Probably more than anyone can summarize here, but what has brought me moderate success is focusing on the business rather than the code. I have been able to wo

Probably more than anyone can summarize here, but what has brought me moderate success is focusing on the business rather than the code. I have been able to work on a few cool computer science problems, mostly due to performance concerns regarding larger datasets, but there are often a lot of ways to solve issues like that and often none of them will be objectively the best. If you don't focus on the business problems you're likely solving a problem they don't have. Problems have value. If you solve a $100k problem for the business it doesn't matter how much time you spent on it if it brings them value. If you're solving $100k problems every day you best ask for a raise :)