The following is an excerpt from an article written by Daniel Vassallo discussing his decision to leave his 500k job at Amazon and our relationship with intrinsic motivation:

For the first couple of years my motivation was off the charts. I was mostly working with another person on an internal tool, and there was very little scrutiny around it. It was a time where I had a lot of independence in choosing how to work and what to work on—at least relative to more recent years. It was just me and the other person improving this thing, talking to users, releasing updates, testing it, and everything else. Whatever we felt was important, we generally got to do. We did the best work we could for its own sake and we were mostly self-directed.

The last couple of years, however, were quite different. I was leading the most important project in the history of my department, with many stakeholders and complex goals. What I could do was always bounded by my ability to convince all the people involved that it was the best way to navigate our goals.