When I first learned what my employer charges for 1 hour of my time, I was shocked and had to completely retool how I thought about these things...and that was knowing beforehand that, by law, we're not allowed to profit, and management had artificially lowered the engineering rate 2 years in row to make up for inefficiencies on the production side, keeping the organization competitive as a whole.
I've worked at two non-profits in the education sector and it's quite a change from having worked at for-profits, mostly in the IT sector. Things are way more relaxed (deadlines, SLAs, etc) and there's a constant worry about running out of funding so they make very conservative choices regarding buying equipment or using public clouds, for instance. I find it's hard to measure things as well when you're working with subjective metrics (e.g. are users "happy"? how do we define that?). Either that or these things didn't get communicated down the chain properly.
The mission is usually a big boost to your morale and engagement, but it's not the same for everyone.
I did, and I do, but to be sure, the organization I work for isn't a non-profit.
Our branch's projects manifest when: 1) data rights are on lockdown and can't legally be distributed; 2) data is limited, making acquisition risk too high; or 3) bids from the private sector far exceed what acquisition estimates suggest they should reasonably be. In general, these constraints tend to keep things both interesting and challenging.
When I first learned what my employer charges for 1 hour of my time, I was shocked and had to completely retool how I thought about these things...and that was knowing beforehand that, by law, we're not allowed to profit, and management had artificially lowered the engineering rate 2 years in row to make up for inefficiencies on the production side, keeping the organization competitive as a whole.