Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait.... "apathy" is rare? I thought that is the step where most of us have been hanging out. I have been waiting for the "real burnout" to kick in when I dropped another level or two.
It depends on what you mean by apathy. I'd look up the definition for you, but honestly I can't be bothered. Hyuk hyuk. Anyway: I am incredibly productive in my ops job, where I feel like the platforms I support are largely meaningless and do nothing but drive efficiency to achieve nothing important for no one in particular. I feel I am driving 'value creation' for people whose wealth is already immeasurable, in a wa…
Are you talking about the job itself, or the thing being produced?
I don't care about the products my company makes, and I think that's a good thing, at least for me. When I've cared deeply about the actual thing being made in the past, that led to emotional attachment, which sucks when your idea doesn't win. It also led me to tend to bias effort towards my own particular hobby-horse, instead of what the data or the plan told me.
Now, the job itself is different - I care what activities I spend my time doing and who I do it with. Make me do things that bore me, and I will eventually do a bad job, because I'm a bit undisciplined. And shitty or incompetent people will chase me off faster than anything else except obvious management disfunction.