Here's where I'm at.
I look back at my career and I can tell you about great projects that I got to be part of, awards and plaudits that I won, big paybacks from projects that went well and literally saved the company. That's all nice to have war stories.
But I can't point to any of it and say, "I made that" because - and here's the kicker - it's all gone.
Software is ephemeral. One day your client does an upgrade, and then the thing that you spent years building and curating like a baby disappears. It isn't mothballed and put in the basement where visitors can walk by and see it. There's no photo of you standing by the thing that you can hang in the hallway and see every day. Your creation just completely vanishes without a trace.
All those years I've also been a musician and recording engineer. I've made a few dozen records none of which amount to anything that anyone else would care about. And all told I'm sure that I earned more money in one year of my IT work than my entire music career.
However, here is a collection of my work that I can point to and say, "I made that." It's a creation that I can reflect on years and years down the road.
I take much more satisfaction in my musical creations than from my software creations, even though I was much more famous and valued as a software architect.