I work on "boring" stuff (CRUD, frontend and backend) and love it.

Maybe because I remember all to well what jobs I used to have:

- farm hand (heavy work on smaller less automated farms)

- construction (noisy, wet, dusty etc)

- security

- help desk

Being paid 8 hours a day to work on borderline interesting tasks, getting free lunch, being paid to study etc feels great. Oh, and I can work from home if I need to.

I also make my work interesting by putting some effort into it.

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.

A job doesn't have to be a calling, and a job that isn't a calling doesn't have to be a soul-crushing grind.

Most developer jobs are for CRUD apps, and you'll rarely be doing greenfield development. There's not a whole lot of room for passion there. If you just treat it as a job, though, rather than something you have to force yourself to be passionate about, it doesn't need to be that interesting. Once you make a living, you can satisfy your creative urges elsewhere.

I do. I've only had two jobs I truly enjoyed doing the 9-5 work for, all the rest have been a slog to get through to pay for my other interests and family-related stuff.