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There's another side of this story as well though. The consequence of having more intellectually challenging work to solve is that by the end of the day you're

There's another side of this story as well though. The consequence of having more intellectually challenging work to solve is that by the end of the day you're brain fried. For most people the only way you're really going to get anywhere in life is by staking it out on your own at some point. If you're not earning enough money to save away a sufficient stash, that means you need to be working your day job while also starting up your own project at home. In some cases this might be impossible due to the absurd contracts some companies expect devs to sign (all your work, even on your time off, belongs to them) and even when it's possible, it's made extremely difficult by the draining nature of more interesting work. Less interesting jobs may not be as satisfying in the short run, but can leave you with more energy to pursue what you actually want to do in the long run.

quotemstr 9y ago
For me, intellectually challenging work is invigorating. I don't feel "brain fried".
internetman55 9y ago
I have this problem as well. I would see people who sit in meetings and send emails do very low-effort work all day, and think they were working hard. When a former manager started cracking down on developers walking outside to cool down and think or spending any idle time, I started putting the similar amount of thought and mental effort into my job, to get 8 full hours of 'work' done without burning out. During this period, I got basically nothing that wasn't super routine done. Any minor hinge in development would take days or weeks to work through instead of a few hours. Said manager was perplexed and began complaining constantly about how the pace of development was slowing down and that milestones were being missed.