I think believes is the key here. There are definitely people who believe that if they can work on complex graph colouring problem in a real-time processing scenario and the interruptions are minimal - then indeed their talent is utilised well. And I can imagine such a scenario happening at Google in advertising department/division/tribe .
There are plenty of critical, unglamorous jobs which need to be done. It’s not unreasonable for an engineer to value high six figure/seven figure salaries over a feeling of work fulfillment and skill utilization
