Many people are attracted to software development because of compensation. But not everyone. Some people are developers because they like to develop software.

Many people are attracted to software development because of compensation. But not everyone. Some people are developers because they like to develop software. Software development organizations can be a good place to work, but the taker mentality in software engineering makes everyone miserable. And the more money there is in software, the more takers join the industry: people that truly hate development and see it as means to an end. They want to stop being developers as quickly as possible because they hate development and see it as a lowly way of life. They feel entitled to manage others despite not caring about what they do. They resort to business excuses even when their contribution to the business are code deliverables. And some organizations are dumb enough to indulge into that. And from there, it is a downwards spiral. You want to hire the best, but at the same time you have entitled managers that hate development and punish people that care about what they do and make feel demoralized instead of inspired. For a developer, the code you work on is a mental place. And if that place is chaotic, developers will be unhappy because their working conditions are inadequate, unless what truly makes you happy is clocking out at 5pm instead of getting to work in the morning. There are people out there telling developers that messy chaotic codebases are normal and they should adapt to chaos and tech debt instead of trying to do something about it. I do not think that is the answer.