Most depressing colleague I ever had was a dude who’d done a masters by research discovering new planets with powerful instruments that detected tiny variations in the light levels in far off solar systems. You could discover new heavenly bodies based off the cadence and degree of occlusion that occurs for that solar system’s star.
Basically this guy was no longer able to progress with astrophysics because the competition for positions/funding was so intense. He’d ended up as a software dev but all he talked about was new planets and he spent every lunch break looking at the raw data from these instruments which were published into the public domain that day.
He had a calling but the world had torn him away from it.