But not really. Looking around my shop, I’m probably the only one around who used to write a lot of C code. No one is coming to ask me about obscure memory bugs. I’m certainly not getting paid better than my peers.

The knowledge I have is personally gratifying to me because I like having a deeper understanding of things. But I have to tell you I thought knowing more would give me a deeper advantage than it has in actual practice.

Is that because the languages being used at your shop have largely abstracted away memory bug issues? If you were to get a job writing embedded systems, or compilers, or OSes, wouldn't your knowledge be more highly valued and sought after (assuming you were one of the more senior devs)?

If you have genuine systems programming knowledge, usually the answer is to innovate on a particular toolchain or ship your own product (I understand you may not like business stuff though.)

I would argue that your advantage right now is that YOU are the one position they can't replace with LLMs, because your knowledge requires exact fine detail on pointers and everything and needs that exact expertise. You might have toughen the same pay as your peers, but you also carry additional stability.

You're providing value every time you kill a bad idea "because things don't actually work that way" or shave a loop, you're just not tracking the value and neither is your boss.

To your employer, hiring people who know things (i.e. you) has giving them a deeper advantage in actual practice.