[Scalanchilis]

Although this may very well explain the author's major motivations and source of job satisfaction, can two categories really explain software developer job satisfaction for everyone?

It makes sense that someone would be more satisfied working on their own ideas than someone else's. The problems being solved are more personally relevant, and they have more control over the execution, for better or worse. The business end of things may be why proportionally few developers go this route.

In this article, an idea or project's success seems to be equated with its profitability and applies to business ventures in general. What about other measures of success: meeting performance and reliability requirements, being widely used, fixing some societal ill, or scratching the itch of curiosity?

How the idea is executed too may greatly affect job satisfaction. Many developers prefer working on greenfield projects over maintaining legacy systems. What is the pace of work like? The quality of the coworkers?

There are numerous variables at play.

[iforgotpassword]

Yeah that's black and white. I'm currently working on a product that's 100% someone else's idea, but I'm pretty much in charge of everything, so design decisions, architecture, roadmap etc. are pretty much all my ideas, which I feel should definitely be higher up in that pyramid.

[Buttons840]

As a though experiment, consider the ratio of ideas you can or cannot pursue? You're thinking of lots of ideas, in order to implement someone else higher level idea. It sounds like you get to pursue all your ideas. Sounds satisfying.

Now consider a developer who is constantly told "sounds good, but that's not our priority right now", "no", "we'll maybe get to that later", etc. They don't get to pursue any of their own ideas. Sounds very dissatisfying.