I work on cutting edge stuff involving LLMs for big tech. I’m paid well. My work has essentially no real-world utility as I define it - materially improving something important for at least one person in the real world.

Engineers like the ones you describe have more positive impact on the world in one day than I have had in the several years that I’ve been doing this.

I often dream about leaving big tech entirely and working solely on legacy software in an overlooked but important domain.

I guess the grass is always greener and all that.