2 cents from personal experience in life, crisis and industry: 1. Nothing wrong with shuffling jsons around or developing yet another REST API. Domain experti

2 cents from personal experience in life, crisis and industry: 1. Nothing wrong with shuffling jsons around or developing yet another REST API. Domain expertise often matters and pays more. There are only so many DB developers, but experts in gRPC APIs for insurance (put here your industry) are always useful for all insurance companies. 2. Your feelings and attitudes ("can't say I am a successful engineer") is likely not related to your professional life per se. Low level CUDA experts have same issues around same age. They can push you to grow your career and can be a valuable resource, but don't expect it to fix a root cause.