I want to second what you're saying here. I used to feel pretty down about my work because I felt like even though I was making good money and progressing career-wise, the things I was working on were not contributing anything positive to the world, and would also be scrapped for a new iteration using the tech-du-jour within a year or two, and nobody would ever see them again.

If I wanted to have a more lasting impact and more reach, I'd have to compete with thousands for a spot somewhere like Yahoo or Google, and again, whatever I was working on would still be scrapped within a year or two.

This is why I dropped out of working for money and started working on my own passion projects. I'm very lucky, because I remember what it was like working on passion projects before I entered the workforce, so I at least knew roughly what I was looking for.