I also did not get this feeling from other technology industries that weren't "Tech". Places full of PhDs, but disconnected from the SV culture. And frankly, less motivated by money and more by lifestyle.
Maybe it all boils down to money. There's too much money in Tech. It attracts the worst, and brings out the worst.
That is my thesis.
In New York, we have the finance industry, which is just as bad (if not worse).
It has also been like this for most of a century. That does not bode well for Tech improving.
That's where ALL the money is, and it's where the worst culture (and worst tech) is, imo. :p
I mean, hell, why else would anyone learn React? $$$$$$
[a] In a material sense, excluding moral and ethical achievements. "Mad Men"-style success, not Buddha-style success.
[b] Although Americans on average are extraordinarily charitable in terms of dollars donated
I've written a fairly massive infrastructure system that is used throughout the world, and has, undoubtedly, saved lives. It will probably continue to do so, in some form or another, long after I take my dirt nap. It has formed the nucleus of an entire Service structure; not just one application.
Did I do it to be considered a "hero"? Did I do it for financial reward?
The answer to both is "No." I have stepped away from the project, and it has taken on a life of its own.
I developed the system over a period of a couple of years, at first, and refined it for a decade, before finding a team willing to take the reins. That required that I step away from the project, and cede total control: technical, IP, legal, etc., to the new team.
Before long, I'll be nothing more than a footnote in the historical record.
Thousands of people, around the world, use the system, every day. During the COVID impact on the users, it was rapidly adapted to serve a very new environment. It has always been completely localizable, and has a simple, powerful semantic interface that allowed all sorts of cool adapters that I only vaguely predicted, in 2008, when I started it.
I never charged a dime for it. In fact, it cost me thousands to maintain and evangelize it.
I'll probably never get credit for most of the work and planning that I did, and I'm fine with that.
I consider that "high achievement." I did a lot of it, because I needed to keep my tech chops up, and saw a need that could be filled. I enjoyed the process of envisioning the project's lifecycle, planning its genesis, and implementing it. It allowed me to do stuff that my employers would not let me do.
It wasn't because I'm some kind of saint, or martyr. In fact, a lot of folks, during its early years, thought that I was a cantankerous, dictatorial, controlling bastard. I needed to keep the project on task, and in focus. That often meant being a real dick (I'm good at that).
When I finally encountered some tech people that were qualified to handle it, and take it to the next level, it was important for me to turn it over completely, and get the hell out of the way. By that time, I was sick of it. I wanted to learn new tech, and work on different stuff. I basically slowed down the car, pushed it out onto the sidewalk, and went screeching off into the distance.
Most of the work that I've done, in the last four years, has been stuff that I wanted to do, for fun. I had a number of theories about developing high-quality software, I wanted to really get down and dirty with Swift, I wanted to develop applications that made me proud, and I wanted to work my ass off. I like working. You won't find me on a golf course. The coroner is gonna have to rub "YTREWQ" off my cheek, because I'll faceplant on my keyboard, when I pop my clogs.
I'm no saint, but I also consider myself to have a very high degree of Integrity. I have absolutely no desire at all to sacrifice that for money.
All said and done, what you describe is another type of high achievement and one that isn't necessarily opposed to massive earnings (at least as a means); that of the skilled artisan. Even if you have helped millions of people in lieu of lucre, the pursuit of high achievement of any kind still required selfishness on your part. You still decided how everything was run and as well as the standards under which it should be run following your departure.
In that sense you're a hero of a sort. Even if you don't see it. It takes heroic effort to scaffold one's integrity, vision, and time into a project with the goal that said project will improve itself years down the line. All of what you've worked on is ,directly or indirectly, a product of your choices.
Off to shave my head...