&gt; I prefer to work on actual problems such that solving them will provide value, though.<p>I think you&#x27;re living in a fantasy world. It&#x27;s not enough that you solve a problem. You actually have to bring it to the world. Mochizuki claims to have solved the ABC conjecture, but isn&#x27;t doing anything to promote his work, leaving the rest of the mathematics world to pick up his slack. Tell me what you&#x27;re working on is that important, that the rest of the world will seek you out if you fail to promote it.<p>I work for a cosmetics marketing company. We design and market three different lines of cosmetics and skincare. I do their website backend. Our products are really good, and attractively priced compared to our competition. We are not producing a Web 2.0 Social Media glorified ad server, but it&#x27;s not a shitty product, but it does need effective marketing.<p>My contribution is to enable their marketing efforts. Me putting in 3x the effort isn&#x27;t going to help their bottom line a whit, and it might even hurt it by lowering the stability of their platform.