These are good, practical advice. I'd say moving to a different company/team every few years is a very useful way to keep oneself motivated. I personally make

These are good, practical advice. I'd say moving to a different company/team every few years is a very useful way to keep oneself motivated. I personally make it a habit to look for different opportunities every few years. Even if I decide not to move after evaluating options, it helps me keep motivated. And when you do move, there's nothing like the excitement of learning new things and feeling a bit nervous/anxious in a new field and having/wanting to prove oneself that will keep you motivated and focused. As for "moving protocol buffers" - indeed, all code does, at the smallest level, is just moving bits and flipping bits. There's no amazingly interesting things in computer science when broken down. What's interesting is what happens in between and what the combination of all of those accomplishes together. What it accomplishes is what matters. We're all just standing on top of the shoulders of giants that is collective human knowledge, adding tiny bits of our own contributions on our luckiest days, and just barely holding onto the shoulders in our normal days. If you're not advancing human knowledge, keeping some tools used by millions working is useful and meaningful. Keeping millions of people entertained is useful. Providing tools for other thousands of engineers is meaningful. The meaning of a job is what you define it to be. Even if you decide you won't find meaning in the job itself and decide to take it purely as a "to-make-a-living", necessary-evil endeavor, what you achieve through it can be personally meaningful (provide for your family, for your personal experience, for society, etc).