There is nothing wrong with being motivated by both doing excellent work and being well compensated for it. If the motivation is purely money, sure, I see a problem. But you're painting both sets with the same brush.
It sounds like Box dude from the story had a very cool experience building a company from 50 people to 1,000. I'm sorry all he thinks he got out of it are his stock options.
But what are you going to do with that experience you have gained. To go back to the romance option, if you can't get someone else into the bed, romance can become very sour.
I too see that the Box guy got more value than just the earnings on the options. But that more value is largely theoretical unless he can turn around and put what he learned into practice (and get compensated for it).
An interesting example is Kingston, a memory company. In 1996, after the bulk of the company was bought by SoftBank, Kingston's founders gave $100m in bonuses to the 550 employees. It's a shame that doesn't happen more.