It's just not very fullfiling to become an icon after you die, or after another company steals your idea or whatever. We are social beings, we want some amount

It's just not very fullfiling to become an icon after you die, or after another company steals your idea or whatever. We are social beings, we want some amount of payoff weather in be cultural, social or monetary capital. Lots of brilliant people lived horrible lives, lots of extremely mediocre but well connected people lived happily making bank prototypes made in the shadows - and that's just how it is - but i get the gist of what OP is saying. Off course the perspective that you built something "for the Zen of it" is important, but i increasingly think it's a perspective pushed mostly to benefit the beneficiaries at the absolute top - no one want's to do stuff "for free" though the pay may be of personal value, altruistic etc.