A company's mission is not an individual's mission. I personally would never hire an engineer whose main pursuit is money or promotions. These are the laziest engineers that exist and are always a liability.
Everyone is the chairman of the board of their lives, with a fiduciary duty to their shareholder, namely themselves. You can decide to hire only employees who either believe in mission over pay or who are willing to mouth the words, but you will absolutely miss out on good employees.
I remember defending a hiring candidate who had said he got into his specialty because it paid better than others. We hired him and he was great, worth his pay. No one else on the hiring team could defend a bias against someone looking out for themselves.
And I would never work for someone with such a paranoid suspicion of the motives of their employees, who doesn’t want to take any responsibility in their employees’ professional growth, and who doesn’t want to pay them what they’re worth.
