>doing meaningful work and working with great people
overall this is true, but its as rare as a finding an employee like the one in the article to accept accept below market rates and less than stellar benefits.
The irony is that all the places I've found where you do meaningful work ALSO pay well. Some of them do just pay high cash comp with minimal benefits, though, and some startups do large equity (1-5%) with less cash comp for a year or so (80k/yr vs. 120-150k).
(The exception was government contracting, where it was >$250k/yr but the most meaningless work, 3 year old broken Dell laptops, and generally horrible.)
overall this is true, but its as rare as a finding an employee like the one in the article to accept accept below market rates and less than stellar benefits.