Having pushed a git commit says nothing about whether the person pushing it has enjoyed doing so intrinsically or as a means to an end.
Conversely, I’ve worked with very passionate technical people that seemingly couldn’t care less about their share value or even core business metrics (which is ok as long as there’s somebody around that can reel them in if they go off on a tangent and they let them), but just don’t like writing code.
I don’t think there’s a simple, non-gameable heuristic for determining whether somebody is intrinsically or extrinsically interested in the tech part of a tech company, or even the company’s core product.
There are people in technical leadership making decisions who are not capable of performing the most rudimentary of programming tasks like committing code.
This is a problem when the decision-maker doesn't act on advice from staff or is incapable of understanding the advice. Now give that leader an ego and abandon all hope.
There are many rungs to fall below "competent, but not passionate". In fact, I think I prefer my leaders to be dispassionate and competent.
Conversely, I’ve worked with very passionate technical people that seemingly couldn’t care less about their share value or even core business metrics (which is ok as long as there’s somebody around that can reel them in if they go off on a tangent and they let them), but just don’t like writing code.
I don’t think there’s a simple, non-gameable heuristic for determining whether somebody is intrinsically or extrinsically interested in the tech part of a tech company, or even the company’s core product.