My interest in category theory is just as a hobby and an amateur; but I have gone pretty deep reading lots of books and so on. To be fair, category theory has not empowered my work (in programming) at all.
I find category theory empowers my programming in the design step, much more so than when actually writing code. It enables me to find a more elegant design from the outset and be sure of its utility and elegance even before I program it.