Wound up parting ways with the company. Because NOBODY else there was ever going to have the opportunity to be a "high-flying" developer. Basically, there wer

Wound up parting ways with the company. Because NOBODY else there was ever going to have the opportunity to be a "high-flying" developer. Basically, there were a few engineers that had gained the trust of upper management. The "chosen few" engineers were talented, though not spectacularly so, and had also saddled the company with their share of mistakes and lots of technical debt. This created a cycle where: 1. The "chosen few" developers got all of the greenfield(-ish) development work -- the only work at the company where it was really possible to move quickly, hit deadlines, and "wow" people 2. The "chosen few" developers got to make nearly all of the technical decisions, and if you weren't one of them you were stuck forever implementing somebody else's idea of a good solution 3. The "chosen few" developers were always solving challenging issues, which made them look impressive to management, who lacked the technical ability to understand that a lot of these issues were actually caused by the "chosen few"'s poor decisions in the first place. 4. The "other" developers were always plodding waist-deep through technical debt, much of it caused by the "chosen few." I was there for only four years but eventually it became clear that there was literally no way for me to shine there. You can't shine when doing maintenance work on legacy nightmare code. I became jealous of the "chosen few" (or, perhaps more accurately, I grew resentful of management) and grew a bit bitter and burned out. My work suffered and I was eventually let go. That was one year ago. Now I'm making 25% more money at a different company where I'm 100% more productive and 100% happier. =) When someone younger than me, in my field, is making more money / getting more acclaim / winning praise from people I respect, it makes me seethe. Sometimes I even waste my time looking for a way to invalidate them, to put an asterisk* on their success, so I can feel better about myself. I think a key question is, "Are you jealous because they're more talented than you? Or are you jealous because they have been given opportunities that you have unfairly been denied?" If you are jealous because they are more talented than you, then YOU are the problem. Get better, find something you're the best at, or (perhaps most healthily) accept the fact that you can be a perfectly valuable human being without being the best at something. If you are jealous because you're not given a fair chance, then THE COMPANY is the problem.