I think the root cause of this boils down to one thing: Smart engineers have been screwed over time and time again by startups who used their talents and didn't reward them.
I've known many early, foundational employees work themselves dead only to get a meager payday while founders and executives (always hired when the risk is gone and who are always given more stock and money) get rich. You don't have to look far on HN to see similar stories.
So enough people experience that/read that and say, "If I'm not going to be rewarded, why not make more money?". So they do this. After all, the only people who could pull this off are the same types of people who would be those essential early engineers.
I'm sure there is some aspect of greed related to this, but I would posit that people who are driven to do this are doing this (deep down) because they feel they want to get back at a class of people who have done them wrong before.
I've known many early, foundational employees work themselves dead only to get a meager payday while founders and executives (always hired when the risk is gone and who are always given more stock and money) get rich. You don't have to look far on HN to see similar stories.
So enough people experience that/read that and say, "If I'm not going to be rewarded, why not make more money?". So they do this. After all, the only people who could pull this off are the same types of people who would be those essential early engineers.
I'm sure there is some aspect of greed related to this, but I would posit that people who are driven to do this are doing this (deep down) because they feel they want to get back at a class of people who have done them wrong before.