those jobs were you working on OSS? Curious how OSS maintainers that aren't at big companies find community and talk to each other.

[agumonkey]

Good point. I got into a few discord groups about that. But I've seen some issues, everybody is very motivated.. but about incompatible things. So it doesn't work well (at least so far).

To the point I was investigating the value of money (which I often despise).. because all of a sudden, people collaborate a bit more when there's a stupid material advantage in the end.