I have quit the software industry and now get paid what people _should_ get paid for software which is a small fraction of what I was being paid before. By choosing to work on actual real problems, instead of partaking in the pseudo-intellectual clout chasing contest that is the tech industry, I have discovered the real value of software which was never much to begin with as I assumed it was when I was a kid.

tl;dr yep, he could have been shoveling CRUD shit and making more money, or implementing high end algorithms within broken operating systems, or implementing high end algorithms with insufficient education or time to prove them, while getting dumber

scratch that he got a bug bounty for his work so his net gain is equal. check mate