I always break jobs down into four factors:

Knowledge – Am I building skills or knowledge that have value outside this specific company (algorithms, math, systems design, etc.), or am I just learning a bunch of internal trivia that won’t matter anywhere else?

Benefits – Financial compensation and benefits can make up for a surprising amount of dissatisfaction.

People – Do I like the people I work and interact with? Do we get along and have anything in common?

Laudability – Is the work noble, meaningful, or interesting? Highly dependent on the individual. For me, it’s education; for others, it might be science, healthcare, yadda yadda yada.

I'm usually reasonably satisfied if a job meets two out of the four.

    >… when people say “culture,” what does that really mean?

I think of an organization's or a team's culture as the undocumented practices that the org or team all follow. Just to name a few…

1. Interpersonal interaction styles

2. Communication styles

3. What's incentivized

4. What behaviors are acceptable/unacceptable …

You could have a "blame culture". Teams like that are incentivized to point the finger and look for convenient scapegoats.

You could have a culture that incentivizes "Psychological safety". Meaning people are allowed to speak up and disagree with stuff without fear of being fired.

You could have a "dysfunctional" culture. One example being where the norm is for individual members to convince other members that they are the smartest person in the room.

    > What actually makes people hate their jobs over time? Is it pay/people/culture?

That's bound to be unique for each person. But it's not unreasonable to guess that _in general_ what ultimately makes people hate their job is…

  • A person and their team value different things

An employee might place a high value on respectfulness. But a coworker can't even spell the word.

Another employee might consider software development as a "craft" and take pride in what they deliver. But the organization/team values "move fast and break things…tech debt be damned!" above everything else.