Personally I've estimated the quality of life I get from working on something fun and meaningful to be about 12-15k/yr. That's the gap between "dream work" and

Personally I've estimated the quality of life I get from working on something fun and meaningful to be about 12-15k/yr. That's the gap between "dream work" and something like generic CRUD business logic type stuff. A huge part of that is the "dream work" also being 40h with decent flex hours, good coworkers, and good management. That 12-15k number is potentially upward of 40k if lacking those. You spend too much time at work to not enjoy it. And I value my own time and enjoyment highly. I wouldn't want to sell it for less. The lower side of the software engineer payscale is still enough that I have more than I want day-to-day. The main limits it imposes on me are house/car/early retirement related things.