Yes and no, respectively.<p>Happy employees require 1) a mission they find internally compelling and 2) a management environment that they feel allows them to do meaningful work towards that mission.<p>1 is usually pretty fixed. If you sign on because you want to change finance, or help people find apartments, or whatever else, your emotional situation re: that topic will likely be pretty stable over ~years.<p>2 changes quickly and often. Projects that an employee feels are important get killed. Things that seem silly get prioritized. Accolades are distributed in ways that seem unfair, etc.<p>So, the parent&#x27;s quote could be rewritten more clearly as:<p>People don&#x27;t leave because they stop caring about a company&#x27;s mission. They leave because they lose faith that the company infrastructure is capable of letting them contribute to&#x2F;achieve that mission.<p>Enormously complex topic. 3 employees at a company may have 3 different slightly different takes on a company&#x27;s mission at the start, and feel totally different about its trajectory down the line.<p>---<p>As for your 2nd point about staying under a manager you like at a company you don&#x27;t care about, personally, I find myself incapable of doing it. I don&#x27;t have to be doing the most impactful company premise in the world (soylent? watsi?) but I at least have to be working on problems I find highly interesting. I&#x27;ve left some companies whose people, culture, and processes I loved, because ultimately their problem space just didn&#x27;t keep me up at night.<p>On the contrary, I can tolerate a much more hostile management environment when its offset by work so personally meaningful that I&#x27;d be doing it in my spare time even if I weren&#x27;t an employee.