| I disagree with you. I spent most of my career in a great company that is privately owned (famous billionaire.) The company pays extremely well but does not provide any sort of "legal ownership" as you describe. Still, I felt massive ownership of stuff I've .. well .. "owned" and I benefited financially and emotionally from it. I am no longer at the company but I have pride in what I've built there and the fact that it still exists and generates tremendous value. On the financial side of things, people (leadership) think of certain people as owning/driving certain things, because we do. So even though I am not the legal owner of platform X, you go get to have some good reviews for having created and nurtured that thing which is now creating goodness. After I left the company, my wife and I were in the south of Argentina on an ice trek. Started talking to a fellow trekker, who turns out what in finance. I told him that I used to be in finance and had built systems X and Y - and he was like "you're the guy?! I use those things every day, they are game changing in our industry." That felt very good. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have a chunk of equity in that company but it doesn't matter - I am still very happy in how "ownership mentality" worked out in terms of $ and pride. To be clear it takes two to tango. I'd never operate like this in a place that didn't reward me for operating this way. |
It is taken a bit for granted, developers' massive ability to impact the workflow, and thus morale, for a significant amount of people; for better or for worse.
Knowing my 15 minute coffee HTML exercise can save 500+ people 10+ minutes daily, with a near instant feedback loop, was about as resolved as I could had been.
It plays into the need to be needed, the inverse of the fear of being replaced, the most basic innate thought in our psyche's.