Comment by narratives1

You have to do something with your life anyway, right? I always envied people who have a calling they are good at and work on essentially until they die (especially in academia and art), since I'm not sure if I have one and if I do (designing 4x God sim games?) I'm unlikely to be paid for it even if I was good, which is itself also unlikely.

Then there's also the case where following your passion is near impossible without a large organization, anything from space to medicine.

But even forgetting all that, there is no reason engineering challenges, team dynamics and sense of accomplishment at a work project can't be higher than for the personal projects you'd do by yourself. Granted, most jobs aren't like that (for myself or for most people) but some of my most challenging and exciting projects were at work.

If you're gonna spend time until you die doing tech things you might as well get paid for it. The less you need the latter the pickier you can be, with your own thing becoming /another option/ at some point.