I want to talk about something that makes me professionally uncomfortable: Missionaries vs Mercenaries.

I’ve worked for a few larger tech firms over my career and have experienced both sides of this coin rather viscerally. Before I get into how these two concepts play into the larger organization, let’s take a look at what they are:

• Missionaries - People who take the job because they enjoy the work. Missionaries aren’t in it for the money or prestige, they’re in it for the work itself, the challenge, because they believe in the vision. Missionaries largely thrive on intrinsic rewards.
• Mercenaries - People who take the job because of the extrinsic rewards, aka: They’re in it for the money/prestige. The work and mission don’t really matter, they’re gonna do a good job because it pays well and they want to keep that gravy-train rolling.

I’m gonna try to keep this post generic, if you want to compare this article to my Resume and draw conclusions about which company is which, feel free. Just know that my intent isn’t to disparage or promote one company over another. If given the opportunity, I wouldn’t work for either company today. One other note, this post talks about money, a lot. I want you to know I understand that having this “debate” at all comes from a place of extreme privilege. A lot of people would be lucky to have a “problem” like this.

The missionary company was a weird place. Pretty cult-like, but that mostly resulted in better experiences for the users. The job paid very well compared to all jobs, but was actually pretty poor compared to other tech jobs of the same caliber. People successful at this company are hired as Staff/Principal roles at other firms. Ultimately, the people that were there were underpaid for the job they were doing.

This was by design. According to longtime employees and leadership, the “Missionary vs Mercenary” problem was “solved” by under-paying. It ensured the people at the company weren’t in it for the money. If they wanted money, they could find it easier at other companies. The people here were in it for the mission, for the customers, for the work. They couldn’t be in it for the money, the money wasn’t there.

This was bullshit, I knew it, everyone around me knew it. The whole “Missionaries vs Mercenaries” argument was an excuse to pay people less than they were worth. Here’s the part that makes me uncomfortable though: It worked.

It’s gross to look back and admit this, but, yeah, it worked. The people I worked with at missionary company largely didn’t care about the paycheck. It was hard work full of challenging problems, burnout, sociopathic leadership, and anti-employee rhetoric and systems. But people stayed because the work was so engrossing. Years later, I’m still referencing old projects and lessons learned there. I’m still friends with many people I met, and they’re still among the very best people I’ve ever worked with.

I ended up leaving missionary company to work at mercenary company. Mostly due to burn-out, but it helped that mercenary company offered to double my salary, give me unlimited time off, and allow me to work from wherever I wanted. At this time, I never looked kindly on the “Missionary vs Mercenary” debate. It was a line given by company leadership to justify underpaying their workforce. It was bullshit, right?

Working for mercenary company was extremely enlightening for all the wrong reasons. Within the first month, I understood what happens to companies that fall far into that mercenary spectrum. People were paid extremely well and **the benefits were outlandish. It was pretty insane, comparatively. I was working less and getting paid more than I ever had before. I wondered how this could be sustainable. Then the honeymoon period wore off and I realized: It wasn’t.

The company was suffering. Everything around me was lazily constructed. Hardly anyone took pride in their work, many people openly despised what they were building, but the work continued. No one fought for lower tech-debt, no one strove to change the company, leadership was completely absent. The excuse was “Mercenary company is a grass-roots type of place, we rely on teams to set roadmaps and set direction”. This meant that the leaf-node teams ended up running things without any sense of collaboration, wider vision, or cohesive direction. Teams largely built what was easy without any sense of what the company or customers needed. They built purely to justify their own existence and that’s it.

This begs the question: Why have leadership at all if they’re just going to bury their heads in the sand? The company would have been better off without any senior leadership at all. The people running the company were also caught up in the mercenary-centric “rest and vest” cycle.

This type of thinking was a constant problem for me. I was interested in good engineering, building sustainable solutions to real problems. For the most part, the people around me were interested in playing politics to justify their paychecks. No one gave a shit about the customer. No one gave a shit about the product. Everyone gave a shit about the stock price. The mercenaries were running the show and no one in leadership was inconvenienced enough to stop them.

Mercenary company was directionless and failing. Instead of taking a hard look at what their customers wanted or needed, they ended up choosing to build something easier. A shortcut to more money. They chose poorly because they didn’t care about the work and they didn’t care about their customers. They cared about the paycheck. So they built the easiest thing to justify that paycheck.

Here’s the part that makes me uncomfortable: Mercenary company did the “right thing” by paying people well and offering stellar benefits, but it attracted exactly the wrong type of person. It attracted vultures and burn-out refugees (👋). The vultures ended up running the show and destroying the company from the inside-out. Missionary company did the “wrong thing” and made excuses to pay people poorly, but it attracted the right type of person. It attracted people who wanted to build better experiences for customers. Largely, those people are chewed up and spat out after the company gets what they can out of them before significant burnout sets in.