I'd go one step further and say that it's likely many of them are working on something they're passionate about:
Their families.
Their families.
Blazing ignorance of the most basic verisimilitudes of the human condition is one of the more annoying characteristics of hacker culture.
Maybe the non-501 developers are genuinely self-sacrificing, in every sense of that word, while the 501s live off their labors. For the 501 is very happy to use Google to search for his Disneyland trip, to use his iPhone to find driving directions, to use Facebook to post the photos.
Say what you will, those companies were not built by 501 engineers, though 501s might well be going there now that the pioneers have built multibillion dollar companies.
The issue is something like this. One workaholic nerd works his life out to achieve something very extraordinary. Then he become famous and rich. And then people begin to dissect his life. During the process people figure out, that we worked crazy hours to achieve what he achieved.
When a theory is made out of this process your logical inference is working very hard is a prerequisite for success.
You start with this assumption then you automatically start classifying 501 workers as somebody who can't do anything big in life. Go a step further, people start classifying 501 people as lazy or inefficient.
Things get bad when you start comparing.
However, apologies I can see that I misread you. Sorry about that.