Super happy senior developer/consultant. Now I work for myself in an office out in the country but I've had lots of normal dev jobs. Lots of work variety, this

Super happy senior developer/consultant. Now I work for myself in an office out in the country but I've had lots of normal dev jobs. Lots of work variety, this year I've worked on; WPF/C# app for laser welding, C++/OpenGL/graphics for radar, and C++/OpenCV/computer vision for tracking the spin of golf balls. I'm going kayaking this afternoon after I check in some changes. It wasn't always this good but I've always been happy to go in to work at the companies I worked for. [1] Life it too short to work someplace that makes you unhappy when you could be working someplace where you actually enjoy going in to work every day. [2] By your question I suspect what you really want to know is how to be a happy senior developer. I'm not in the "web world" so it might not be applicable but here is an approach that has worked for me: 1) Work for small or tiny companies. A tiny company doesn't have many "dark surfaces" for incompetent/lazy/"political climber" types to grow in. When there are only 4 people rowing the boat you can tell pretty quick if someone isn't pulling their oar. Large enough to have an HR department? Probably too big. 2) Work on new code. I've almost never worked on code older than a year that I didn't write. You know who needs developers to write green field code? New, tiny companies, that's who. Startups are small but you they aren't the only small companies. 3) Work with nice people that are smarter than you. Working with people smarter than I am has always been a given for me... 4) Try contracting, direct if possible. [1] I've been doing this for 30+ years. [2] Not sure if this applies to women. :-( My wife is also a developer and it kills me how much harder working life is for her simply because she's female.