Do You Love the Job, or Just the Paycheck?

I have a love-hate relationship with my job. I love what I do, and essentially go home every evening to develop myself further so that the next day, I can do even a better job. I love it to a point where everything else is secondary to being better at what I do

On the flip side, there are moments when given certain tasks I absolutely hate it. I think it has to do with my vision of what a perfect environment ought to be, and anything that does not fit that mold is something I despise. I truly believe software development is an art, and it ought to be treated as such. Add to that, I am somewhat of a purist, and like things done in a particular manner, and the fact that resource constraints don't help in that regard frustrate me.

At the end of the day, I (think) would be doing what I do, as long as I feel I am being adequately compensated for it, both personally (in terms of my own growth) and professionally (yeah, pay check size does matter :D)

From TFA:

To be honest, I wasn’t even taking pleasure in my disposable income. Most of my extra cash went toward medicating my work stress. Because I wasn’t getting satisfaction from my job, I distracted myself with overpriced restaurants, tropical vacations and retail therapy. I traded up to a bigger, nicer apartment, but I didn’t spend much time in it because I was always at the office justifying my paycheck.

I hear you!

I love my job, but only because a job is required for my lifestyle choice and among the available options, it's the best for me.

If I didn't have to pay my two mortgages and put food on the table ... (as Howard Stern would say) I'd rather stay at home and stare at the wall all day (or bitch about Twitter being down)

Good article, but getting seriously tired of those NYTimes login pages growl

I like my job, at the end of the day its really chill and pays fairly well, however its really just something i'm doing while in school, so I really don't see a long term career happening.

Can it be neither?