I have a degree in CS and one in Physics. For the first 7 years I worked as a "programmer", ie. writing code, a lot of C++, and of course web stuff. About 6 ye

I have a degree in CS and one in Physics. For the first 7 years I worked as a "programmer", ie. writing code, a lot of C++, and of course web stuff. About 6 years ago I (accidentally) became a "data guy". I do a lot of data infra/engineering, a lot of stats and analytics, and lately ML. Also I do a lot of management stuff and hiring. I'm lucky, this is a pretty sweet time to be working for me. My skills are a perfect match for the work, I'm able to do impactful work and can get paid for it. I don't really care about interesting technical problems that much, in the sense that I don't want to solve an interesting technical problem just because it's interesting. What matters is having an impact on your users and the business. I think if you're looking for those types of technical challenges, it's better to contribute to open source code, rather than doing it at the day job. At the day job, you should always choose the method which makes sense to move fast..