I really appreciate the answer. I find it sad that I disagree. The viewpoint you lay out is super clear and I've seen people react to me like that before. I jus

I really appreciate the answer. I find it sad that I disagree. The viewpoint you lay out is super clear and I've seen people react to me like that before. I just can't reconcile it. I'm trying to (otherwise I wouldn't have posted this question in the first place). In the 4 years that I've worked as a software engineer, the hardest thing I've ever done was a university course where I had to analyze binary programs with IDA Pro. I find it odd how after being 4 years in the field there are still a handful of university courses that were clearly tougher. The best programmer I know personally agrees with this assessment as he was my course mate (I'm nowhere near his skill level, and he's always considered to be the C++ expert no matter what company he applies to). I've talked with friends - all of whom have more experience than I do given that I was in uni for 8 years - about this and I got a myriad of different responses. HFT developers seem to program actual hard things that I don't have experience in. Ethical hacking seems to be in its infancy in many companies making it possible for me to go that route (source: a friend did this and he was at a similar skill level). There's a huge difference between being a pentester for a corporate of a big HR company compared to Google's Project Zero. CRUD developers for web apps for startups seem to agree with me. I wonder if it's true for people working at a big corporate and doing CRUD, that I wouldn't know. For as far as I've noticed, being able to do a good job is mostly contingent on motivation. When my motivation is at the level of dedicating my life towards it for whatever period of time I'm working on it, it seems I get the job done at a satisfactory to exceptional level (most of the time). This has also been true for my friends. > Practice and some humility will probably pay off better For the past 4 years I've pretended to be humble, because people can deal with me better. The thing is I'm not. And neither am I humble for the capabilities of many people. Many people are insanely good at anything when sufficiently motivated. The reason I'm posting what I'm posting now is because I need coaching and I want to be authentic. I've been hiding myself and it's eating at me. I get paid, and people are happy with my work, but it's making me feel soulless. In an ideal world I'd start a company. However, understanding markets and market dynamics is insanely hard. It is as hard as actual investing and actual trading. It's not a financial risk I can afford, despite the fact that I think it suits my skills much better. Startups are a good environment, but the stress is in many cases too much. I agree with that there are many talented/smart people.