Not an answer to your question, but just wanted to say I'm in a similar boat as you. I was working for a big tech company doing what I call a "non-core program

Not an answer to your question, but just wanted to say I'm in a similar boat as you. I was working for a big tech company doing what I call a "non-core programming" - analysis role. I was neither a systems programmer nor a math wizard. I knew enough CS background to understand the problem domain very well, and enough Python/stats/pandas/bash fu to arrive at useful answers. But, I didn't see a career in it. I'm now a sysadmin for a research centre and found my lost love for building and maintaining clusters. I don't know if I'd become as smart as some of the people I read about & admire on HN, but I stopped worrying too much and started focussing on the little things. I'm now designing a better version of our research cluster, learning a load of things along the way. Hopefully, once I'm confident enough in myself, I will work on my ideas rigorously and build useful products. TLDR; I stopped worrying too much and trying to keep things simple, and learn. Don't quite know if my words will be useful to you.