>It's doesn't seem like a skill like riding a bike where you learn it once and then it's just this thing you can pull out whenever (or maybe it just takes longe

>It's doesn't seem like a skill like riding a bike where you learn it once and then it's just this thing you can pull out whenever (or maybe it just takes longer to get to that point). Sure it is, you just need to see it as a skill that you need to work on and be disciplined about it. There are still a lot of places that can use daily automation that also don't have time/money to go looking for a product. Plenty of people are good at things and do not necessarily love doing that thing. I'm sorry, but having a bleeding-heart passion about programming is not a prerequisite for doing well and people that make it a prerequisite can turn into toxic, snobby elitists when working with others. The people that go back to their real love just need more time to reach a given plateau compared to someone who does this stuff for 10-16 hours a day and gets a shot of dopamine every time they compile something. Nothing says you can't reach the top without loving it, it's just going to take a lot longer. A lot of businesses just do not care about the extra quality you can put into a code base and when you try to put your passions into something and realize how little people care for anything beyond mediocrity, it can end up killing your passion.