The programming talent myth

Good sodding grief... you are trying to derive profound sociological conclusions from an obvious employee motivation specialist bullshit line, pardon the redundance. Of the "your employer trusts and values you; the pride for belonging to Our Insanely Great Team(tm) should serve as a compensation" variety. Sane reaction is to roll your eyes (when out of eye contact with said BS artist) and ignore it, same as when given an equally worthless boilerplate tokens of appreciation. And above everything else, do not let it affect your judgement regarding your worth, or that of your coworkers and employers. In any direction.

The theory is obvious; I don't know if it's taught to MBA in that form, but basically it goes like that

* employee's degree of satisfaction affects its productivity and should be considered as an investment.
* optimizing return on investment is a good practice.
* replacing the costly investment with cheaper alternative that gives an equivalent output is a good practice.
* telling the mark that it is special greatly increases its gullibility; any successful scammer knows that.
* once upon a time an engraved watch used to serve as demonstration that coworkers and management remember and value the recipient. These days a plastic paperweight with inscription on it demonstrates that a script ran from crontab over HR database has put the recipient's name and address into monthly (or quarterly) bulk order form. However, it still counts as a token of appreciation, and that's what matters.
* attaching "... because you work here" to "you are special" (see above) improves loyalty and you can't overdo that - the people who will roll their eyes at over-the-top bullshit won't take you serious anyway. And it demonstrates your worth to upper management.

No matter where you go, these pests are inevitable. Anywhere, including the job of burger-flipper in McDogfood, janitor in railroad station WCs, etc. As well as really wonderful jobs in great places. Learn to recognize the noise for what it is and filter it out; it's nothing personal, they are just taught that way...