It’s really up to what you value most I would say. Personally I work to live, and all of my passions are outside of work, even if they are programming-related. I get paid ridiculous money doing BS work at some corporate company doing nothing for the world, and I’m okay with that. If you would rather do something cool and innovative for a company and put in a lot of effort that would potentially only be compensated by the knowledge and experience that you gain, that’s also an option. It all depends on what you want your career to look like.

Semi-related, please learn about [Boglehead] investing while you’re young and stuff all your phat programmer money into the right places. You could retire by the time you’re ~40, and that may shape your expectation of what you want your full career to be.