It must be nice for Kent to just trot off and investigate whether or not his work "matters". For the rest of us, this is a non starter because that effort can't

It must be nice for Kent to just trot off and investigate whether or not his work "matters". For the rest of us, this is a non starter because that effort can't be captured in a story or a task attached to a story on the Jira board. Us mortals might be able to convince our boss that our investigation is worthy of a spike but it'd be bounded to a couple of hours. For us dark matter engineers we need to tell ourselves that, because we're paid, our work "matters".