Elitism is driven by ego and self actualization though. I think there's a lot of people who are highly, highly motivated to work on tough problems with compete

Elitism is driven by ego and self actualization though. I think there's a lot of people who are highly, highly motivated to work on tough problems with competent co-workers. Those emotions are less driven by the domain itself, and more about the fact that those people have succeeded in finding meaningful work with co-workers of appreciable worth. The tricky thing I find is finding that. Far too many regular projects are focused on mobilizing the dumbest blocks of wood towards a goal. Without actually investing in the human beings doing the work. I think once we regain a culture of actually investing in people who aren't in the top 10% in their field, things can change. Currently though we do not have that culture.