It would be strange for a programmer as an employee to care about the business or the product, given that he has to work for a living and has no stake in any of it. It seems to be a common misunderstanding, unicorn employees that want to care about the business don't actually exist, but a lot are willing to lie about it of course.
How do you make something better if you dont give a shit?
It's not only not strange, its pretty much a job requirement to recognize your job is the stake in the business.
Every single programming job I have had has required me to care enough about the product and the business to understand, interpret, and implement things that the business wanted but couldnt fully articulate.
That being said, if the business wants you to be both the business and the programmer, they have a broken system and are failing to manage properly
Having a job is not even close to a "stake in the business". If you want me to act like I have a stake in the business, give me a stake in the business.
To be clear, that's stock with dividends and voting rights. Something like democratic control over the workplace would do wonders for morale. Then managers answer to the body of employees as a whole, not the "boss."
Sounds like you should start a business.
You absolutely have a stake in terms of your paycheck, is it as great a stake as you would like? No.
Are plenty of people happy with that kind of stake? Absolutely.
Do you need to get paid in stock to get paid well? No, in fact in many cases its gambling with market forces you simply cannot control.
I dont mean to say you should burn your life for a business, but if you simply dont care because "I am a programmer and I dont need to" imho your general effectiveness is going to be low, your skill progression isnt going to be fast, and your chance of getting hired somewhere with equity that isnt a shitshow is also low.
You absolutely have a stake in terms of your paycheck [...] Are plenty of people happy with that kind of stake? Absolutely.
That "stake" is a product of how good the employer is relative to others, how hard it is to find another job and the job market for the position in general. I don't begrudge people for being happy with that. I am one of them. But a first order approximation of this "stake" can be summed up as "no stake."
Sounds like you should start a business.
Whether the parent poster should start a business is irrelevant to whether or not it's bullshit to ask/expect employees to be motivated as if they have a larger material stake in the business than they do.
First of all equity doesnt mean stake, you can absolutely trade equity for cash, and your payroll can absolutely be a large stake in the business.
What it does mean is that your stake is not directly 1:1 tied to the business success. This goes back to gambling, if you are the house and take money on every deal, you have a stake in deals continuing to happen.
You are right that your pay is based on many factors, and so would your equity.
So I disagree with your summation, and I think its improper to pretend that equity is the best way to get paid and to care about what you are building (especially when you believe in a product but risk is high.)
To your second point, you can argue (and I think successfully) that having more of a direct stake in a business will increase your personal investment, but that is literally the concept of ownership.
If you think the current practices are bullshit I do believe starting your own highly successful business is the correct approach; you get what you want and if you are successful enough, the industry will change behind you.
I did not say "you should work as if you have a greater investment than you do" during any part of my comments, simply that if you dont care about the product you will not produce quality work.
If someone isnt paying you what you are worth, you are not going to produce quality work.
The point of the stock isn't selling it for cash, it's having a share in the profits and more importantly voting rights at the company level. Are plenty of people "happy" being wage labor? Maybe. Certainly compared to some of the alternatives - unemployment, welfare, homelessness, lack of health care access. Is it really anyone's heart's desire to sell their labor for a paycheck, though?
Start a business... I've thought about it. If only it were so easy. Even if I did, that solves the problem for me, but not anyone else.
Well, you do have to give a shit. But giving a shit about doing a good, honest job, is not the same as believing the business or the product. It's like this saying - one should be able to understand an opinion without believing in it. Similarly, one can put their best, honest effort working on a product while at the same time believing the product is generally pointless and waste of space on the market.
(Of course if one is deeply cynical about a business, one should consider changing jobs - but that's not always easy or possible; in fact, most people are in position where they need the money, whether they actually believe in their employer or not.)
I think its quite hard to do that for a long period though, if you truly dont believe in the product and are only working for the paycheck, apathy is going to set in fairly fast.
If you can find pieces of it you can be proud of and care about, you can maintain sanity.
