[farleykr]

I don't know that I have any good questions to suggest that you ask yourself but I just want to point out that "average" or "normal" are not pejorative terms. There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing a fine job at work and then going home to enjoy reading a book or whatever hobbies you have.

The reason I point this out is that whenever I feel like you're feeling I eventually realize it's because I'm buying into the lie that I have to be a paragon of excellence at something for my life to be worth living or to get the most out of it. I think IT work, programming in particular, makes us think in terms of optimization but that's just not the way humans work. Of course we may want to "optimize" in small ways like healthy living or gaining skill at a hobby. There's nothing wrong with aspirations but there's also nothing wrong with being happy where you are with what you have.

I fell backwards into IT work after failing at the career I wanted out of college and then taught myself to program so I could sidestep into a developer role when I thought that would fulfill me. It didn't. I still have good days and bad days and sometimes the suspicion that I'm not fulfilling my potential creeps up on me. These are the ups and downs of real life, not problems to optimize away. My greatest pursuit lately has been growing in my ability to accept disappointment with equanimity.

To address your specific request, maybe some questions you could ask yourself are: Do I have realistic expectations about what a job is supposed to do for me? Is my job about me and what I want or is it a role I use to serve others?

One suggestion to top it off: It sounds like you're close to answering your own question when you talk about "humans and how we work, and how we use our brains." So, at the risk of being too blunt, maybe don't think so much about yourself. Maybe spend some time thinking about how you can grow in learning about humans, how they work, and how you can be of service to them as they ask themselves the same questions you're asking yourself.

[HellDunkel]

I am sure you have built things with your bare hands that you have been proud of or maybe someone close to you. if i compare theses events in my own life to the things i built as a dev i must say: something is off. and nobody is helped if we sugarcoat things like that. sw engineering is hard work and more often than not feels like a waste of time. i never aspired to stand out, all i want is build something i can be proud of.

[farleykr]

I certainly didn't intend to sugarcoat anything. I was actually hoping to lay bare the harsh reality that work is often disappointing. I would hazard a guess that maligree has built at least a few things they're proud of at work. I read their post as expressing an overall feeling that they're not at home in their job, which to my understanding is a tangent from whether or not you have individual accomplishments to be proud of.

I'll double down on my original comment and say that if you depend on work to be your ultimate source of fulfillment (another way of calling it a home), the disappointment and reality that "sw engineering is hard work and more often than not feels like a waste of time" will always pull the rug out from under you at some point.

[HellDunkel]

should we not put up some serious effort to make work less disappointing? i think everybody, especially the senior folks need to up their game a little and say „no“ a lot more. we are trapped in a loop of endlessly stupid hypecylces and we will never break out by stating „work is often disappointing“ and call it a day.

[farleykr]

I'm not saying we should turn a blind eye to disappointments because "that's just the way it is." Work itself is a process of taking things that are not good or disappointing and correcting them. But maligree is getting at the idea of finding ultimate fulfillment at work. I'm convinced that even a thousand years from now we'll still be experiencing disappointment at work and if we wait for disappointment to be gone from work so we can find ultimate fulfillment in it we'll never get there.

[HellDunkel]

disappointment, set backs and failures are part of work and this is not a problem but a very natural thing. The thing about software is that we do way too many stupid and downright useless things and this leads to a lot of frustration. Imagine we built houses like we do software.