It's also absolutely possible to create an ugly monster of organization while cheering up your team with whatever we-change-the-world mission.
I think it's mostly the people who realized the company has deceived them, either in the company values/mission or the "pay for performance" scheme being BS.
There shouldn't be anything wrong with someone just doing their job for the salary. If their performance falls below what's expected (and clearly defined) for their level, then that's a problem. They shouldn't be penalized for not doing extra work when they aren't being rewarded.
Employers need to have compensation models that make sense too. I was once told I could get a promotion if I consistently worked 1 hour longer everyday. That's a 13% increase in hours for a 7% pay raise, for a position with more responsibility and expectations. These managers are either idiots or predators - anyone with an MBA should understand that's a shitty value proposition. Either way, they lost my respect.
That time-transaction mindset leads to exactly what you alluded to. "If I spend 13% more time here, I should get 13% more pay." What that doesn't say is if those 13% more hours were spend solving previously unsolved issues for the organization.
At least at my company, there's no differentiation. I do look for problems to solve. I have volunteered for extra roles and responsibilities that others didn't want. So why do the the people that are too smart to take on the role of application security champion for the team get promoted, while those security champions are passed over?
It seems you're describing that engagement is better than transactional mindset. That's true from the employer's perspective. That's only true from the employee's perspective if the employer is rewarding that.
The promotion I was talking about was brought up because I was already performing at the next level and was engaged- filling the lead role for the team the prior year and volunteering for additional projects. So yeah, the problems and work that I did would have gone undone or the team's work would be uncoordinated.
'That time-transaction mindset leads to exactly what you alluded to. "If I spend 13% more time here, I should get 13% more pay."'
To be real, that's the company's mindset that they should require you to work an extra 13% for a 7% raise, a rate decrease. The defined expectations for that next level are demonstratably higher. Arguably those higher expectations should be matched with a higher rate not a lower one. This concept is critical to understand
To put it bluntly, it's likely because the company doesn't value solving security as much as you may think they should. Solving problems is the same as solving valuable problems. If your goal is to be promotable, the problems you should solve should be as close as possible to the items your company values the most. Unfortunately, things like quality and security are not often valued until after things go wrong.
>The defined expectations for that next level are demonstratably higher.
Maybe I'm misreading this, but it sure seems like you're saying the performance for the higher pay is above and beyond what you're currently doing. Now whether those expectations are above what you're willing to do for the pay is a personal decision.
>That's only true from the employee's perspective if the employer is rewarding that.
This is probably where we fundamentally disagree. I think employees also benefit from being engaged. I've worked with people on assembly lines who were engaged with work that most would find monotonous. Instead of finding the work some tedium to be put up with, they actually found ways of getting personal fulfillment out of it. Same goes for low-status jobs elsewhere I've worked. I think your sentiment here is really what underlies unhappiness with work and you'd eventually find the same regardless of how handsomely you'd get paid.
Everything you've outlined at this point seems to indicate you work at a company that has a culture that is misaligned with what you're after. But you also aren't willing to take a risk of changing that. I doubt there are any silver bullets here that will make some magic happen without professional or personal risk.