I was in a similar position up until a few months ago. It wasn't lack of interest on part of other devs, quite the opposite: everyone was just too eager to incorporate new things into the codebase and prove their ideas were the best. It was almost like the wild wild west where anybody could push anything to the codebase and the inexperienced management was excited at the prospect of a cutting edge product.

What happened was quite the opposite: the codebase was very inconsistent and there were lots of parts nobody understood. All these conflicts and lack of integration also lead to a lot of bugs which management thought were just part of software engineering. Micromanagement was also rampant and caused significant mental stress.

What I am trying to get across is that having overly enthusiastic co-workers is not always a good thing either (the grass is always greener on the other side.) Don't listen too much to what other people are saying about their jobs. Try to figure out what you are missing (I was missing the need to be part of a community and do innovative stuff) and try to find a way to get that (I got involved in an open-source project where I found I could contribute and be part of the community and do good things.) If you do good things long enough, you will be noticed and eventually land one of those rare jobs where you are paid to do what you love (gotta put in the wood before you can get heat from the fire)

And you are so concerned with him and criticizing him dearly because ... ? Can we not let a man do what he wants ?

>I'm not saying I'm better, in many, many ways I'm a lot worse

So being worse than someone gives you the power to critique someone so badly ? I wonder what you would've said if you thought you were better shudder