work environment can mess with your mindset to care. To the point of being told not to. you just need to achieve X, and move on, and you never get to make thin

work environment can mess with your mindset to care. To the point of being told not to. you just need to achieve X, and move on, and you never get to make things in a way you care about them.... so you may decide personally to focus on the means, try different languages, learning new frameworks, techniques..... but never quite being in environment where you can build something you care about. Interviewing people you often hear peoples stories around this, it's a motivation to find a new job, or they end up with side projects / open source which they care about and start wishing they could do those full time. They just want a space where they can build things that matter to them. Some places get it, some don't, some partially get it. One of the classic things I have seen is "managers" that say they want you to care but don't really care themselves. Interestingly a number of years ago I went through a program called "Better by Design" which the NZ government sponsored for local businesses, see:- http://www.betterbydesign.org.nz/why-design-matters/ http://www.betterbydesign.org.nz/why-design-matters/ and a big part of the message about good design was really all about trying to make people care at every level of the company.