I’m not OP and I ask myself that question daily?

I have a job that is financially viable at a small, good, profitable firm… that has less stellar engineering management (not bad people wise)… and I care deeply about my craft. I’m a child hood coder with also a deep “Protestant Work Ethic.”

I have semi-checked out at work, it’s mentally taxing to know the systems could be better. I also know after 5 years my hard work and going the extra mile” will not be rewarded so I coast with my above-average reviews… but I feel guilt and mental anguish and stress and worry I’ll be found for a fraud (not imposter syndrome way, in a “I could do better and will be punished for not” way)

For some of us it’s a passion not a paycheck. Although the pay is nice.

Some people have this unfortunate affliction where they went into SWE with a passion for programming and want something more fulfilling out of a job than resolving a few tickets and then checking out mentally.

Hopefully they'll be cured of that one day, perhaps the next performance review cycle will finally rid them of any remaining illusions.

That's a very unsatisfying way to work. I like software design and architecture and even arguing about it as long as people do it in good faith. That's what makes the job interesting to me. I think I would get depressed if I just checked off tickets every day.

EM = engineering manager.

Re: arguing and why not just avoid it:

During my brief (7 year) sojourn at one place that was not-my-company (Google), you end up with a mix of personalities, and it's very hard to convince people who believe there's a Right Way to do things that there is no Right Way, so you just sort of have to muddle through figuring out how to be productive without irritating people, or as an EM, leaving them thinking you're negligent.

Conversely, theoretically, it's hard to convince people who are slopping through and rushing code to slow down. (in practice, this wasn't a problem at Google, but it's worth mentioning for completeness.)

Case study: 6 person team. 1 EM who ended up doing 20% of the code, 1 me who did 60%, 2 who did 10% each, only do things when directly asked, and they couldn't find an excuse to kick the can down the road due to "ambiguity" that was product/design's fault, and then two who, in all seriousness, never contributed code to this year-long project: 1 who wanted OOP-to-the-max InjectedFoobarManagerFactory, another who definitely didn't want anything like that, but didn't really have an alternate proposal, they just loved explaining endlessly and authoritatively why anything else brought up was bad.

(what did they do if they weren't contributing? the first would write vaguely productive "experiments" for other teams, that obviously wouldn't ship, in the code repo they were used to. took them 18-24 months to make their first code contribution to our actual code repo, the other wandered off to some other random project in the org. EM was new and out 3/4 of the project for new child leave)

Fair question. Not OP, but I'll add that I prefer to do work that matches what I value, not just go get a paycheck and make other people richer. Taken to an extreme, I'm happiest when I forage for food to augment what we buy on my spouse's salary and my part-time local utility work. I'm privileged to live on land that supports this practice, and to not do work that I don't agree with. We don't have much of a savings, but we're rich in other ways, notably community, clean water, ~clean air when the wind isn't blowing in from the highway and the neighbors aren't running their various engines, and a sense of purpose. I considered being a software engineer but after reading HN for years I burned out on that dream and instead focus on land & water stewardship, activism towards the same, and building walking-distance community.

I think it's a lot more usual to have your ticket and then your whole damn team decides to argue for hours on how you should do it, just because your manager lets it happen. This happened with my last job and it really pushed me out. The reason why people argue so much is that the stakes have never been lower - they don't do the work, or the thinking, or the fixing. It's just really easy to "have input" and then the environment makes you follow that "input" because "we're a team".

This is a dramatically unpleasant way to live, though. Op is asking out of a desire to have a fulfilling life and clearly isn't finding fulfilment in SWE.

"take a ticket and do the work" doesn't describe ANY software job I've ever had

it's all meetings, design docs, fighting in PR comments, agile ceremonies, etc etc

building things / fixing bugs is maybe 10% of the work

These employees, or at least one style of these employees, are super-frustrating to work with as well.

Like, I have no problem with someone who is in the ticket flow, is conscientious about their work, tries to understand the business purpose, anticipates and asks some unanswered questions, and takes care to truly finish the work. Then, you know, sure, work your eight (or six), take your breaks, and leave it out of your brain all other times.

But the other style is all-too-common: Do only what's listed in the ticket, and the laziest possible interpretation at that. If something is undefined, well, that's their problem, if they realize it, they can schedule another ticket. Don't ask questions, don't collaborate, don't do anything extra and then if pressed, say phrases like, "Well they didn't say.." or "well, they didn't ask..." Take no ownership.

Those people suck.

Because "they" are writing the code all wrong and crooked!

You're being downvoted but I mean this does work for some people. I definitely have coworkers who treat their work as purely transactional. Their goal isn't to be promoted or get frustrated at their job, it's to receive a paycheck and health insurance and get home to their families or hobbies. That's certainly a valid approach in any job scenario (not just SWE.)

I'm not quite at the level you've described, but I certainly have elements of it. I've been in the same role for ~10 years and have pretty much maxed out the expected raises/promotions of the role. It's not as satisfying as something brand new, but my pay to effort ratio is pretty ideal and I can work on side projects and learn new things on my own.

Easier said than done.