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I get stuck on asking “why am I solving this problem” too much. I am surrounded by technical problems that it would give a dopamine hit to solve and I’d feel the pleasure of helping my fellow man, but 99% of them feel like they shouldn’t even exist and solving them doesn’t really lead to any meaningful progress beyond providing me job security and money. (How) do people deal with this?

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Deciding which problems should be solved, identifying where there is business value in solving them, is pretty much the definition of business leadership.

I think the only real answer is moving into management, where you can more effectively argue against spending effort on things that aren't worthwhile.

Well that’s not what I wanted to hear! I think you’re right though, you get to choose your challenge: do you want your problem to be possibly working on things that don’t really matter or be responsible (and empowered) to figure out what really matters.

Yeah it sucks but unfortunately this is the conclusion I came to after pondering on this for my own career. I think you phrased it as well as I've ever seen it put though.

And of course there is always the other options. For myself I didn't relish either choice and now I teach programming and CS. But I'm old and this feels like a good way to end my working years.

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