Where I live, every place is the same, Jira sweatshop mentality, just put out a fire or solve as many stories as quickly as possible to maintain velocity, with whatever tools someone higher than you imposed because it was convenient at the time.
When I come home I'm done with coding for the day and I have no time to code stuff I like as I'm investing it in taking care of myself physically and socially to counteract the negative effects of being on a chair at work in front of a monitor with headphones on 8 hours a day.
this is false.
look into smaller businesses who only need 1-5 coders. you will get paid well, do interesting stuff and have a lot of say in your stack and tools. usually these companies do not produce software as their deliverable but need good internal software.
e.g. i work for < 50M/yr e-commerce company that manufactures in the DIY/home remodeling industry. i report directly to the CEO, code our full stack and admin our VPS linode server. we have internal voip systems that get integrated, physical production hardware (scales, scanners, etc), inventory tracking, fulfillment, amazon integration and a whole lot more. i get to touch it all.
The facts however, are that these tips work for the people giving them.
No new businesses get created in Germany and no people retire? Sounds like a bleak place.
it takes time, but you have to search continuously. people leave and get replaced all the time.
Even a medium size EU city should have a critical mass of developers by now.
Of course, it would be nicer if we just had decent employers in the first place.
Bucharest is capital, not 'just' an EU city, but it's by no means the largest nor would I think it has the most tech folks compared to other areas. (maybe that's wrong assumption though?)
there's another dev that can handle any emergencies or critical bug fixes while i'm out. still i have to be available by phone in case there are questions, but even then it rarely requires more than a lazy login/check at the end of the day.
At the end of the day it's just a salary I need to support my other hobbies. After 7 years in the trenches I lost hope in the do what you love coding for fun mantra as I never found it and i feel that chasing it any longer will waste precious years of our limited time on this Earth I could use enjoying other things life has to offer or new experiences.
Zürich and Munich as well.
The truth is most of us are replaceable cogs regardless of our titles and salaries if we're willing to look past our egos.
Mitigating risk and ensuring continuity is a core tenant of good business.
i'm not saying it's good to be that bus factor (you're on-call basically 24/7), but it also has undeniable perks for the employee (not the employer).
in reality my bus factor is not that high. the nice thing about well-designed systems is that they seldomly need attention, and there's another dev here who's more than capable of bug fixing and maintaining what's already in place.
You may have to reconsider the difference between treat and staple, coding and "meaningful human interaction". Coding remains a staple for me even though I'm often "overfed" with poorly prepared fare. I'll still want more tomorrow. So when you say you "love coding", I think, well, me too, although maybe not as much as you do--but it turns out that we're not actually the same at all. You're more "normal".
You may have to switch to a job where human interaction (the meaningful part--well, maybe sometimes) provides your staple and the coding is a special treat you indulge in on days when you feel like it.
They all present challenges, but they could be acceptable for you.
Jira and stories are not the norm, especially if you have been doing it for a long time, most of the time your role is improving the process through experience.
8 hours a day is not given, if you already know how to do it in 5.
As you become an expert on radio telescope arrays or the sport of curling you'll see the problems that are outside the scope of a spreadsheet. Meanwhile be part of the community surrounding it so they trust you and your understanding.
Otherwise you need a pathbreaking stroke of genius, a mountain of cash to burn, or the willpower and charm to get the world to choose your product app over the other 50 products that are very similar.
Working with computers every day, for 8 to 10 hours a day or more, for years on end has sucked the joy out of just about anything I used to enjoy that was computer-related.
Sometimes I'll get interested in something computer related on my own, like, say, emacs configuration, but nobody's going to pay me to work on that.
Basically, people pay you to work on something useful to them, and if what you're interested in is not useful to them, they don't care, and you can starve on the street for all they care.