If you really feel like your software job is just routine sticking bits together, maybe start to look for another job. The one thing I like about my dev job is

If you really feel like your software job is just routine sticking bits together, maybe start to look for another job. The one thing I like about my dev job is it's always something new and interesting, and the stuff I am building is overall not interesting at all, but I enjoy what I do within it. After 15+ years of front end development I still get a kick out of plugging together features and seeing the results. I hate routine and repetitive tasks and I would quit if I was bored every day (there are certainly some boring days). I read somewhere once that new developers coming into the industry just for the money are in for a shock. Software is boring to a lot of people, you have to be the right kind of person to actually enjoy the tedium of reloading, recompiling, debugging, just for that one short lived smirk to yourself when it all works and you check it in.