> I'd slightly modify that to say that what they were doing was more important to them than status - which isn't the same as saying they didn't care about statu

> I'd slightly modify that to say that what they were doing was more important to them than status - which isn't the same as saying they didn't care about status at all. Agree. I refer to this as meaningful work. It can be difficult to describe to others why it is important, but it is important to them at that time. The joy of such work is that status does not weigh upon it as much as other endeavors. I suspect some of this success reverse-engineering efforts sometimes runs ramshod over non-extrinsic motivations because they're not as apparent, especially to the authors of such pieces.