I find that perfecting what some would call "non-sexy infrastructure pieces" very rewarding. In fact, it's what I spend most of my day doing! Only to me, all of

I find that perfecting what some would call "non-sexy infrastructure pieces" very rewarding. In fact, it's what I spend most of my day doing! Only to me, all of our infrastructure pieces are sexy. Because I wrote and open sourced a lot of them, I want them to succeed because by doing so, they create a stable site (and I get fewer pages at 2am). If you are a software craftsman, then maintenance isn't really "maintenance." It's finding logic and design flaws and finding ways to erase those rough edges. In the end, you work towards a perfect vision of your software, just as a sculptor works toward his perfect vision of slab of marble.