I don't hate programming. They money is good. Everything else I could do, would come with a serious slash to my salary. And that's just something else. Jobs that might be interesting require additional years of degrees. It's too late for that.
What remains? It is hard to keep the motivation going. I wish it wouldn't be like this. I want to give 100%, each day. But I can't force myself to care. I tried. Let's see how long I can go on like this.
Once I accepted that after 3-4 hours (well realistically about 6 when you factor in breaks) I'm effectively done for the day my stress levels went way down.
I care about the goal, not the means - if the project is gonna save pandas/explore space, I am happy to dig for hours if that's what it takes.
Most startups know this, thats why they are claiming to be 'changing the world', I've seen how that sausage is made, 95% of that is pure marketing BS.
I find most work is just keeping the wheels of society spinning, taxes filed, tickboxes checked. Thats okay, someone has to do that, but not exciting.
"On the whole, American workers are generally satisfied with their jobs. Even so, a significant share (30%) view the work they do as “just a job to get them by,” rather than a career or a steppingstone to a career. Views about work are sharply divided along socio-economic lines, and the sense of vulnerability is most acute among workers with no college education and lower-than-average household incomes."
"In addition to job satisfaction, the survey explored what American workers’ jobs mean to them – are their jobs central to who they are, or are they mainly just a source of income? About half (51%) of employed Americans say they get a sense of identity from their job, while the other half (47%) say their job is just what they do for a living. And about half (51%) of all U.S. workers say they view their job as a career, while 18% see it as a steppingstone to a career and 30% say it’s just a job to get them by."
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2016/10/06/3-how-a... (Pew Research: How Americans view their jobs)
Can you live with spending 70% of your life in front of a computer? You can be a dev.
Can you live with your wrong decision costing someone's life? (And all other downsides of being a doctor). I probably couldn't.
Does reading about law bore you out of your mind? If yes, maybe you can't be a lawyer no matter how talented
Personally I find understanding how software and technology works really interesting (I enjoy understanding how 'things' work in general). I also find programming tasks reasonable engaging, if very frustrating at times. They're not my favourite type of problem solving but it's fun. So Software is a reasonably interesting profession and it comes with good money, plenty of opportunity and lot of flexibility.
That said if I had enough money to retire I'd happily leave it and stop programming. My curiosity is largely satisfied and there are other things I'd rather spend my time doing, such as acting, running or studying one of the countless other subjects that interests me. But it's hard to impossible to make a good living doing those things so I keep working as a software engineer and do those things in my spare time. And that's fine. As I say it's moderately interesting and definitely better than most of the alternatives. And I do take pride and interest in my work. But I don't love it and while my career is up there on my priority list it's never going to be top.