[jmkni]

I've come to realise that actually coding is the part of software development I enjoy the least, and in many staff software engineer positions, that is basically entirely what you are doing

Other people are doing the fun/interesting stuff, project managers, product owners, scrum masters, etc etc are doing all of the fun interesting figuring out/thinking, and then it's just your job to code it.

When you work on side projects, you get to wear all of those other hats and it's way more rewarding

[pavel_lishin]

Wild! Coding, for me, is the fun part - implementing the solution, once I've come up with one.

I've never looked at a product owner or a scrum master and thought to myself, "man, those guys get to have all the fun." I've more often thought, "wow, they have to answer to three people, two of whom are assholes, who have four opinions on how things should be done between them."

[turdprincess]

Actually coding is the domain of mid level and senior engineers. Staff engineers architect, design technical strategy, collaborate across teams. A proper staff engineer might only see code during review or a proof of concept.

[cudgy]

Opposite for me. Much rather code an abomination than hash out the abomination in meetings all day with scrum “masters”, product “owners”, and software “engineers”.

[doctor_eval]

Not really related to your points but I feel that separating design and implementation is a mistake; the people designing and implementing should be, if not the same people, then certainly in the same room, and in constant contact.

So it could be that, if you’re in a world where you aren’t getting to do any of the fun figuring-out stuff, perhaps that’s a problem with the workplace structure rather than with programming generally.

I enjoy a bit of everything, and am apparently lucky to have been able to do it for a long time.