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Comment by tstrimple | Hacker News Reader

> Never hire programmers who demonstrated that they don't care about the boring stuff.

This is why I feel like I'm a bad programmer and no longer look for work in that capacity. I enjoy the edge cases and challenging problems, but I am almost incapable of creating CRUD apis and user interfaces at this point. I'm amazing in a hackathon, but contribute poorly to regular sprint style work. I can pick up and integrate new technology extremely quickly and can refactor a spaghettified mess of code into something maintainable, but I am completely miserable doing maintenance level work after things are smoothed out.

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Yeah, programming is a big field though, so always be on the lookout via your network, linkedin, and indeed. I left my last job because it was going to require thousands of hours of combing through hardware specs to verify them. I liked day to day testing and QA but no way was I going to do that. I just found a new job that lets me continue on with the type of programming I enjoy.

> contribute poorly to regular sprint style work

> I am completely miserable doing maintenance level work

Sounds like something you might want to work on even if you don't get a job in programming. It seems unlikely you'll find any line of work where everything you do every day is new and exciting.

So far I've been able to find positions that work within these constraints. At this point I'm more comfortable working with my ADHD than fighting against it (I tried that for years too). For the last seven years I've helped companies move into the cloud. I'm always working with new code bases and finding new challenges to adoption. I'm sure this will eventually become routine as well and I'll have to find some other way to stay engaged. I'll probably be one of those people who completely change careers at some point.

I'm not sure I'd agree. Sometimes it really pays to play to your strengths. I've had jobs that were odd-work and putting out fires for a few years now and I've never been happier. I'm good at that

Programming-wise it isn't as hard to find as you might think. Maybe not working FAAMG or similar, but it's quite doable. If you don't compromise on the desire to work only on interesting* stuff when a big paycheck comes along, you'll eventually end up in a position where you only work on interesting stuff. The gamut of work is wide.

To be honest such work isn't even that rare. Most people would rather make $200k and complain about how boring their job is than have an interesting one. I think for many people "interesting work" is often the same as "stressful work" and so the interesting positions are not as easily filled.

[*] Interesting as defined by me, and probably the parent poster as well. Obviously this is subjective.

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