Yes and no, respectively. Happy employees require 1) a mission they find internally compelling and 2) a management environment that they feel allows them to do

Yes and no, respectively. 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. 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. 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. So, the parent's quote could be rewritten more clearly as: People don't leave because they stop caring about a company's mission. They leave because they lose faith that the company infrastructure is capable of letting them contribute to/achieve that mission. Enormously complex topic. 3 employees at a company may have 3 different slightly different takes on a company's mission at the start, and feel totally different about its trajectory down the line. --- As for your 2nd point about staying under a manager you like at a company you don't care about, personally, I find myself incapable of doing it. I don'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've left some companies whose people, culture, and processes I loved, because ultimately their problem space just didn't keep me up at night. On the contrary, I can tolerate a much more hostile management environment when its offset by work so personally meaningful that I'd be doing it in my spare time even if I weren't an employee.