I don't think that too many people like the feeling that their work is going to be useless. On the other hand, if you don't have a larger overview of a problem

I don't think that too many people like the feeling that their work is going to be useless. On the other hand, if you don't have a larger overview of a problem domain it can be difficult to feel that you're making progress doing anything other than optimising and abstracting. On the other hand there are reasons why the Linux kernel runs dramatically better designed than Windows.