Some options: 1. Learn to take a broader view of programming. As others have said (comments from greenyoda, taylodl), and you intuit, the job isn't really abou

Some options: 1. Learn to take a broader view of programming. As others have said (comments from greenyoda, taylodl), and you intuit, the job isn't really about coding most of the time, let alone coding algorithms. It's hard to make that mental leap, but when you do you view your work very differently (I wrote about this here - https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/07/10/stop-writing-software/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/07/10/stop-writing-softwar...). There are plenty of interesting new skills to learn if you learn this attitude. 2. There are jobs that are about hard algorithm optimization. So try to find jobs where those algorithm-specific skills are useful; they do exist. (I personally don't see my job as writing code,I see it as identifying and solving problems, but I would very much hate to update legacy apps. I'd get horribly bored and want to quit. Right now I'm really enjoying doing scientific computing, specifically image processing for gene sequencing.)