[kristopolous]

Depends what motivates you.

The unstated part of crossing the chasm and everything that deals with new tech is there's potential social value in market failure.

Personally I'd rather spend my career at one Xerox Parc failed project after another instead of working on profitable but ultimately empty products

For some it's not about money or a career, it's about building new things

In an ideal world people like me would be academics. But that institution is also excessively career and status oriented so without many options, we run off to the private sector.

Your reaction helps solidify a heretical stance I've had recently, that money has been a corrupting influence on technology and has actually stagnated it by perversing the incentives towards strictly monetary goals without regard for the social. It's like we replaced traditional banking with casinos.

The people who went to the moon, built the atomic bomb and invented the internet did so on a modest government salary.

[bartvk]

You can still do that, though. Most countries have multiple scientific institutes aimed at defense, climate or space research. For the US, orgs like NOAA and NASA need engineers. For Europe, there's all the national institutes like DLR for Germany, and European communities like ESO and ESA. You can make a contribution to science there.