They are housed in our mind, actualized in our behavior, and outlive us, always searching for a receptive niche in the cultural environment. Memes can be very compelling, in the same way that genes compel certain behaviors. They can be persistent and long-lived. Values implanted through early socialization are very much a part of us, and we hope that a good choice of occupation is not only consistent with those values, but nourishes them and encourages them to propagate. Viewed in this light, the perfectly adapted employee is in a reciprocal relationship with her work environment.
Vocational adaptation is a kind of mating that enhances the survival of important values.
The synergy created between employees and employers becomes the optimal medium in which their shared values can thrive. Consider the concept of social justice, an important meme that has survived tenaciously for some 2500 years, despite a few societal ice ages and other environmental hardships. Her memes will feel like they are a little closer to entering the Peaceable Kingdom. And so they may, long after she has retired from work and this world. There was time when many would have found these elaborate evolutionary musings unnecessary.