But guess who gets the glory? :(
In my opinion, it's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit. You're stronger with others than on your own.
Not sure I understand.
Anyways, I've been around engineering teams for a while now and here's what I mean: there's always some principal engineer or fellow (in the terms of a title) that is greatly esteemed and admired because of decades of progressively larger and larger feature creation and system architecture/leadership.
If all I ever do is fix bugs -- forever in my career -- it means I'm not going to build anything and I don't get to be on the team that gets the people to the stars because that team is reserved for aforementioned team of people who have built a lot.
I probably shouldn't be a programmer anymore since all I'm good for is fixing bugs.
If you're working for someone else, and it's their name on the product, ignore glory and insist on money.
You say this like I've not thought about it or tried it myself. :)
It's difficult since I don't know what I don't know. I stumble around trying to figure out what I need to figure out and come to realize that I don't know what goes where.
It's also difficult because of sheer time. I spend 13-14 hours going to work, being at work, or coming home from work. Whatever suggestion you have I've probably thought about or tried, so do be considerate if you decide to reply. ;)
That's how I interpreted what was being said rather than expecting fame in the hacker community.