Comment by scottyah

Most people nowadays are trying to optimize dollars for amount of work, without the dedication to the craft that was prevalent in previous generations. Large companies exacerbate this issue with all the layers of abstraction between a person's work and seeing the fruits of their labor.

There's way less pride from work: most people don't judge themselves too much on coworkers opinions since jobs are more changing, and it's unlikely for you to develop lifetime friendships with people who remain on your team.

Large corporations have too many regulations and HR policies to meaningfully pay based on performance, so there's little monetary incentive to be a strong performer.

You rarely get to see the product you've built get used in a meaningful way where someone would say something about it. It's likely that only one or two disinterested people quality check your work, and in this case you're either within spec (expected), "close enough to pass" (which wasn't getting reported), or failing miserably. The QA people hate getting the last one, but there's so much apathy these days from what I've seen because everyone just wants to be somewhere else doing something else.

So basically they've evolved to take away any dopamine one can get from pushing for quality from anyone but the most intrinsically motivated workers. They got rid of those people systemically and purposefully, and made a lot of money doing it.