Maybe 15 years ago I would've agreed because there was genuine innovation in tech where you could actually be passionate and proud of building it. "I want to work here because I want this product to exist" could've been a legitimate thing to say back in the day.

Nowadays with every market being saturated and tech being a race to the bottom quality-wise, what's there to be passionate about and/or proud of? Do you think people are proud of building yet another OpenAI wrapper or advertising surface? If they actually are proud of those I would feel pretty sad for them.

Also, the majority of landlords don't take payment in "passion" or "pride" and rents have skyrocketed since the glory days of tech.

i think it's still out there, but yeah, you have to wade through an amazing amount of poop to find it. insert here the joke about someone digging through the muck in a horse stable and the punch line is "there's got to be a pony in here somewhere."