About 1.5 years ago, I left my job. I had started work believing I was working for a cause. And along the way, the pressures to perform based on corporate or management KPIs mattered. Performance appraisals started to take hold. What your colleagues started to initiate matters as a benchmark. There were actions that my bosses explicitly wanted me to take so I took them. I ended up working for a boss instead of a cause.
It could have been different but at what costs? Working for a cause does take its toll on one’s career, popularity with colleagues and bosses. Whereas working for a boss promises better bonuses, relationships, recognition. After all, you might have parents to feed, expectations of friends and family to meet. But the model worker seemed to me a lot like a mediocre one.
Working for a cause to me is the only way to work contrary to what we have been brought up to believe. Too much of our education system is around the industrial complex and more about obedience or conformity than to think critically and independently. They might fit the needs of the masses, but how about you?