It’s a privilege that can often feel like a punishment. I’ve done everything from applications to building to plot master to headwiz and I love, LOVE seeing people having fun and getting involved in things. I loved doing apps too, not only to help people really get what they were going for, but I think I called every problem player we ever had from their initial application/reaction to being asked to tweak things.
But it’s work. And I don’t know what’s popular now, it seems to flip flop back and forth, but I was always a firm believer in if you became staff you didn’t get XP for the stuff you ran. You could participate in things with your PCs and get XP, but unlike how PRP or volunteer GMs could be rewarded, that incentive went away when you ran things with your staffbit and you shouldn’t be running things on your PC at that point. The real reward was getting buy in from other players and getting them involved! And of course being able to dig into people’s sheets or backgrounds or plot notes or metaplot outlines or whatever that weren’t available to the general public.
While dealing with problem players is never, ever fun and no matter how hard you try there’s always going to be people that think you’re treating them unfairly, I still lean that it’s more privilege. It’s just the best feeling to entertain a grid full of players who keep coming back for more of your stories. To know that people are enjoying themselves and see them growing their own stories from seeds you threw out there or chasing a mystery that you put in a post one day that no one noticed for months. It’s just fun and when you have the time and bandwidth for it, worth the headaches that come with it.