[jjanzer]

I think the problem here is that not all employers will challenge you. In my mind, the key to finding enjoyment in your work if it's not challenging is to challenge yourself. Unless your job is oppressive to self direction there is nothing stopping you or anyone else from creating or doing something that is positive for the business and challenging for you. As a few examples you could find ways to optimize a system that is inefficient (it doesn't even need to be at the software level), analyze information about your customers, find ways to save money, research ways to get new clients, etc. A side benefit to challenging yourself is that you will find it quite rewarding. I can highly recommend Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book on "flow" in regards to the phenomenon around it.

I think what I'm trying to say is by challenging yourself to be more than what it is your employer expects out of you results in a net win for both you and your company.

[wdewind]

This is a nice idea, but unfortunately in many cases getting the information and power you require to solve the problems is blocked by seniority. You have to keep in mind, outside of development many many industries are still essentially seniority not performance based. For instance, if I work in HR and there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we are recruiting, it's not as simple as whip up a prototype, in many cases you'll actually need for someone (ie: a superior) to be fired in order to really affect change. It's not easy to address important inefficiencies within the company without pointing out that someone is fucking up their job.

As for the inefficiencies you CAN fix, this seems like a standard part of any job (and life to be honest). If you see problems in your job that you actually can and know how to improve and you aren't improving them, that's an entirely different issue.

[janesvilleseo]

I agree completely. I work at a company that is small about 25 people, but I engage in this quite often. The company is rather open about everything. I have access to just about everything I need except for the company bank accounts, which I do not want. This provides with a lot access to do a lot of this flow analysis. However the two greatest challenges I still have to overcome are 1)Buy-In from the higher ups to actually use the data/analysis and 2)the time to keep it up. I often feel, for multiple reasons, that I shouldn't be spending time on these endeavors. However, I still seem to always have a 'project'.

[jbl]

I also agree with the grandparent post. There's always something to do, and something more that could be done to make a project interesting.

However, I've often been frustrated by the effort required to get buy-in or recognition from higher-ups. I often found myself wanting to contribute more, but sometimes it seemed like a sisyphean task and not worth the effort (especially once you start balancing compensation and effort).