Why does a stock price matter to a company?

I will get a bit philosophical here, so bear with me.

In public traded coorporations there is a high emphasis given to “please the shareholders”, and to increase the stock price and dividends.

But why is the stock price important at all?

“Squeezing employes” financially and increasing productivity, not for competitivness per se, but for dividends and stock prise increases.

On the other side of this equation there are hedge funds, and other speculators (like us), longing and shorting on the stock market and funneling this capital to their accounts.

Zooming out makes the whole system bizzare to me. As an employee in a public traded company, they put constant pressure on people like me to catch the KPIs and “please the shareholders”. But the shareholders are many times just big capital playing around on the stock market and “scalping capital” to their large accounts, while adding nothing of value to society.

I get it that the executive branch has an interest to please the shareholders, due to their bonuses. But other than that… employees are beeing squeezed and pushed hard only for the created value to become a number on some ledger somewhere, that adds little value back to society, especially regionally/localy.

I got a bit sidetracked there for a moment, lol.

But back to this subs topic.

Why does the price of a stock matter for a company and its day to day operations?

Besides the reputation and public image, what difference does it make if a certain stock trades at 150$ or 90$?