[pixelrevision]

It doesn’t sound like burnout to me. It sounds more like organizational issues that have left the author with a very limited amount of time to work on a sluggish product they can’t take pride in. The name brand and pay sometimes just don’t make up for that especially for some people.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to take pride in your work and to have working conditions that facilitate that. Get enough people together who feel that way and can find something useful to build and you get a huge competitive advantage. Software that is useful and performant is like gold but takes a lot of extra effort and passion to keep it that way.

You’re right about the “fun” part though. Making great software (and art) is hard work! “Satisfying” is probably a better metric to shoot for.