[mullethunter]

For the past 8 years I've been designing .NET enterprise integration solutions and I love it. I love the problem solving that is required and working on getting square pages to fit seamlessly into round holes. Recently I switched companies and was working with jQuery and PHP doing front end things like UI validation and was losing my mind. It's not the pencil and paper type of challenge as integration design.

[zheng]

Wow, could you elaborate more? This sounds like a very interesting viewpoint, and one that I've not seen before.

[hackinthebochs]

I'm with you on this one, we're a rare breed. I think people underestimate how much good software engineering can go into these "boring" enterprise projects. Of course, there are a lot of shops where programming skill is lacking, so you're actively discouraged from doing anything the least bit interesting. But if you can find a gig that welcomes skill and creativity, you can end up having a lot of fun doing these types of projects.

For me, an interesting project is not the topic but the technical challenges behind it. Your typical web front end stuff just doesn't have any appeal. It's just programming gruntwork.