I liken it to research scientists vs technicians. A technician at CERN maintaining the accelerators is probably pretty damn smart, they probably also understan

I liken it to research scientists vs technicians. A technician at CERN maintaining the accelerators is probably pretty damn smart, they probably also understand some particle physics. They may not be the ones driving/designing the experiments and they probably aren't getting their names on those physics papers but that doesn't mean they didn't contribute any value...