How pathetic would it be for your highest achievement in life being that you kicked a ball around adequately? Who here can honestly imagine themselves satisfied with such an empty existence?
Is it less pathetic to be an average software developer?
If you eliminate all the software developers that are working on things that are not just useless but actually bad, and take the average of those who remain, then… yeah, it is way less pathetic to be one of those “average of the non-evil” software developers than it is to be an adequate ball-kicker.
This is severely confounded by the fact thay many software developers are doing things that are actively detrimental, like working on adtech, or developing new social control features for social media, or helping totalitarian governments oppress dissidents, etc.
If you eliminate all the software developers that are working on things that are not just useless but actually bad, and take the average of those who remain, then… yeah, it is way less pathetic to be one of those “average of the non-evil” software developers than it is to be an adequate ball-kicker.