If people are focused on Research and Development in a large commercial project, it will often catch the ire of people responsible for risk mitigation.
Yes, if you're talking about sorting algorithms and similar. But there are, of course, still many, many even harder problems waiting to be solved. Harder, because they are compound, and more complex. There's still need for top talent. But it's true that most "ordinary" businesses do not need those types of programmers.
It is astonishingly impressive anything relevant, generalizable, and repeatable actually makes it back into the public domain. Like watching your dog eat 1kg of cheese... impressive for all the wrong reasons... lol =)