> But I "believed in" them enough to know they were doing things I found interesting and could afford to pay me.

I think "I found interesting" might be not be quite right for most people either. If it's serving a need for the people that pay for it, or you think it can be serving a need if it continues in the direction it's going, I think that's the important part in "believing in it".

I've done work for companies where I was able to convince myself of this for short periods, but eventually had to accept the harm was greater than the good (payday loan companies. Used appropriately they aren't horrible, but they do everything in their power to make sure they aren't used appropriately), and that's when even though the work was interesting it became hard to stomach, for me at least.

Ultimately, if the service or product you're working to support is one people appreciate and come away appreciating afterwards, I think most people won't have a problem "believing in it". It might not be interesting though, so it's entirely possible believing in it isn't sufficient to keep people working there in itself.

Don't know about OP, but for me it doesn't have to be something "amazing and world changing", but it should be something that makes a positive impact on the society.

For example I work in healthcare and I think that the software that I write positively affects both doctors and patients, even though it is not about a world-changing novel idea. If I were to work for Meta though (just to make an example), I wouldn't be thrilled at the idea that I am optimizing for addiction, and even if I weren't working on the core business of the company, but instead on the latest and greatest web framework, I would be still working for a company that (in my opinion) totals a negative contribution to our society. The motivation is not the same for me.

Now, in the case of Web3 and crypto, people are usually either on the "the best thing since the discover of fire" camp, or in the "a wasteland of frauds and Ponzi schemes", so in fact the dichotomy between "believing in it" and "despising it" is not really wrong...

If you define "believe in" as "thinking they were doing something amazing and world-changing," sure. If you mean it in the more normal sense of "Think it is a worthwhile endeavor that has a reasonable chance of success," the distinction you're drawing here doesn't seem very salient.

As a senior engineer / tech lead / whatever, I have to work with product people and think heavily in the product's terms. I have to imitate various user personas, their needs, their perspectives.

If I'm trying to think on a a user's behalf, and the question "what the user might want from the service to further their best interest?" for me has answers like "discontinue immediately and uninstall the app", I can't work on making new features and improving user retention. I'm not psychopathic enough.

> space between believing in something and despising that thing.

Correct. It's the spectrum between wasting time because the business will never work, and actively and consciously helping people do things that I would rather help them stop doing. None of this spectrum is interesting to me to work on, except maybe if that were the only way to secure my family's physical survival. I try to strategically stay far from circumstances like those.

It's not the technology, of course. I have interviewed with a company that used a blockchain to track something like carbon credits and trees planted. Most web3 companies try to peddle tokens though.

> nervous about touching water when trying to swim for the first time is healthy and rational

I agree about the first time, and maybe the N-th time, until you're comfortable in it. But your goal has to be to get comfortable in water, and to master the almost-submerged motion that is swimming. If you plan to swim in the long term while avoiding contact with water and staying on the shore, it's likely unrealistic.