What is more impactful about data science than web dev? I can tell you as someone who spent years coding C++, it's not 'better' or more impactful. My brother was into AI and got out because he didn't find it was impactful. AI sounds so cool on paper and documentaries, but at it's core it's just statistics and coding put together.
My reasoning is that it's pretty easy, that almost anybody could do it, and that it's a lot less likely to change anyone's life for the better.
Let's take an example, who had more impact: the guy who made a cancer detection model twice as accurate or the guy who coded the Vue.js view to display the results to an oncologist?
The embedded engineer who made some machine use twice as less energy or the guy who coded the website selling those machines?
I feel like I'm wasting my potential.
I chose webdev because it was the fastest path to easy money in tech and I really regret it.
You're comparing apples to oranges - your non-web dev examples have high impact while your web developer is doing something less consequential. In reality, you can have high impact as a web dev as well - say noticing and fixing a large security bug which could be used to steal personal data of a billion people - or improving performance of a popular webapp (say Facebook's main page), which can result in large amounts of electricity saved every year. These accomplishments are probably as rare as the non-webdev examples you gave though. In reality, as a data scientist or an embedded engineer you'll also most likely to be working on an inconsequential detail of some inconsequential (or straight up BS) project. The engineering field is very detail-oriented and it just needs a hundred peons for every "cool job", regardless of the subfield.
