I'm obviously not saying that you should purposefully treat employees like garbage. The parent comment's tone was as if a business needs to beg for workers, and to make sure that programmers are kept happy with fancy and trendy technology. This is what's toxic and infantilizing. We are all a part of a business for one purpose - to continue or increase the success of the business.

For me, a job has to be reciprocal. I take my salary very seriously, and I reflect on what I've done in the past pay period. I want to make sure that I've provided that amount of value in that amount of time. Of course my feelings are important, I'm not going to contribute to an environment that doesn't reciprocate the value that I provide with some combination of compensation and gratitude.

My point is, I hear a lot of programmers talk about the feelings of the business with disdain, and frankly complete entitlement. I've seen plenty of engineers not contribute their fair share value to the business side - they think they earn their living by showing up and completing a couple of tickets a week, when in reality the business needs are much more demanding. The ideal working relationship is reciprocal - both parties get some satisfying bit of value out of it.