"Benefit to society" whats that all about? Landman and Patent Agent get A's for benefiting society. From what I can see anything software related gets B or less.
> “Even introverts are happier when they are around people they like,”
Agreed. I don't mind spending time alone, but I love being around people I like. Usually others with a common interest. (And no, it doesn't have to be tech related. Horse people and swimmers are a lot of fun.)
Extroverts sometimes talk about themselves. A lot. Not that interesting :)
You describe yourself as the "product owner". And the dev has no equity. Maybe he feels he's doing all the work and you gain all the benefits. You should offer him some equity, ownership is a great motivator.
The lower you go the more you will know. But seriously, there is a lot of upside knowing exactly whats going on in hardware when you are pushing bits around at a high level. A downside is you waste time writing at a level where a compiler/interpreter would generate much better code for you.
If you are working for someone, yes there will be always someone on your back. Just get it done. Quick and dirty.
A good place for a programmer is founding or co-founding a startup. The deadlines will be self imposed. Self imposed deadlines are a lot more achievable and realistic. However being a part of a startup brings with it the headaches of generating revenue and/or wooing investors.
The memory model. Explain why given: int a[100] and char* p = a, a and p point to the same place but a + 1 and p + 1 do not. C's memory model is easy in concept, one huge array of memory cells. But in practice it can be a rats nest of pointer arithmetic.