For me it doesn’t seem a daily grind. When I am actually writing software, I completely love it, even after 14 years of doing it professionally full time (and several years part time during uni).
The only parts that I never liked were the bureaucratic bullshit, production support even at insane hours of the day, and the politics with your colleagues.
Usually those were a relatively small part (20-40%) of the total and I still could enjoy writing good software the rest of the time.
Now finally contracting I’m in a position were my coding skills are really appreciated and I enjoy my time coding and helping my colleagues without all the bullshit.
Maybe I don’t score high in the interesting jobs lottery, but I’m perfectly happy of the pretty good amount of money that I get doing something that I love in old, boring, huge companies.
