Maybe the real problem isn't even technical. Maybe Jim and Tom just hate each other because something happened when they first met. We can keep arguing about haproxy vs nginx 'til the cows come home, or I could say to myself, "Hey, they both listen to Kevin, I'm gonna go ask him for a favor..." but that's kinda passing the buck.
My biggest success not falling back to other people for this was Ben, who yelled at me - in an open office plan - the first time I asked him for help. It took most of a year of me making smalltalk at the coffee machine before he was happy to see me coming, instead of avoiding eye contact. I think at some point he figured out we think alike on certain BS technical limitations, and then I started getting smiles.
If you can't tell from this that I'm fond of cats, especially shy or cantankerous ones, well...
My problems, of course.
I think it's perfectly fine to not care about your job to a higher degree than necessary, and I also think it's fine to seek out work based on social impact rather than salary. Most people can't have it both ways, and end up having to make a choice at some point.