I feel like I've met the archetypes of people who reply to my Stack Overflow threads. Overall, though, this is a beautiful story. Thank you for posting it :) Favorite quote:"The games people play, the roles and reputations they chase and entertain, the fleeting pleasure they derive from solving intricate problems, is all fun for a while. Ultimately though, if you do not solve anything worthwhile, if you forget about the people involved, it's never gonna be truly fulfilling. And that may be fine, and it might not be, and you may or may not get that from somewhere else than your workplace when you grow up. Work can be work; it can be for the money, it can be for the fun of it. That's okay. As long as you manage to get that fulfillment somewhere in your life."